560 Phil. 615
AUSTRIA-MARTINEZ, J.:
The petition is without merit.
- WHETHER OR NOT THE PETITIONERS ARE SEASONAL/PROJECT/TERM EMPLOYEES NOT REGULAR EMPLOYEES OF RESPONDENTS;
- WHETHER OR NOT THE PETITIONERS WERE ILLEGALLY DISMISSED AND ARE ENTITLED TO BACKWAGES AND OTHER MONETARY BENEFITS PRAYED FOR IN THE COMPLAINT.[5]
ART. 280. Regular and Casual Employees. – The provision of written agreement to the contrary notwithstanding and regardless of the oral agreement of the parties, an employment shall be deemed to be regular where the employee has been engaged to perform activities which are usually necessary or desirable in the usual business or trade of the employer, except where the employment has been fixed for a specific project or undertaking the completion or termination of which has been determined at the time of the engagement of the employee or where the work or services to be performed is seasonal in nature and the employment is for the duration of the season.The foregoing provision provides for three kinds of employees: (a) regular employees or those who have been “engaged to perform activities which are usually necessary or desirable in the usual business or trade of the employer”; (b) project employees or those “whose employment has been fixed for a specific project or undertaking, the completion or termination of which has been determined at the time of the engagement of the employee or where the work or services to be performed is seasonal in nature and the employment is for the duration of the season”; and (c) casual employees or those who are neither regular nor project employees.[9]
An employment shall be deemed to be casual if it is not covered by the preceding paragraph: Provided, That, any employee who has rendered at least one year of service, whether such service is continuous or broken, shall be considered a regular employee with respect to the activity in which he is employed and his employment shall continue while such actually exists.
This is further buttress[ed] by the fact that the relationship between complainants and the respondent URSUMCO, would clearly reveal that the very nature of the terms and conditions of their hiring would show that complainants were required to perform phases of special projects which are not related to the main operation of the respondent for a definite period, after which their services are available to any farm owner.[13]The NLRC, agreeing with the LA, further ruled that:
In the case at bar, We note that complainants never bothered to deny that they voluntarily, knowingly and willfully executed the contracts of employment. Neither was there any showing that respondents exercised moral dominance on the complainants, x x x it is clear that the contracts of employment are valid and binding on the complainants.Finally, the CA noted:
The execution of these contracts in the case at bar is necessitated by the peculiar nature of the work in the sugar industry which has an off milling season. The very nature of the terms and conditions of complainants' hiring reveals that they were required to perform phases of special projects for a definite period after, their services are available to other farm owners. This is so because the planting of sugar does not entail a whole year operation, and utility works are comparatively small during the off-milling season. x x x[14]
Petitioner Pedy Caseres first applied with private respondent URSUMCO on January 9, 1989 as a worker assisting the crane operator at the transloading station. Upon application, Caseres was interviewed and made to understand that his employment would be co-terminus with the phase of work to which he would be then assigned, that is until February 5, 1989 and thereafter he would be free to seek employment elsewhere. Caseres agreed and signed the contract of employment for specific project or undertaking. After an absence of more than five (5) months, Caseres re-applied with respondent as a seasonal project worker assisting in the general underchassis reconditioning to transport units on July 17, 1989. Like his first assignment, Caseres was made to understand that his services would be co-terminus with the work to which he would be then assigned that is from July 17, 1989 to July 20, 1989 and that thereafter he is free to seek employment elsewhere to which Caseres agreed and readily signed the contract of employment for specific project or undertaking issued to him. Thereafter Caseres voluntarily signed several other employment contracts for various undertakings with a determinable period. As in the first contract, Caseres' services were co-terminus with the work to which he was assigned, and that thereafter, he was free to seek employment with other sugar millers or elsewhere.It should be stressed that contracts for project employment are valid under the law. In Villa v. National Labor Relations Commission,[16] the Court stated that:
The nature and terms and conditions of employment of petitioner Andito Pael were the same as that of his co-petitioner Caseres.x x x
It must be noted that there were intervals in petitioners' respective employment contracts, and that their work depended on the availability of such contracts or projects. Consequently, the employment of URSUMCO's work force was not permanent but co-terminous with the projects to which the employees were assigned and from whose payrolls they were paid (Palomares vs. NLRC, 277 SCRA 439).
Petitioners' repeated and successive re-employment on the basis of a contract of employment for more than one year cannot and does not make them regular employees. Length of service is not the controlling determinant of the employment tenure of a project employee (Rada vs. NLRC, 205 SCRA 69). x x x[15]
x x x by entering into such contract, an employee is deemed to understand that his employment is coterminous with the project. He may not expect to be employed continuously beyond the completion of the project. It is of judicial notice that project employees engaged for manual services or those for special skills like those of carpenters or masons, are, as a rule, unschooled. However, this fact alone is not a valid reason for bestowing special treatment on them or for invalidating a contract of employment. Project employment contracts are not lopsided agreements in favor of only one party thereto. The employer’s interest is equally important as that of the employee’s for theirs is the interest that propels economic activity. While it may be true that it is the employer who drafts project employment contracts with its business interest as overriding consideration, such contracts do not, of necessity, prejudice the employee. Neither is the employee left helpless by a prejudicial employment contract. After all, under the law, the interest of the worker is paramount.[17]The fact that petitioners were constantly re-hired does not ipso facto establish that they became regular employees. Their respective contracts with respondent show that there were intervals in their employment. In petitioner Caseres's case, while his employment lasted from August 1989 to May 1999, the duration of his employment ranged from one day to several months at a time, and such successive employments were not continuous. With regard to petitioner Pael, his employment never lasted for more than a month at a time. These support the conclusion that they were indeed project employees, and since their work depended on the availability of such contracts or projects, necessarily the employment of respondent’s work force was not permanent but co-terminous with the projects to which they were assigned and from whose payrolls they were paid. As ruled in Palomares v. National Labor Relations Commission,[18] it would be extremely burdensome for their employer to retain them as permanent employees and pay them wages even if there were no projects to work on.