TUNAY NA PAGKAKAISA NG MANGGAGAWA SA ASIA BREWERY VS. ASIA BREWERY, INC G.R. No. 162025

Topic: Right to Self-Organization; Excluded Employees/ Workers; Confidential Employees

FACTS:

1)     Respondent ABI entered into a CBA with Bisig at Lakas ng mga Manggagawa sa Asia-Independent (BLMA-INDEPENDENT), the exclusive bargaining representative of ABI’s rank-and-file employees. 

2)     Article I of the CBA defined the scope of the bargaining unit, as follows: The UNION shall not represent or accept for membership employees outside the scope of the bargaining unit herein defined.

Section 2. Bargaining Unit. The bargaining unit shall be comprised of all regular rank-and-file daily-paid employees of the COMPANY. However, the following jobs/positions as herein defined shall be excluded from the bargaining unit, to wit:

xxx

Confidential and Executive Secretaries

xxx

Purchasing and Quality Control Staff.

3)     The CBA expressly excluded Confidential and Executive Secretaries from the rank-and-file bargaining unit, for which reason ABI seeks their disaffiliation from petitioner.  ABI’s management stopped deducting union dues from 81 employees, believing that their membership in BLMA-INDEPENDENT violated the CBA. 18 of these affected employees are QA Sampling Inspectors/Inspectresses and Machine Gauge Technician (checkers) who formed part of the Quality Control Staff. The rest are secretaries/clerks directly under their respective division managers.

4)     Petitioner, however, maintains that except for those who had been promoted to monthly paid positions, the other secretaries/clerks are deemed included among the rank-and-file employees of ABI. BLMA-INDEPENDENT claimed that ABI’s actions restrained the employees’ right to self-organization.

5)     VA ruled that the subject employees qualify under the rank-and-file category because their functions are merely routinary and clerical. He noted that the positions occupied by the checkers and secretaries/clerks in the different divisions are not managerial or supervisory, as evident from the duties and responsibilities assigned to them. With respect to QA Sampling Inspectors/Inspectresses and Machine Gauge Technician, he ruled that ABI failed to establish with sufficient clarity their basic functions as to consider them Quality Control Staff who were excluded from the coverage of the CBA. Accordingly, the subject employees were declared eligible for inclusion within the bargaining unit represented by BLMA-INDEPENDENT.

6)     CA reversed the VA, ruling that the 81 employees are excluded from and are not eligible for inclusion in the bargaining unit as defined in Section 2, Article I of the CBA.

ISSUE: WON the checkers and secretaries/clerks of respondent company are rank-and-file employees who are eligible to join the Union of the rank-and-file employees.

RULING: YES. The checkers and secretaries/clerks of respondent company are rank-and-file employees who are eligible to join the Union of the rank-and-file employees.

Although Article 245 of the Labor Code limits the ineligibility to join, form and assist any labor organization to managerial employees, jurisprudence has extended this prohibition to confidential employees or those who by reason of their positions or nature of work are required to assist or act in a fiduciary manner to managerial employees and hence, are likewise privy to sensitive and highly confidential records. Confidential employees are thus excluded from the rank-and-file bargaining unit. The rationale for their separate category and disqualification to join any labor organization is similar to the inhibition for managerial employees because if allowed to be affiliated with a Union, the latter might not be assured of their loyalty in view of evident conflict of interests and the Union can also become company-denominated with the presence of managerial employees in the Union membership. Having access to confidential information, confidential employees may also become the source of undue advantage. Said employees may act as a spy or spies of either party to a collective bargaining agreement.

Confidential employees are defined as those who:

1) assist or act in a confidential capacity,

2) to persons who formulate, determine, and effectuate management policies in the field of labor relations. 

The two (2) criteria are cumulative, and both must be met if an employee is to be considered a confidential employee that is, the confidential relationship must exist between the employee and his supervisor, and the supervisor must handle the prescribed responsibilities relating to labor relations. The exclusion from bargaining units of employees who, in the normal course of their duties, become aware of management policies relating to labor relations is a principal objective sought to be accomplished by the confidential employee rule.

A perusal of the job descriptions of these secretaries/clerks reveals that their assigned duties and responsibilities involve routine activities of recording and monitoring, and other paper works for their respective departments while secretarial tasks such as receiving telephone calls and filing of office correspondence appear to have been commonly imposed as additional duties. Respondent failed to indicate who among these numerous secretaries/clerks have access to confidential data relating to management policies that could give rise to potential conflict of interest with their Union membership. It is not even farfetched that the job category may exist only on paper since they are all daily-paid workers. With respect to the Sampling Inspectors/Inspectresses and the Gauge Machine Technician, the job descriptions of these checkers showed that they perform routine and mechanical tasks preparatory to the delivery of the finished products. No evidence was presented by the respondent to prove that these daily-paid checkers actually form part of the company’s Quality Control Staff who as such were exposed to sensitive, vital and confidential information about [company’s] products or have knowledge of mixtures of the products, their defects, and even their formulas which are considered trade secrets. 

DISPOSITIVE: Petitioner won.

DOCTRINE: Although Article 245 of the Labor Code limits the ineligibility to join, form and assist any labor organization to managerial employees, jurisprudence has extended this prohibition to confidential employees or those who by reason of their positions or nature of work are required to assist or act in a fiduciary manner to managerial employees and hence, are likewise privy to sensitive and highly confidential records. Confidential employees are thus excluded from the rank-and-file bargaining unit.