Bad Faith Bargaining & Constitutional Rights: PBM Employees vs. PBM, Cheat Sheet of Forensics

Download Bad Faith Bargaining & Constitutional Rights: PBM Employees vs. PBM and more Cheat Sheet Forensics in PDF only on Docsity! Philippine Blooming Mills Employees Organization v. Philippine Blooming Mills Co., Inc. 51 SCRA 189; G.R. No. L-31195 June 5, 1973 Nature and Procedural History: On appeal The court rendered judgment, the dispositive part of which read's: IN VIEW HEREOF, the respondent Philippine Blooming Mills Employees Organization is found guilty of bargaining in bad faith and is hereby ordered to cease and desist from further committing the same and its representatives namely: respondent Florencio Padrigano, Rufino Roxas, Mariano de Leon, Asencion Paciente, Bonifacio Vacuna, Benjamin Pagcu, Nicanor Tolentino and Rodulfo Monsod who are directly responsible for perpetrating this unfair labor practice act, are hereby considered to have lost their status as employees of the Philippine Blooming Mills, Inc. (p. 8, Annex F.) Summary of Facts: On March 4, 1969, Philippine Blooming Mills Employees Organization (PBMEO) decided to stage a mass demonstration in front of Malacañang to express their grievances against the alleged abuses of the Pasig Police. After learning about about PBMEO's plans, Philippine Blooming Mills Inc. called for a meeting with the leaders of the union. During the meeting, the planned demonstration was confirmed by PBMEO, which noted that the demonstration was not a strike against the company. PBMEO stated that the planned demonstration was an exercise of the laborers' inalienable constitutional right to freedom of expression, freedom of speech and freedom for petition for redress of grievances against police indignities. The company asked PBMEO to cancel the demonstration, noting that the same would constitute an interruption of the normal course of their business which may result in loss of revenue. The company also threatened the workers that they would lose their jobs if they pushed through with the demonstration. A second meeting took place where the company stressed that those from the 1st and regular shifts should not absent themselves to participate in the demonstration, otherwise, they would be dismissed. Since it was too late to cancel the plan, the demonstration took place. The officers of PBMEO were eventually dismissed by the company for violation of the "No Strike and No Lockout" clause of their Collective Bargaining Issues: Whether or not the dismissal of PBMEO officers from their employment constituted a violation of their constitutional right to freedom of expression, assembly, and petition. Decision (Disposition and holdings): Yes. A constitutional or valid infringement of human rights requires a more stringent criterion, namely existence of a grave and immediate danger of a substantive evil which the State has the right to prevent. This is not present in the case. It was to the interest herein private respondent firm to rally to the defense of, and take up the cudgels for, its employees, so that they can report to work free from harassment, vexation or peril and as consequence perform more efficiently their respective tasks enhance its productivity as well as profits. Herein respondent employer did not even offer to intercede for its employees with the local police. In seeking sanctuary behind their freedom of expression well as their right of assembly and of petition against alleged persecution of local officialdom, the employees and laborers of herein private respondent firm were fighting for their very survival, utilizing only the weapons afforded them by the Constitution — the untrammeled enjoyment of their basic human rights. The pretension of their employer that it would suffer loss or damage by reason of the absence of its employees from 6 o'clock in the morning to 2 o'clock in the afternoon, is a plea for the preservation merely of their property rights. The employees' pathetic situation was a stark reality — abused, harassment and persecuted as they believed they were by the peace officers of the municipality. As above intimated, the condition in which the employees found themselves vis-a-vis the local police of Pasig, was a matter that vitally affected their right to individual existence as well as that of their families. Material loss can be repaired or adequately compensated. The debasement of the human being broken in morale and brutalized in spirit-can never be fully evaluated in monetary terms. As heretofore stated, the primacy of human rights — freedom of expression, of peaceful assembly and of petition for redress of grievances — over property rights has been sustained. To regard the demonstration against police officers, not against the employer, as evidence of bad faith in collective bargaining and hence a violation of the collective bargaining agreement and a cause for the dismissal from employment of the demonstrating employees, stretches unduly the compass of the collective bargaining agreement, is "a potent means of inhibiting speech" and therefore inflicts a moral as well as mortal wound on the constitutional guarantees of free expression, of peaceful dismissing the petitioners' motion for reconsideration on October 9, 1969, due to their failure to file their motion for reconsideration and arguments in support thereof within the periods respectively fixed in the rules therefor. Notes and Comments: Despite this clear and unmistakable precedent, which has not been modified, revoked, or reversed by this Court, the main opinion not only went into the merits of petitioners' pose that the respondent court erred in holding them guilty of bargaining in bad faith, but also upheld petitioners' claim for reinstatement on constitutional grounds. Since the main opinion's conclusions are based on a scholarly and masterful exposition of constitutional guarantees of free speech and peaceful assembly for redress of grievances, it is bound to overwhelm them unless they note the real issues carefully, in this case, to dutifully state that as presented by petitioners and in light of its attendant circumstances, this case does not call for the resolution of any const. Invoking any constitutional promise, significantly where it impacts the bill of rights freedoms, demands the Court's focused attention. My understanding of constitutional law and related judicial procedures is that even our most prized constitutional rights may only be preserved by the courts when their jurisdiction over the subject matter is unquestionable, and the necessary norms of procedure are followed. No constitutional right can be sacrificed on the altar of procedural technicalities, commonly called niceties. Still, this principle is utilized to annul or set aside final verdicts only in circumstances of possible due process denial. I've never seen a final and executory judgment rejected and set aside because it sanctioned a fundamental right infringement unless the breach amounted to a denial of due process. Without support from any provision of the constitution, law, judicial precedent, or reason of principle, the main opinion nudely and unqualifiedly asserts that the violation of a constitutional right divests the Court of jurisdiction. As a result, its judgment is null and void. The constitutional concerns in those cases are very different from the ones before us. Petitioners don't claim due process. Nor do they claim that "the respondent Court of Industrial Relations and private enterprise breached any of their constitutional privileges," contrary to the main conclusion. Neither the petition nor any other pleading of petitioners asserts that the impugned respondent court decision is null and unlawful because it denied constitutional liberty.