5-5-5 contract circumvention of the law on security of tenure....the previous employees of the company hired on a five-month basis numbered about 10,000 as of July 1990. This confirms private respondents’ allegation that it was really the practice of the company to hire workers on a uniformly fixed contract basis and replace them upon the expiration of their contracts with other workers on the same employment duration. This scheme of the petitioner was apparently designed to prevent the private respondents and the other “casual” employees from attaining the status of a regular employee. It was a clear circumvention of the employees’ right to security of tenure and to other benefits like minimum wage, cost-of-living allowance, sick leave, holiday pay, and 13th month pay..... The five-month period specified in private respondents’ employment contracts having been imposed precisely to circumvent the constitutional guarantee on security of tenure should, therefore, be struck down or disregarded as contrary to public policy or morals.....(Purefoods Corp vs. NLRC, Dec 12, 1997)
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 07:01:47 +0000