367 Phil. 605
GONZAGA-REYES, J.:
"January 13, 1988Another Memorandum dated January 13, 1988[4] was sent to petitioner reading as follows:
MEMO TO: MS. CAROLINA L. CASTILLO
REMITTANCE CLERK/RPC
ERMITA BRANCH
SUBJECT: REASSIGNMENT
In line with the Bank's policy on flexibility employee development, effective immediately, you are hereby requested to report to the Luneta Area Office for your training grid. Please report to Mr. Eufracio E. Cruz, Jr.-SM/A00 for further instructions.
Also, please accomplish the usual transfer of accountabilities and submit the same to your immediate supervising officer.
(Sgd.) ARTURO O. ALCASAR ( Sgd.) GILBERTO C. MARQUEZ
RPC OO Branch Manager"
"January 13, 1988On January 21, 1988, petitioner filed with the NCR Arbitration Branch a complaint-affidavit for illegal dismissal asking for her reinstatement as Foreign Remittance Clerk plus moral and exemplary damages and attorney's fees.[5]
MEMO TO: MS. CAROLINA L. CASTILLO
REMITTANCE CLERK/RPC
ERMITA BRANCH
SUBJECT : REASSIGNMENT
In line with the Bank's policy on flexibility employee development and internal control, effective immediately, you are hereby reassigned temporarily as Remittance Clerk-Inquiry.
Please accomplish the usual transfer of accountabilities and submit the same to your immediate supervising officer.
(Sgd.) ARTURO O. ALCASAR
RPC OO"
"January 25, 1988On January 25, 1988, Shahab filed a formal complaint with the branch manager of the respondent bank regarding the over-charging of commission on foreign remittances, specifically mentioning petitioner as the one who attended to his withdrawals.[7] The branch manager decided to pursue further investigation on the matter.[8]
MEMO TO: MS. CAROLINA L. CASTILLO
REMITTANCE CLERK-INQUIRY
THRU: MR. INOCENCIO R. NASAPUY
PP/HEAD-REMITTANCE SECTION
SUBJECT: DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Relative to your reassignment as Remittance Clerk-Inquiry effective January 21, 1988, for internal control purposes, you are hereby instructed that your specific duties and responsibilities will be confined to handling of inquiring by phone, by walk-in clients over the counter and to assist the FX Supervisor-Inquiry & Investigation in verifying inquiries of correspondent banks, agencies, other banks and branches.
Accordingly, you are hereby instructed further to desist from performing functions of other staff positions particularly those of the Remittance Clerk-POP/Collection Items.
For your strict compliance.
(Sgd.) ARTURO O. ALCAZAR ( Sgd.) GILBERTO C. MARQUEZ
RPC OO Branch Manager"
"WHEREFORE, PREMISES CONSIDERED, judgment is hereby rendered declaring the dismissal of complainant as illegal and ordering the respondent Philippine Commercial and International Bank, to immediately reinstate complainant to her former position as Foreign Remittance Clerk with full backwages amounting to P102,500.00 from her constructive dismissal on January 13, 1988 up to the present without loss of seniority rights, privileges and other rights granted by law.On appeal, the National Labor Relations Commission set aside the labor arbiter's decision. It ruled that there was no demotion because the position to which she was being reassigned belongs to the same job level as her former position and both positions have the same rate of compensation. The dispositive portion of the decision reads:
"The claim for damages for insufficiency of evidence is hereby dismissed.
"Pursuant to Section 12 of RA 6715 amending 223 (sic) of the Labor Code, respondent PCIB is hereby ordered to immediately reinstate complainant upon receipt of this decision, to her position as Foreign Remittance Clerk, Ermita Branch, or reinstate her in the payroll as mandated by the same law."
"WHEREFORE, premises considered, the appealed decision is hereby set aside, and a new judgment is entered, ordering the respondent to reinstate the complainant as Remittance Clerk Inquiry, without backwages to the position where she is being reassigned. Failure to comply on the part of the complainant within ten (10) days from receipt would be construed as abandonment of her job."Hence, the present petition wherein petitioner raises the following assignment of errors:
"I. RESPONDENT NLRC ERRED IN DISREGARDING THE FACTUAL FINDINGS OF THE LABOR ARBITER;Private respondent PCIB filed its Comment to the petition alleging that the reassignment of petitioner could not result in demotion as both positions of Foreign Remittance Clerk for Payment Order/Collection and Foreign Remittance Clerk for Inquiry are given the same weight in terms of duties and responsibilities and there was no diminution in rank, wages and other benefits.
II. RESPONDENT NLRC ERRED IN RULING THAT PETITIONER WAS NOT CONSTRUCTIVELY AND ILLEGALLY DISMISSED"
"It is the employer's prerogative, based on its assessment and perception of its employees' qualifications, aptitudes, and competence, to move them around in the various areas of its business operations in order to ascertain where they will function with maximum benefit to the company. An employee's right to security of tenure does not give him such a vested right in his position as would deprive the company of its prerogative to change his assignment or transfer him where he will be most useful. When his transfer is not unreasonable, nor inconvenient, nor prejudicial to him, and it does not involve a demotion in rank or a diminution of his salaries, benefits, and other privileges, the employee may not complain that it amounts to a constructive dismissal."[18]The Court, as a rule, will not interfere with an employer's prerogative to regulate all aspects of employment which includes among others, work assignment, working methods, and place and manner of work.[19] The rule is well-settled that labor laws discourage interference with an employer's judgment in the conduct of his business.[20]
"x x x The employer has the prerogative of making transfers and reassignment of employees to meet the requirements of the business. Thus, where the rotation of employees from the day shift to the night shift was a standard operating procedure of management, an employee who had been on the day shift for some time may be transferred to the night shift (Castillo v. CIR, 39 SCRA 81). Similarly, transfers effected pursuant to a company policy to transfer employees from one theater to other theaters operated by the employer, in order to prevent connivance among them, was sustained (Cinema, Stage and Radio Entertainment Free Workers v. CIR, 18 SCRA 1071). Similar transfers and re-assignments of employees have been upheld such as the re-assignment of one from a position of supervisor to that of engineer at the power house (Interwood Employees Assn. V. Interwood, 99 Phil. 82), or the transfer of the union president from his position of messenger clerk in a hotel to purely office work and two other unionists from the position of hotel guard to line and elevator men, without diminution of pay or other employees' rights (Bay View Hotel Employees Union v. Bay View Hotel, L-10393, March 30, 1960), or the temporary assignment of a sales clerk to another section of the store (Marcaida v. PECO, 63 O.G. 8559)."In this case, the respondent Commission upheld PCIB's contention that the remittance clerk payment order/collection item is given the same weight in terms of duties and responsibilities as that of a remittance clerk inquiry. It was established that both positions are remittance clerks under level S-S III[24] and that these positions are of "co-equal footing, co-important and of the same level of authority"[25] and that the transfer did not entail any reduction of wages and other benefits.[26] The respondent Commission sustained the position of the respondent bank that the duties of the second position include not only receiving the complaints of clients and the "scope is wider in the sense that she can get access to some other records which are not being prepared by her and which also entitle her to communicate directly with higher officers of the bank."[27] As explained by Mr. Jose Ortega, the Head of the Job Evaluation Section of the Human Resources Management Unit of private respondent bank:
"Employees belonging to the same level are compensated in a defined salary structure corresponding to that level which means that persons belonging to the same level may have different actual salaries depending on length of stay and performance. While their functions may differ, said functions are given the same weight in terms of duties and responsibilities because both are slotted at level S-III.PCIB's Branch Manager, Gilbert Marquez, likewise stated in his Affidavit[29]that:
Thus, a Remittance Clerk Payment Order/Collection Item(s) is given the same weight in terms of duties and responsibilities as that of a Remittance Clerk Inquiry because both positions are in fact Remittance Clerks, which, in PCIB's classification system, are both slotted at level S-III.
Accordingly, a person occupying the position of Remittance Clerk Payment Order/Collection Items who is transferred to the position of Remittance Clerk Inquiry will not suffer any diminution of wages and other benefits. Neither will said person suffer a diminution in rank and responsibilities since both positions are slotted at level S-III and both are, in fact, Remittance Clerks. Attached as Annex A is the Table of Organization of PCIB Remittance Processing Center, Ermita, Branch."[28]
"The position of Remittance Clerk-Inquiry and that of a Remittance Clerk-Payment Order Payable/Collections Items are of a co-equal footing, importance and level under our approved plantilla;Accordingly, petitioner's bare assertion that the transfer or reassignment was arbitrary and without any basis was rejected by respondent NLRC, which held that the respondent bank was acting within its management prerogative to protect its interest and that of its clients[30] and found that petitioner "simply refused to assume her new position" in view of the positive assertion of the branch manager that she was "not prevented from entering the bank's premises."[31] In other words, there was no sufficient basis to conclude that petitioner was barred from entering the bank's premises.
It is not true that Castillo has become a mere fixture in the office premises without any function and given no-assignment nor responsibilities as alleged by her (Castillo) in par. 7 of her complaint, the truth of the matter being that she was assigned duties and responsibilities which are at the very least co-equal, co-important and of the same level of authority with that of her former duties and responsibilities as Remittance Clerk-Payment Order/Collection items, and that she refused to do said newly assigned duties and responsibilities. Had she assumed her new position, it would have given her a better opportunity to learn more about the entire operations of the bank and would have paved the way to a successful development of her career.
In her position paper, Ms. Castillo claims that her transfer to the position of Remittance Clerk-Inquiry was a demotion. This lacks factual basis since the transfer did not entail any reduction of wages and other benefits. As a matter of act, had she accepted her new position, she would have assumed a bigger responsibility, a big departure from her former position where she merely did routine processing work. Neither did Ms. Castillo's transfer result in constructive dismissal since she was transferred to a position which would have required her to do much more work than before."