HACIENDA BINO/HORTENCIA STARKE, INC./HORTENCIA L. STARKE, PETITIONERS, VS. CANDIDO CUENCA, FRANCISCO ACULIT, ANGELINA ALMONIA, DONALD ALPUERTO, NIDA BANGALISAN, ROGELIO CHAVEZ, …

Hacienda Bino versus Cuenca

The Case

This is a labor case about the security of tenure of sugar workers. Hacienda Bino, a two hundred thirty-six hectare sugar plantation in Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental, owned and operated by Hortencia Starke, is pitted against seventy-six of its farm workers led by Candido Cuenca. The workers were barred from work after they signed up as beneficiaries of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. They sued for illegal dismissal and money claims. The case matters because it draws the line between a seasonal worker and a regular seasonal worker, and it shows exactly when the doctrine of stare decisis does and does not bind a court.

Procedural History

The workers filed their complaint for illegal dismissal and money claims before the National Labor Relations Commission, Regional Arbitration Branch in Bacolod City. The Labor Arbiter ruled that the notice of July 18, 1996 amounted to a termination of employment, found the dismissal illegal, and ordered reinstatement without loss of seniority rights, payment of backwages and wage differentials, and attorney's fees. Both sides appealed to the National Labor Relations Commission, which affirmed the Labor Arbiter with modifications and further ordered payment of holiday pay to the workers listed in the holiday pay payroll. A motion for reconsideration was denied.

The workers then went up to the Court of Appeals. The appellate court modified the Commission's decision by deleting the award for holiday pay and premium pay for holidays, and affirmed the rest. It held that the workers' appeal to the Commission was not perfected, so as to them the Labor Arbiter's decision had become final. The Court of Appeals denied the hacienda's motion for reconsideration for failure to state the date of receipt of the decision. The hacienda then filed this petition for review with the Supreme Court.

Facts

Hacienda Bino employed about two hundred twenty workers who did cultivation, planting of cane points, fertilization, watering, weeding, harvesting, and loading of harvested sugarcane onto cargo trucks. The seventy-six respondents were part of that workforce, and the payrolls showed their services were availed of since 1991.

The hacienda's Board of Directors asked the Sangguniang Bayan of Kabankalan for authority to reclassify the land from agricultural to industrial, commercial, and residential, except the portion earmarked for the agrarian reform program. According to the owner, half the workers supported the reclassification while the others, including the respondents, opted to become agrarian reform beneficiaries.

On July 18, 1996, during the off-milling season, Starke issued a notice to all hacienda employees stating that those who signed in favor of the agrarian reform program were expressing their desire to get out of employment on their own volition, and that beginning that day only those who did not sign would be given employment. The respondents treated the notice as a termination of their employment and filed their complaint on September 17, 1996. The owner claimed the notice merely gave preference during a season of little work, and that when milling resumed in October 1996 she issued notices of available work to all workers, including the respondents, who refused to return.

Issues

• Whether or not the Court of Appeals violated the doctrine of stare decisis in refusing to apply the ruling that sugar workers are seasonal employees.
• Whether or not the respondents are regular employees entitled to security of tenure.
• Whether or not the Court of Appeals erred in denying the motion for reconsideration for failure to state the date of receipt of the decision.

Applicable Provisions

The decision rests on the concept of regular employment, which the Labor Code defines in Article 280:

Article 280. Regular and Casual Employment. The provisions of written agreement to the contrary notwithstanding and regardless of the oral agreement of the parties, an employment shall be deemed to be regular where the employee has been engaged to perform activities which are usually necessary or desirable in the usual business or trade of the employer, except where the employment has been fixed for a specific project or undertaking the completion or termination of which has been determined at the time of the engagement of the employee or where the work or service to be performed is seasonal in nature and the employment is for the duration of the season.

This is the test the Court applies: work necessary or desirable in the employer's usual business makes employment regular, and the seasonal exception requires that the employment itself be for the duration of one season only.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that there was no violation of stare decisis. Under that doctrine, when a court has laid down a principle of law applicable to a certain state of facts, it will adhere to that principle and apply it to all future cases in which the facts are substantially the same. Where the facts are essentially different, however, stare decisis does not apply, for a perfectly sound principle applied to one set of facts might be entirely inappropriate when a factual variance is introduced. The Court compared the earlier case, where the farm laborers worked only for a definite period for a farm owner and were free to offer their services to other farm owners, with the present case, where the hacienda spans two hundred thirty-six hectares. The Court of Appeals was correct that the disparity in facts meant the earlier ruling could not control.

On the second issue, the Court held that the respondents are regular employees. The primary standard for determining regular employment is the reasonable connection between the particular activity performed by the employee and the usual trade or business of the employer. There was no doubt the respondents performed work necessary and desirable in the usual trade or business of the hacienda. To be excluded from regular employment, it is not enough that the work is seasonal in nature; the workers must have been employed only for the duration of one season. While the records showed the work was seasonal, there was no proof they were hired for one season only, and the payrolls showed their services were availed of since 1991. Absent proof to the contrary, the general rule of regular employment stands, and the employer bears the burden of proving the lawfulness of a dismissal.

On the third issue, the Court held the matter already moot. The arguments in the motion for reconsideration were aired in the petition and adequately addressed, and the owner was not left without any other recourse.

Doctrine

First, stare decisis binds only where the facts are substantially the same; a factual variance removes the case from its reach. Second, the primary standard for regular employment is the reasonable connection between the activity performed and the usual trade or business of the employer. Third, seasonality of work does not by itself make a worker seasonal; the employer must show the worker was hired for the duration of one season only. Absent such proof, the general rule of regular employment prevails, and the burden of proving the lawfulness of dismissal lies on the employer.

Disposition

The petition was denied, and the decision of the Court of Appeals, which affirmed the finding of illegal dismissal and deleted the holiday pay award, was affirmed.

Remember This

Memorize this line: seasonal work does not make a seasonal employee unless the worker was hired for one season only. Examiners use this case to test stare decisis and the regular employment rule for sugar and farm workers.