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SYNOPSIS
PBSTSEU instituted a Petition for Certification Election to determine the sole and exclusive
bargaining agent of the supervisory and technical staff employees of PICOP for collective
bargaining agreement (CBA) purposes. Following the submission by the parties of their
respective position papers and evidence, Med-Arbiter Phibun D. Pura issued an Order
dated March 27, 1990, holding that supervisors and section heads of the petitioner are
managerial employees and therefore excluded from the list of voters for purposes of
certification election. Public respondent Bienvenido E. Laguesma, acting as the then
Undersecretary of Labor, issued the assailed Order dated April 17, 1991 setting aside the
Order dated March 27, 1990 of the Med-Arbiter and declaring that the subject supervisors
and section heads are supervisory employees eligible to vote in the certification election.
PICOP sought reconsideration of the said order. However, public respondent in his Order
dated August 7, 1991 denied PICOP's motion for reconsideration. Hence, this petition.
PICOP's main thesis is that the positions of Section Heads and Supervisors, who have
been designated as Section Managers and Unit Managers, as the case may be, were
converted to managerial employees under the decentralization and reorganization
program it implemented in 1989. Being managerial employees, with alleged authority to
hire and fire employees, they are ineligible for union membership under Article 245 of the
Labor Code.
In this petition, a thorough dissection of the job description of the concerned supervisory
employees and section heads indisputably showed that they were not actually managerial
but only supervisory employees since they do not lay down company policies. The petition
was dismissed, and the Resolution and Order of public respondent Bienvenido E.
Laguesma dated April 17, 1991 and August 17, 1991, respectively, finding the subject
supervisors and section heads as supervisory employees eligible to vote in the
certification election were affirmed. TAcCDI
DECISION
DE LEON , JR ., J : p
Before us is a petition for certiorari seeking to annul the Resolution 1 and the Order 2 dated
April 17, 1991 and August 7, 1991, respectively, of public respondent Bienvenido E.
Laguesma, acting then as Undersecretary, now the Secretary, of the Department of Labor
and Employment (DOLE), which reversed the Order dated March 27, 1990 3 of Med-Arbiter
Phibun D. Pura declaring that supervisors and section heads of petitioner under its new
organizational structure are managerial employees and should be excluded from the list of
voters for the purpose of a certification election among supervisory and technical staff
employees of petitioner. 4
The facts of the case are the following: cdphil
PICOP's main thesis is that the positions Section Heads and Supervisors, who have been
designated as Section Managers and Unit Managers, as the case may be, were converted
to managerial employees under the decentralization and reorganization program it
implemented in 1989. Being managerial employees, with alleged authority to hire and fire
employees, they are ineligible for union membership under Article 245 2 9 of the Labor
Code. Furthermore, PICOP contends that no malice should be imputed against it for
implementing its decentralization program only after the petition for certification election
was filed inasmuch as the same is a valid exercise of its management prerogative, and that
said program has long been in the drawing boards of the company, which was realized
only in 1989 and fully implemented in 1991. PICOP emphatically stresses that it could not
have conceptualized the decentralization program only for the purpose of "thwarting the
right of the concerned employees to self-organization."
The petition, not being meritorious, must fail and the same should be as it is hereby
dismissed. LLjur
SO ORDERED.
Bellosillo, Mendoza, Quisumbing and Buena, JJ., concur.
Footnotes