ASSOCIATION OF COURT OF APPEALS EMPLOYEES (ACAE), PETITIONER, VS. HON. PURA FERRER-CALLEJA, IN HER CAPACITY AS DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF LABOR RELATIONS, AND UNION OF CONCERNED EMPLOY…

We are asked in this petition to ascertain the power, if any, of
the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), more specifically the Bureau of
Labor Relations (BLR), to supervise the activities of government employees; in
this case, unions of judiciary personnel who serve in the Court of Appeals.

The question of power is quite significant. Hitherto, the BLR has concentrated on labor
relations in the private sector. Its
enforcement machinery and the mass of law and jurisprudence governing its
functions are entirely geared to the handling of the peculiar problems arising
in private employment. In this case,
the BLR has tasked itself to intervene not only in a quarrel between two groups
of government employees but more important, in a quarrel between employees working for an independent branch
of government, the Judiciary.

The two issues raised in this petition are: (1) whether or not the respondent Bureau of
Labor Relations acted with grave abuse
of discretion when it granted the petition for certification election to
determine the certified bargaining agent to represent the rank-and- file
employees of the Court of Appeals; and (2) whether or not a petition for cancellation of registration of the union requesting for a
certification election is a bar to the resolution of a prior petition for certification election.

The antecedent facts of
the case are as follows:

On April 4, 1990, the respondent Union of Concerned Employees of
the Court of Appeals (UCECA), a registered union filed a petition for accreditation and/or certification election with
the Bureau of Labor Relations (docketed as BLR Case No. 4-11-90) alleging that
the petitioner, Association of Court of Appeals Employees (ACAE) which is the
incumbent bargaining representative, no longer enjoys the support of the
majority of the rank-and-file employees. The UCECA alleged that there was a mass resignation of ACAE members on April 14, 1989.

On May 10, 1990, the ACAE filed its Comment and/or
Opposition. It stated that the listing
by the ACAE of its membership at three hundred three (303) employees was a
product of fraud. It charged the UCECA with misrepresentation, forgery
and perjury in attaching to its (UCECA) petition,
a copy of the names of members
some of which were twice listed, written
without consent or unsigned, and some of the signatures of which were
forged. In addition, the petitioner
alleged that some of the UCECA members,
upon learning of the fraudulent act, resigned from the union.

In its reply, the UCECA stated that its registry book was not
smeared with fraud and claimed that any mistakes were only clerical errors.

On June 18, 1990, petitioner ACAE filed a Petition for Cancellation of Certificate of
Registration of the UCECA in BLR Case No. 6-19-90 on the ground of fraud and
misrepresentation by UCECA in obtaining its Registration Certificate No. 159
and in preparing its Registry Book of members. On June 28, 1990, the ACAE moved
for deferment of the resolution of the case of BLR 4-11-90 pending the case of BLR 6-19-90.

On July 16, 1990,
the UCECA filed a motion to dismiss BLR 6-19-90 for being dilatory, to which ACAE replied that the maxim of res ipsa loquitur should be applied as the
“fraudulent documents submitted by UCECA
speak for themselves.”

On July 30, 1990, the Bureau of Labor Relations ruled that BLR
6-19-90 (cancellation proceedings) is not a bar to the holding of a
certification election. It granted the
UCECA’s prayer for a certification election. The BLR found that UCECA was supported by three hundred three (303) or
forty (40%) percent of the seven hundred
sixty two (762) rank-and-file employees of
the court. ACAE’s motion for
reconsideration was denied.

On August 21, 1990, the
respondent Bureau conducted a pre-election conference.

Feeling that it was being
stampeded into participating in a
certification election, ACAE
filed this petition for certiorari and prohibition. We issued a temporary restraining order
effective August 29, 1990.

The first question that
arises is the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Labor
Relations to handle disputes among associations of employees working for the judiciary.

There is no question that
government employees may organize provided the purposes behind such
organization are legitimate.

No less than the Bill of
Rights specifically identifies government employees as having the right of self-organization. It provides:

xxx                               xxx                               xxx

“Sec. 8. The right of
the people, including those employed in the public and private sectors, to form
unions, associations, or societies for purposes not contrary to law shall not
be abridged.” (Article III, 1987 Constitution)

In the provisions
governing the Civil Service Commission, we find:

“Sec. 2. (1) The civil service embraces all branches,
subdivisions, instrumentalities, and agencies of the Government, including
government-owned or controlled corporations with original charters.

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Sec. 2. (5) The right to self?organization shall not be denied to
government employees.”

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(Article IX-B, Section 2 (1) and (5), Constitution)

The article on Social
Justice and Human Rights adds:

“Sec. 3. The State
shall afford full protection to labor, local and overseas, organized and
unorganized, and promote full employment and equality of employment
opportunities for all.

It shall guarantee the rights of all workers to self-organization,
collective bargaining and negotiations, and peaceful concerted activities,
including the right to strike in accordance with law. They shall be entitled to security of tenure, humane conditions
of work, and a living wage. They shall
also participate in policy and decision­-making processes affecting their
rights and benefits as may be provided by law.” (Article XIII, Section 3,
1st and 2nd paragraphs)

xxx                               xxx                               xxx

The issue of what governs
and who supervises unions of government employees is of more than passing
concern especially when those who organize and hope to engage in
certain forms of concerted action are court employees.

Government personnel find
themselves in an equivocal and ambivalent position. They have a right but it is not clear to
what extent they may exercise it. Congress
has not legislated as yet on the complicated problems arising from
unionism in government as distinguished from unionism in the private
sector. Obviously, the same rules do
not and cannot apply under the present state of the law. A major re-ordering of government, notably
its civil service laws and budgetary and fiscal procedures would result if
Congress, in enacting the laws required by the constitutional provisions, gives
exactly the same rights and privileges to all workers in the public and private
sectors.

At present, the terms and conditions of employment in the
government service are governed by law, not by the relative strengths of
management and labor as they hammer out mutually acceptable terms across the
collective bargaining table. Paradoxically,
all the representatives of “labor” and “management” in
government are employees. At
the same time, everybody forms part of the “owner” of the enterprise,
the sovereign people. The
qualifications and eligibilities of civil servants, their appointment and
promotion, standardization of salaries, disciplinary actions, fringe benefits, and retirement gratuities,
among others, are governed by statutes, rules, and established principles
which are the products of decades of experience, not to mention borrowings from
civil service systems abroad.

The provisions of civil service law on the terms and conditions
of employment including the regulation of labor-management relations in the
government sector, unless Congress decides to amend or repeal them, form part
of the response to any requests or demands of organized groups of government personnel. Any understanding between the top officials of a government
agency and the union which represents the rank-and-file is subordinate to the
law governing the particular issue or situation.

We emphasize the above
because in ascertaining what agency should supervise certification elections in the public sector, we limit the determination strictly to the question
before us — the holding of certification elections. Jurisdiction over questions which may arise after the certified
bargaining representative flexes its muscles and engages in concerted
action will have to await the filing of more appropriate cases and, hopefully,
the enactment of applicable legislation.

The Constitution provides
that the rights of all workers to self-organization, collective
bargaining, and peaceful concerted activities, including the right to strike,
are guaranteed provided these are in accordance with law. There is reference to the need for a law governing the procedures incident to self-organization.

What is the law which
governs certification elections in the Court of Appeals?

The Solicitor General
argues that the applicable law is Executive Order No. 180 issued on June 1,
1987 entitled “Providing Guidelines for the Exercise of the Right to
Organize of Government Employees; Creating a Public Sector Labor-Management
Council; and for Other Purposes.”

The pertinent provisions of Executive Order No. 180 are:

“SECTION 7. Government
employees’ organizations shall register with the Civil Service Commission and
the Department of Labor and Employment. The application shall be filed with the Bureau of Labor Relations of the
Department which shall process the same in accordance with the provisions of
the Labor Code of the Philippines as amended. Applications may also be filed with the Regional Offices of the
Department of Labor and Employment whish shall immediately transmit the said
applications to the Bureau of Labor Relations within three (3) days from
receipt thereof.

xxx                               xxx                               xxx

SECTION 8. Upon approval of
the application, a registration certification shall be issued to the
organization recognizing it as a legitimate employees’ organization with the
right to represent its members and undertake activities to further and defend
its interest. The corresponding
certificates of registration shall be jointly approved by the Chairman of the
Civil Service Commission and Secretary of Labor and Employment.

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SECTION 10. The duly registered
employees’ organization having the support of the majority of the employees in
the appropriate organizational unit shall be designated as the sole and
exclusive representative of the employees.

SECTION 11. A duly
registered employees’ organization shall be accorded voluntary
recognition upon a showing that no other employees’ organization is registered
or is seeking registration, based on records of the Bureau of Labor Relations,
and that the said organization has the majority support of the rank-and-file
employees in the organizational unit.

SECTION 12. Where there are
two or more duly registered employees’ organizations in the appropriate
organizational unit, the Bureau of Labor Relations shall, upon petition, order
the conduct of a certification election
and shall certify the winner as the exclusive representative of the
rank-and-file employees in said organization
unit.” (Rollo, pp. 235-237)

It is obvious that
Executive Order No. 180 is at best a stop gap measure for a limited
purpose. Certain provisions and
procedures in the Labor Code were engrafted into a decree governing the
entirely novel situation of unionism in the governmental sector. Enacted a little over one month and a half
before Congress reconvened after the revolutionary government was replaced by
the present government, it unfortunately lacks a legislative record,
parliamentary debates, and the insights that only the elected representatives
of all the people can bring to bear in the regulation of a complicated and
sensitive relationship.

The petitioner questions
the validity of Executive Order No. 180 but limits its challenge to an alleged
violation of the separation of powers doctrine. The argument is self-defeating because, followed to its logical conclusion, only this Court would have the power to supervise
certification elections in the Court of Appeals. The task is not for us and we certainly have no intention to
undertake it.

It is the function of
this Court, and we will not hesitate to exercise the power, to regulate all
activities of Judges and court
personnel, the Supreme Court included, to the end that the independence, effectiveness, and integrity of the
judiciary as mandated by the Constitution are not impaired
or compromised. It is axiomatic, for
example, that any demands of court employees for higher compensation or
improved facilities must be viewed in the
context of the fiscal autonomy guaranteed by the Constitution to the Judiciary. (Constitution, Article VIII, Section
3). Neither DOLE, the Civil Service
Commission (CSC), nor any other agency would have jurisdiction to adjudicate
such claims. And since unresolved legal
questions commenced elsewhere are ultimately decided by us, the final decision
on all such questions would still be with this Court.

All this does not mean
that the separation of powers doctrine requires us to supervise the details of
self-organization activities
in the courts. In the same way that CSC validly
conducts competitive examinations to grant requisite eligibilities to court
employees, we see no constitutional objection to DOLE handling the
certification process in the Court of Appeals, considering its expertise,
machinery, and experience in this particular activity. Executive Order No. 180 requires organizations
of government employees to register
with both CSC and DOLE. This
ambivalence notwithstanding, the CSC has no facilities, personnel, or
experience in the conduct of certification elections. The BLR has to do the job.

Executive Order No. 180
states that certificates of registration of the legitimate employee
representatives must be jointly approved by the CSC Chairman and the DOLE
Secretary. Executive Order No. 180 is
not too helpful in determining whose opinion shall prevail if the CSC
Chairman and the DOLE Secretary arrive at different conclusions. At any rate, we shall deal with that problem
when it occurs. Insofar as power to call for and supervise the conduct of
certification elections is concerned, we rule against the petitioner.

One final point on the petitioner’s objection to the jurisdiction
of the BLR. ACAE cannot persuasively
challenge the validity of Executive Order No.
180 because its very personality to bring this suit is premised on its
having organized under the same executive order. The first paragraph of the petition reads:

“1. – Petitioner
ASSOCIATION OF COURT OF APPEALS EMPLOYEES, ACAE for brevity, is an association
of government employees duly organized and existing under and by virtue of
Executive Order No. 180, duly accredited as the exclusive representative of the
rank-and-­file employees of the Court of Appeals, with office address at the
Court of Appeals Compound, M. Orosa Street, Ermita, Manila.” (Rollo, p. 2)

The petitioner argues that the respondent UCECA failed to prove
that it no longer enjoys the support of the rank-and-file employees. ACAE claims that it has 395 members. It states that if the fraudulently entered
names numbering 88 are all deducted from
the 303 listed names for UCECA, there would actually be 215 members only
left. Even assuming, therefore, that
the petitioning union has satisfied
the required percentage of signatures (20%) according to section 2 of Rule VI, Rules and Regulations to Govern
the Exercise of the Right of Government Employees to Self-Organization, no
election can be had if the incumbent bargaining representative still has the
clear majority.

It is precisely because the respondent union has been questioning
the majority status of the petitioner that a petition for certification
election was filed. Nowhere in the
rules is there a further requirement for a petitioning union to prove the lack
of a majority status of the incumbent representative or who among its listed
members are not actually affiliated with it. What is merely required for a petition for certification election to be
granted is the filing of a verified petition which is supported by the
signatures of at least twenty (20%) percent of the covered employees. It is also essential that it is not filed
within one (1) year from the date a declaration of a previous final
certification election result was issued.

The BLR has satisfied itself that the private respondent has
faithfully complied with the bare requirements for the petition. It is a well-settled rule that “a
certification proceeding is not a litigation in the sense that the term is
ordinarily understood, but an investigation of a non-adversarial and fact finding character.” (Associated
Labor Unions (ALU) v. Ferrer-Calleja, 179 SCRA 127 [1989]; Philippine
Telegraph and Telephone Corporation v. NLRC, 183 SCRA 451 [1990]) Thus, the
technical rules of evidence do not apply if the decision to grant it proceeds from an examination of the
sufficiency of the petition as well as a careful look into the arguments
contained in position papers and other documents.

The public respondent has
found the petition to be sufficient in form and substance there being
compliance with the twenty (20%) percent support signatures. The factual findings of the Bureau of Labor
Relations on this matter appear to be
supported by substantial
evidence and we, accordingly, accord them great weight and respect. They shall not be disturbed by the Court in
the absence of proof of reversible error. (See Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association
(PALEA) v. Ferrer-Calleja, 162 SCRA 426, [1988]; Airtime Specialists, Inc. v.
Ferrer-Calleja, 180 SCRA 749 [1989]) On the basis of its findings, it was only
proper for the public respondent to order the holding of a certification
election which is mandatorily required by Section 12, Executive Order No. 180:

“Section 12. Where
there are two or more duly registered employees’ organizations in the
appropriate organizational unit, the Bureau of Labor Relations shall, upon petition, order the conduct of a certification election
and shall certify the winner as the exclusive representative of the
rank-and-file employees in said organizational unit.” (Underscoring Supplied)

Even assuming there were
fraudulently included names or signatures, respondent UCECA would still have
complied with the twenty (20%) percent requirement. The remaining membership, i.e. 215, alleged by petitioner
ACAE constitutes twenty eight (28%) percent of the rank-and-file court
employees.

The result of the certification election shall determine who
between the petitioner and the private respondent is telling the truth. As we have ruled in Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association
(PALEA) v. Ferrer-Calleja, (supra):

“Whenever there is doubt as to whether a particular union
represents the majority of the rank-and-file employees, in the absence of a legal impediment, the holding of a
certification election is the most dramatic method of determining the
employee’s choice of their bargaining representative. It is the
appropriate means whereby controversies and disputes on representation may be
laid to rest, by the unequivocal vote of the employees themselves.” (At page
431)

The petitioner likewise argues that the certification proceedings
should be suspended pending its petition for the cancellation of union
registration of the UCECA.

The records show that UCECA was registered with the Civil Service
Commission on March 16, 1990. (Rollo,
p. 45) When the said union was organized, some of its members allegedly used to
be members of the ACAE who tendered mass resignations on August 14, 1989 and on
September 29, 1989. (Rollo, pp. 27-35)
On January 30, 1990, the officers of ACAE, in Board Resolution No. 8 resolved
that the resignations tendered were irregular and must be accomplished
individually. (Rollo, p. 55)
Thereafter, for some reasons, some of the listed members in the Registry Book of the UCECA wrote
individual letters to UCECA in April, 1990 either questioning the inclusion
of their names or tendering their resignations.

On June 18, 1990, the petitioner herein filed its petition to
cancel the union registration of UCECA. The act of the petitioner in charging commissions of fraud and
misrepresentation against UCECA only after realizing the rising membership of
the latter and the subsequent petition for certification election raises grave suspicions as to whether or not it
wants to subvert the right of the employees to determine the proper exclusive
representative or agent now that they are given two unions from which to
choose. Assuming for the sake of
argument that the petitioner ACAE had lawful grounds to challenge the existence
of the UCECA, it should have done so, soon after the date it had notice or
knowledge of the registration of the latter to protect its own interests and
not at a later time when its bargaining position was already at the risk of
being lost.

At any rate, the Court applies the established rule correctly
followed by the public respondent
that an order to hold a certification
election is proper despite the pendency of the petition for cancellation of the
registration certificate of the respondent union. The rationale for this is that at the time the respondent union
filed its petition, it still had the legal personality to perform such act
absent an order directing a cancellation.

It is the policy of the
State in protecting the rights of labor to ensure and maintain industrial
peace. For this reason, all employees
of an appropriate bargaining unit shall be given an opportunity to organize and
to determine which labor organization should be their exclusive bargaining
representative. Hence, a petition for
certification election filed by an interested labor organization shall be dealt
with accordingly, with a view to attaining this objective. This is especially true when it involves the
ultimate respect for and protection of the rights of government employees. In granting to employees in the civil service the right to organize, a procedure has been enacted to allow
them to select what union shall be the recognized representative for all those
in one agency, i.e., a certification election. (Sections 5, 6 and 12; Executive
Order No. 180; Sections 3 and 4, Rule V and Rule VI, Rules and Regulations to
Govern the Exercise of the Government Employees to Self-Organization)

The
freedom of choice given to workers is a constitutional right. Therefore, the holding of a certification election, being a
statutory policy, should not be circumvented. (Associated Trade Unions-ATU v. Noriel, 89 SCRA 264 [1979]; Philippine
Airlines Employees’ Association (PALEA) v. Ferrer-Calleja, supra;
Airtime Specialists, Inc. v. Ferrer-Calleja, supra)

WHEREFORE, the petitioner having failed to show grave
abuse of discretion committed by the public respondent, the petition is
hereby DISMISSED. The assailed orders
of the public respondent are AFFIRMED. The Temporary Restraining Order issued on August 29, 1990 is LIFTED.

SO ORDERED.

Fernan, C.J., (Chairman), Bidin,
Davide, Jr., and Romero, JJ., concur.