RILECO, INC., PETITIONER, VS. MINDANAO CONGRESS OF LABOR-RAMIE UNITED FARM WORKER’S ASSOCIATION (LOCAL) AND THE COURT OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, RESPONDENTS.

Appeal by writ of certiorari taken by Rileco
Inc. from an order of the Court of Industrial Relations in Case No. 69-MC-DB, the dispositive portion of which reads as follows:

“WHEREFORE, the Department of Labor, pursuant to the
provisions of Section 12 of R. A. No. 875 is hereby requested to conduct an election
among the eligible workers in the ramie culture of the Manolita Plantation. 
The appropriate collective bargaining unit is composed of all the workers whose names appear in Exhibit ‘X-Court’, Ramie Project, numbering 176 workers
in all.  Upon termination of the
election, the results shell forthwith be submitted to
this Court for its further disposition. 
The contending unions are the Mindanao Congress of Labor-Ramie United
Farm Workers’ Association-Local
and the Ledesma Plantation Laborers Union-Mindanao
Association of Agricultural and Industrial Labor.”

The case below involved a
petition for certification election filed by the Mindanao Congress of
Labor-Ramie, United Farm Workers’ Association-Local, a legitimate labor
organization, claiming that more than 10% of the employees and laborers of the Manolita Plantation – owned by Rileco
– were its members; that no certification election had been conducted at such
plantation for the past twelve months immediately prior to the filing of its
petition, and praying that a certification election be ordered held.

Herein petitioner filed a
motion to dismiss the petition on the ground that a valid and binding collective bargaining agreement already existed
between it, on the one hand, and, on the other, the Ledesma
Plantation Laborers Union, a duly
registered labor union which represented a majority of the employees of said
plantation.  Subsequently, petitioner
filed a supplemental motion to dismiss the
petition upon the ground that the Court of Industrial Relations did not have juris­diction to entertain it because the Manolita
plantation was engaged solely in agricultural work and, consequently, its
laborers were agricultural laborers.

On April
22, 1963 the respondent
Court of Industrial Relations issued the order appealed from.

The only question raised
now is
whether or not the ramie culture in which
petitioner is admittedly engaged in its Manolita plantation is an agricultural or an
industrial undertaking.  If it is of the latter nature, the order appealed from
must be set aside because the Court of Industrial Relations has no jurisdiction
over the case.

In connection with the
above issue the relevant provisions of Section 2, Republic Act 602 are to this
effect:

“‘Agricultural’ includes farming in all its branches and among other things
includes the cul­tivation and tillage of the soil, dairying, the production,
cultivation, growing, and harvesting of any agricultural or horticultural
commodities, the raising of livestock or poultry, and any practices performed by a farmer or on farm
as an incident to or in conjunction with some farming operations, but does not
include the manufacturing or processing of sugar,
coconuts, abaca, tobacco,
pineapples or other farm products.” (Underscoring Supplied.)

On the nature of ramie culture the respondent court found that
the whole process known as such end in which the Manolita
plantation was engaged consisted of the preparation of the soil, planting of
ramie roots and caring thereof for at least one-hundred days; then the ramie
stalks are cut and delivered to the stripping sheds where they are stripped
with the use of decorticating machines powered by electricity; then the wet
fibers are dried under the sun for one day and later made to pass through the
brusher to cleanse them of impurities; that thereafter the fibers are deemed
ready for the market.

In the case of Benjamin Celestial, et al. vs. The Southern
Mindanao Experimental Station et al. 57 O. G. 8461 which involved a similar
process or functions, We said –

“Where an experimental station operates a farm
comprising 960 hectares, and, through its employees and laborers actually tills
the soil, introduces and plants seeds of the best crop (principally cacao)
varieties found by it after study and experiment, raises said crops in the best
approved methods of cultivation, including the spacing of each plant or seedling and the amount of water needed through
irrigation, weeding, etc. and the proper harvesting of the crops, including the
timing and method, discovers plant pests and
their eradication by means of treatment with the proper insecticides, and,
thereafter, extracts the seeds from the harvest for sale and
distribution to farmers, there can be no question that all these acts and functions … are agricultural as distinguished
from non-agricultural functions.” (Underscoring Supplied)

While the Celestial case involved a farm or plantation dedicated
to the growing and cultivation of cacao and other plant seeds, it can not be
denied that there is a great similarity between the processes therein discussed
and the ones involved in ramie culture.

Moreover, petitioner has invited our attention to case No.
95-MC-DB entitled “Petition for Certification as Sole Collective Bargaining Representative of the Workers of Odel Plantation in the Court of Industrial Relations”
where the Court of Industrial Relations itself held that the production of
hemp, abaca and copra and the use of stripping machines in connection with its
harvesting which ends with the classification and packaging of the products
ready for marketing are “purely agricultural work”; that although the
plantation therein questioned raised abaca
and processed it until it was ready for marketing, the processing did
not convert the abaca into another product, and that the mere use of modern
machines as a labor saving
device does not alter the agricultural nature of the product.

This, while not binding on us, would seem to be reasonable
construction of the law and must be applied likewise to the processing of ramie
fiber.

IN VIEW OF THE FOREGOING, We hereby rule that the ramie process or culture as
described in the appealed order is purely agricultural in character.  Consequently, the writ prayed for is granted
and the decision under review is set
aside, with costs.

Concepcion, C.J., Reyes, J.B.L., Makalintal, Zaldivar, Sanchez,
Castro, Fernando, and Capistrano, JJ., concur.