Source: http://lawlibrary.chanrobles.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=28738:g-r-no-l-57473-august-15,-1988-san-miguel-corp-v-national-labor-relations-commission&catid=1240&Itemid=566
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 00:44:12+00:00

Document:
SAN MIGUEL CORPORATION, Petitioner, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS COMMISSION and SAN MIGUEL BREWERY SALES FORCE UNION (PTGWO) respondents.
Siguion Reyna, Montecillo & Ongsiako Law Offices for Petitioner.
Isidro D. Amoroso for Private Respondent.
1.	LABOR AND SOCIAL LEGISLATION; SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM; JURISDICTION; ARTICLE 180, LABOR CODE; ANY MATTER RELATED TO THE WORKER’S ENTITLEMENT TO BENEFITS FOR WORK-CONNECTED DISABILITY; CASE AT BAR. — It is evident that what was sought to be litigated by the union before the Bureau of Labor Relations and later before the Labor Arbiter, was the matter of its members’ entitlement to benefits for work-connected disability — whether limited to those specified by the Labor Code or inclusive of the difference between the latter and that theretofore being paid by the petitioner. In any case, it certainly was an issue unavoidably comprehended within the catch-all phrase, "any other matter related thereto," contained in the afore-quoted Section 180 of the Code. It was, therefore, undoubtedly an issue exclusively cognizable by the SSS, and consequently, one beyond the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Labor Relations, and that of the Labor Arbiters as well — from which Article 217 of the Code in fact expressly excepts "claims for employees’ compensation," among others.
2.	ID.; EMPLOYEES COMPENSATION PROGRAM; COMPENSATION; ACCRUAL OF RIGHT THERETO. — The right to compensation or benefit for the loss or impairment of an employee’s earning capacity due to work-related illness or injury is premised on the occurrence of the illness or injury. It accrues upon, and not before, the happening of these contingencies. That the employee must have incurred the illness or injury during the program’s effectivity, given the cut-off date set by the law, is the only fact which operates to vest the right to be indemnified according to either the phased-out scheme or the new one.
3.	ID.; ID.; ID.; STATE INSURANCE FUND; DIRECTLY LIABLE FOR PAYMENT OF COMPENSATION OF DISABLED EMPLOYEES. — In the event of illness or injury, and once a claim is made under such a new indemnification scheme, it is the Fund which becomes liable to compensate the employee for the disability, and its liability is "exclusive and in place of all other liabilities of the employer." (Art. 173, Labor Code, Ysmael Maritime Corp. v. Hon. Avelino, 151 SCRA 333, 336-337) The clear intent of the law is that the employer should be relieved of the obligation of directly paying his employees compensation for work-connected illness or injury on the theory that this is part of the cost of production or business activity; and that no longer would there be need for adversarial proceedings between an employer and his employee in which there were specific legal presumptions operating in favor of the employee and statutorily specified defenses available to an employer. The new compensation program now imposes on the employer nothing more than the obligation to remit monthly premiums to the State Insurance Fund, and it is the latter on which is laid the burden of compensating the employee for any disability. Once the employer pays his share to the fund, all obligation on his part to his employees is ended.
Shortly thereafter, the Union filed a second complaint, 15 this time with the Labor Arbiters’ Office, accusing the petitioner of non-compliance with the requirements of PD 851, non-payment of premium pay for work done during rest days and holidays, and underpayment of wages under PD 928. It also prayed for the inclusion in the bargaining unit of the salesmen and helpers in the sales offices located in Valenzuela, Bulacan and Muntinlupa, Rizal.
This, too, is the message of Policy Instructions No. 1 of the Minister of Labor, dated April 23, 1976, that employee compensation cases in private employment are under the original jurisdiction of the SSS.
Resolution of the case on this jurisdictional issue would not, however, end the controversy. To do that, it is necessary to decide the appeal on the merits. This the Court will now proceed to do.
2)	the exclusory proviso in Article 173 of the Code does not exempt the employer from continuing to comply with payment of compensation arising from prior unilateral grant and practice. These reasons are not persuasive.
WHEREFORE, the petition is hereby GRANTED, and the decision of the National Labor Relations Commission dated January 7, 1981 is hereby REVERSED and SET ASIDE, and a new one entered dismissing the private respondent’s complaint. No pronouncement as to costs.
Cruz, Gancayco, Griño-Aquino and Medialdea, JJ., concur.
2.	To be enforced and implemented by the Employees’ Compensation Commission in conjunction with the Government Service Insurance System and the Social Security System.
5.	Id., Art. 183. The contributions are pooled into the State Insurance Fund.
6.	Id., Arts. 168, 170.
7.	Id., Art. 173. The benefits are obviously exclusive of those under the old Workmen’s Compensation Act (Act No. 3428, as amended) and the Employers’ Liability Act. Art. 173 further provides that payment of compensation under the program shall bar the recovery of benefits under Sec. 699 of the Revised Administrative Code; R.A. No. 1161 (the Social Security Act), as amended; C.A. No. 186 (the GSIS Law), as amended; R.A. No. 610 (the AFP Pension Act), as amended; and R.A. No. 4864 (re the Police Commission), as amended.
8.	Id., Arts. 180, 217. N.B. Art. 217 explicitly excepts from the jurisdiction of Labor Arbiters and the National Labor Relations Commission "claims for employees’ compensation, social security, medicare and maternity benefits." Art. 297 abolished the entire machinery administering, enforcing and adjudicating claims under the old Workmen’s Compensation Act (Act No. 3428, as amended).
9.	Arts. 294 and 300.
15.	Id., pp. 2-3, 303-304.
19.	The appeal having been docketed as NLRC Case No. RB V-20078-78.
21.	The Court of course, has no original jurisdiction over actions of declaratory relief, but takes cognizance of the proceeding at bar as one of certiorari.
22.	SEE footnote 2, supra.
24.	SEE Rollo, p. 24.
26.	Articles 292 and 294, Labor Code, supra, footnotes 4 and 5 of page 2.
27.	Articles 292 and 300, Labor Code, id.
28.	In Chavez, supra, the Court was confronted with the issue of whether petitioner’s compensation claim for ailments contracted by him prior to the effectivity of the New Labor Code on November 1, 1974 but filed thereafter, should be adjudicated under the old Workmen’s Compensation Act (Act No. 3428, as amended) or under the New Labor Code; the Court declared that it was the latter which applies, "for what is important is when compensation is sought" (at page 86).
29.	Article 173, Labor Code, SEE Ysmael Maritime Corporation v. Hon. Celso Avelino, etc. Et. Al., G.R. No. L-43674, 151 SCRA 333, 336-337, relating to compensation actions under the Civil Code with a review of relevant cases and conflicting rulings.
31.	SEE de Jesus v. Employees’ Compensation Commission, Et Al., 142 SCRA 92, 99, 100.
32.	The following observations in Stertz, supra, are also pertinent. "To resume, ours is not an employers’ liability act. It is not even an ordinary compensation act. It is an industrial insurance statute . . . All the features of an insurance act are present. Not only are all remedies between master and servant abolished, and, in the words of the statute, all phases of them withdrawn from private controversy, but the employee is no longer to look to the master even for the scheduled and mandatory compensation. He must look only to a fund led by various employers. Let a claim be rejected by the commission, the latter and not the employer is to be used. Nor is the commission so much as selected by the parties. The State administers the fund.

References: v. 
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 Art. 183
 Art. 173
 Art. 173
 Art. 217
 Art. 297
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