Source: http://lawlibrary.chanrobles.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=82148:g-r-no-170388,-september-04,-2013-colegio-del-santisimo-rosario-and-sr-zenaida-s-mofada,-op,-petitioners,-v-emmanuel-rojo,-respondent&catid=1574&Itemid=566
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 10:51:04+00:00

Document:
G.R. No. 170388, September 04, 2013 - COLEGIO DEL SANTISIMO ROSARIO AND SR. ZENAIDA S. MOFADA, OP, Petitioners, v. EMMANUEL ROJO, Respondent.
COLEGIO DEL SANTISIMO ROSARIO AND SR. ZENAIDA S. MOFADA, OP, Petitioners, v. EMMANUEL ROJO,* Respondent.
This Petition for Review on Certiorari1 assails the August 31, 2005 Decision2 and the November 10, 2005 Resolution3 of the Court of Appeals (CA) in CA-G.R. SP No. 85188, which affirmed the July 31, 2003 Decision4 of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC). Said NLRC Decision affirmed with modification the October 7, 2002 Decision5 of the Labor Arbiter (LA) which, in turn, granted respondent Emmanuel Rojo’s (respondent) Complaint6 for illegal dismissal.
1. To pay [respondent] the total amount of P39,252.00 corresponding to his severance compensation and 13th month pay, moral and exemplary damages.
2. To pay 10% of the total amount due to [respondent] as attorney’s fees.
WHEREFORE, premises considered, the appealed Decision is hereby, AFFIRMED with MODIFICATION only insofar as the award of separation pay is concerned. Since [respondent] had been illegally dismissed, [petitioner] Colegio Del Santisimo Rosario is hereby ordered to reinstate him to his former position without loss of seniority rights with full backwages until he is actually reinstated. However, if reinstatement is no longer feasible, the respondent shall pay separation pay, in [addition] to the payment of his full backwages.
The Computation Division is hereby directed to compute [respondent’s] full backwages to be attached and to form part of this Decision.
The rest of the appealed Decision stands.
Petitioners moved for reconsideration which the NLRC denied in its April 28, 2004 Resolution24 for lack of merit.
Petitioners filed a Petition for Certiorari25 before the CA alleging grave abuse of discretion on the part of the NLRC in finding that respondent had attained the status of a regular employee and was illegally dismissed from employment.
According to the CA, respondent has attained the status of a regular employee after he was employed for three consecutive school years as a full-time teacher and had served CSR satisfactorily. Aside from being a high school teacher, he was also the Prefect of Discipline, a task entailing much responsibility. The only reason given by Mofada for not renewing respondent’s contract was the alleged expiration of the contract, not any unsatisfactory service. Also, there was no showing that CSR set performance standards for the employment of respondent, which could be the basis of his satisfactory or unsatisfactory performance. Hence, there being no reasonable standards made known to him at the time of his engagement, respondent was deemed a regular employee and was, thus, declared illegally dismissed when his contract was not renewed.
Hence, the instant Petition. Incidentally, on May 23, 2007, we issued a Resolution30 directing the parties to maintain the status quo pending the resolution of the present Petition.
Petitioners maintain that upon the expiration of the probationary period, both the school and the respondent were free to renew the contract or let it lapse. Petitioners insist that a teacher hired for three consecutive years as a probationary employee does not automatically become a regular employee upon completion of his third year of probation. It is the positive act of the school – the hiring of the teacher who has just completed three consecutive years of employment on probation for the next school year – that makes the teacher a regular employee of the school.
In this case, petitioners’ teachers who were on probationary employment were made to enter into a contract effective for one school year. Thereafter, it may be renewed for another school year, and the probationary employment continues. At the end of the second fixed period of probationary employment, the contract may again be renewed for the last time.
In Mercado, we held that “[u]nless this reconciliation is made, the requirements of [Article 281] on probationary status would be fully negated as the school may freely choose not to renew contracts simply because their terms have expired.”36 This will have an unsettling effect in the equilibrium vis-a-vis the relations between labor and management that the Constitution and Labor Code have worked hard to establish.
The above provision clearly provides that full-time teachers become regular or permanent employees once they have satisfactorily completed the probationary period of three school years.37 The use of the term satisfactorily necessarily connotes the requirement for schools to set reasonable standards to be followed by teachers on probationary employment. For how else can one determine if probationary teachers have satisfactorily completed the probationary period if standards therefor are not provided?
The provision on employment on probationary status under the Labor Code is a primary example of the fine balancing of interests between labor and management that the Code has institutionalized pursuant to the underlying intent of the Constitution.
Labor, for its part, is given the protection during the probationary period of knowing the company standards the new hires have to meet during the probationary period, and to be judged on the basis of these standards, aside from the usual standards applicable to employees after they achieve permanent status. Under the terms of the Labor Code, these standards should be made known to the teachers on probationary status at the start of their probationary period, or at the very least under the circumstances of the present case, at the start of the semester or the trimester during which the probationary standards are to be applied. Of critical importance in invoking a failure to meet the probationary standards, is that the school should show – as a matter of due process – how these standards have been applied. This is effectively the second notice in a dismissal situation that the law requires as a due process guarantee supporting the security of tenure provision, and is in furtherance, too, of the basic rule in employee dismissal that the employer carries the burden of justifying a dismissal. These rules ensure compliance with the limited security of tenure guarantee the law extends to probationary employees.
When fixed-term employment is brought into play under the above probationary period rules, the situation – as in the present case – may at first blush look muddled as fixed-term employment is in itself a valid employment mode under Philippine law and jurisprudence. The conflict, however, is more apparent than real when the respective nature of fixed-term employment and of employment on probationary status are closely examined.
The fixed-term character of employment essentially refers to the period agreed upon between the employer and the employee; employment exists only for the duration of the term and ends on its own when the term expires. In a sense, employment on probationary status also refers to a period because of the technical meaning “probation” carries in Philippine labor law – a maximum period of six months, or in the academe, a period of three years for those engaged in teaching jobs. Their similarity ends there, however, because of the overriding meaning that being “on probation” connotes, i.e., a process of testing and observing the character or abilities of a person who is new to a role or job.
Understood in the above sense, the essentially protective character of probationary status for management can readily be appreciated. But this same protective character gives rise to the countervailing but equally protective rule that the probationary period can only last for a specific maximum period and under reasonable, well-laid and properly communicated standards. Otherwise stated, within the period of the probation, any employer move based on the probationary standards and affecting the continuity of the employment must strictly conform to the probationary rules.
However, for teachers on probationary employment, in which case a fixed term contract is not specifically used for the fixed term it offers, it is incumbent upon the school to have not only set reasonable standards to be followed by said teachers in determining qualification for regular employment, the same must have also been communicated to the teachers at the start of the probationary period, or at the very least, at the start of the period when they were to be applied. These terms, in addition to those expressly provided by the Labor Code, would serve as the just cause for the termination of the probationary contract. The specific details of this finding of just cause must be communicated to the affected teachers as a matter of due process.42 Corollarily, should the teachers not have been apprised of such reasonable standards at the time specified above, they shall be deemed regular employees.
In Tamson’s Enterprises, Inc. v. Court of Appeals,43 we held that “[t]he law is clear that in all cases of probationary employment, the employer shall [convey] to the employee the standards under which he will qualify as a regular employee at the time of his engagement. Where no standards are made known to the employee at that time, he shall be deemed a regular employee.
Section 2. Security of Tenure. – (a) In cases of regular employment, the employer shall not terminate the services of an employee except for just or authorized causes as provided by law, and subject to the requirements of due process.
Curiously, despite the absence of standards, Mofada mentioned the existence of alleged performance evaluations47 in respondent’s case. We are, however, in a quandary as to what could have been the basis of such evaluation, as no evidence were adduced to show the reasonable standards with which respondent’s performance was to be assessed or that he was informed thereof. Notably too, none of the supposed performance evaluations were presented. These flaws violated respondent’s right to due process. As such, his dismissal is, for all intents and purposes, illegal.
As a matter of due process, teachers on probationary employment, just like all probationary employees, have the right to know whether they have met the standards against which their performance was evaluated. Should they fail, they also have the right to know the reasons therefor.
Mofada would also have us believe that respondent chose to resign as he feared for his life, thus, the school’s decision not to renew his contract. However, no resignation letter was presented. Besides, this is contrary to respondent’s act of immediately filing the instant case against petitioners.
WHEREFORE, the Petition is hereby DENIED. The August 31, 2005 Decision and the November 10, 2005 Resolution of the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R. SP No. 85188 are AFFIRMED. The status quo order of this Court is LIFTED.
* National Labor Relations Commission was deleted as party-respondent pursuant to Section 4, Rule 45 of the Rules of Court.
2 CA rollo, pp. 310-319; penned by Associate Justice Fernanda Lampas Peralta and concurred in by Associate Justices Ruben T. Reyes and Josefina Guevara-Salonga.
4 Id. at 22-32; penned by Presiding Commissioner Raul T. Aquino and concurred in by Commissioners Victoriano R. Calaycay and Angelita A. Gacutan.
5 Id. at 34-38; penned by Labor Arbiter Fructuoso T. Aurellano.
7 See Teacher’s Contract, id. at 45.
27 G.R. Nos. 90010-11, September 14, 1990, 189 SCRA 658, 664, citing University of Santo Tomas v. National Labor Relations Commission, 261 Phil. 483, 489 (1990).
28 CA rollo, p. 315.
32 G.R. No. 183572, April 13, 2010, 618 SCRA 218, 233-234.
33 As in the case of Mercado, the 1992 Manual of Regulations is the applicable Manual in the present case as it embodied the pertinent rules at the time of the parties’ dispute. At present, the Manual of Regulations for Private Higher Education of 2008 has been in place and applies to all private higher educational institutions; while the 2010 Revised Manual of Regulations for Private Schools in Basic Education covers all private educational institutions in basic education.
34 G.R. No. 178835, February 13, 2009, 579 SCRA 421, 435-436.
35Mercado v. AMA Computer College-Parañaque City, Inc., supra note 32 at 243.
37Magis Young Achievers’ Learning Center v. Manalo, supra note 34 at 435.
2. Subject in all instances to compliance with the concerned agency and school requirements, the probationary period for teaching or academic personnel shall not be more than three (3) consecutive school years of satisfactory service for those in the elementary and secondary levels, x x x.
38Magis Young Achievers’ Learning Center v. Manalo, supra note 34 at 435, citing Fr. Escudero, O.P. v. Office of the President of the Philippines, 254 Phil. 789, 797 (1989). See also Lacuesta v. Ateneo de Manila University, 513 Phil. 329, 336 (2005).
39Mercado v. AMA Computer College-Parañaque City, Inc., supra note 32 at 238-243.
40 Id. at 243. Emphasis supplied; italics in the original.
43 G.R. No. 192881, November 16, 2011, 660 SCRA 374, 388, citing Hacienda Primera Development Corporation v. Villegas, G.R. No. 186243, April 11, 2011, 647 SCRA 536, 543.
Probationary employment. – There is probationary employment where the employee, upon his engagement, is made to undergo a trial period during which the employer determines his fitness to qualify for regular employment, based on reasonable standards made known to him at the time of engagement.
(c) The services of an employee who has been engaged on probationary basis may be terminated only for a just or authorized cause, when he fails to qualify as a regular employee in accordance with reasonable standards prescribed by the employer.
44 CA rollo, p. 46.
The following are just causes for the terminat[ion of] this contract by either the employer or employee.
The closing or cessation of the school or x x x considerable decrease in enrollment.
Serious misconduct or willful disobedience by the employee of the orders of his [employer or] representative in connection with his work.
Gross and habitual neglect of duty or gross inefficiency and incompetence of the employee.
Fraud or willful breach by the employee of the trust reposed in him by his employer or representative.
Gross violation of [the] rules and regulations of the school[;] or commission of a crime involving moral turpitude and such offenses committed by the employees[;] immorality[;] drunkenness[;] assaulting a teacher or any other school authority or his agent or student[;] instigating, leading or participating in school strikes[; and/or] forging or tampering with the official school records and forms.
Grave emotional disturbance on the part of the employee which [in] the judgment of employer or his representative could bring damage to the students and the school, in general.
46Tamson’s Enterprises, Inc. v. Court of Appeals, supra note 43 at 388-389.
47 TSN, July 15, 1996, p. 82; CA rollo, p. 221.
48 Id. at 18; id. at 157.

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