PHILIPPINE TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE CORPORATION, PETITIONER, VS. ALICIA LAPLANA, HON. RICARDO ENCARNACION, AND NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS COMMISSION, RESPONDENTS.

Alicia Laplana was the cashier of the Baguio City Branch Office
of the Philippine Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (hereafter, simply PT
& T). Sometime in March 1984, PT
& T’s treasurer, Mrs. Alicia A. Arogo, directed Laplana to transfer to the
company’s branch office at Laoag City. Laplana refused the reassignment and proposed instead that qualified
clerks in the Baguio Branch be trained for the purpose. She set out her reasons therefor in her
letter to Mrs. Arogo dated March 27, 1984, viz.:

“1. I have
established Baguio City as my
permanent residence. Working in Laoag
will involve additional expenses like for my board and lodging, fare, and other
miscellaneous expenses. My salary alone
will not be enough — there will be no savings and my family will spend more on
account of my transfer.

“2. I will be away from my family. A far assignment would be a big sacrifice on
my part keeping me away from my husband and family which might affect my
efficiency.

“3. Since I have been with PT & T for more than six years already, I
have learned to work with my co-employees here more effectively. Working in another place with entirely
different environment will require long adjustment period, thereby affecting
performance of my job.”

On April 12, 1984, Mrs. Arogo reiterated her directive for
Laplana’s transfer to the Laoag Branch, this time in the form of a written
Memorandum, informing Laplana that “effective April 16, 1984, you will be
reassigned to Laoag branch assuming the same position of branch cashier,”
and ordering her “to turn over your accountabilities such as PCF,
undeposited collections, used and unused official receipts, other accountable
forms and files to Rose Caysido who will be in charge of cashiering in
Baguio.”

Apparently Laplana was not allowed to resume her work as Cashier
of the Baguio Branch when April 16, 1984 came. She thereupon wrote again to Mrs. Arogo advising that the directed
transfer was unacceptable, reiterating the reasons already given by her in her
first letter dated March 27, 1984. On
April 30, 1984, Laplana received a telegram from Mrs. Arogo reading as follows:

“PLEASE REPORT TO MANILA ON MAY 2, 1984 FOR NEW JOB ASSIGNMENT

IF YOU DON’T REPORT ON MAY
2, 1984, WE WILL CONSIDER THIS AS ABANDONMENT OF YOUR JOB AND THIS MIGHT CONSTRAIN
US TO IMPOSE DISCIPLINARY ACTION AGAINST YOU

YOU CAN GET YOUR CASH ADVANCE FOR TRANSPORTATION FROM MRS. BAUTISTA
TODAY.”

On May 8, 1984, Laplana in turn sent a
telex message to Mrs. Arogo which reads as follows:

“I LOVE WORKING FOR OUR COMPANY HOWEVER I AM SORRY I CANNOT
ACCEPT YOUR JOB OFFER IN MANILA. THANK
YOU AND RETRENCH ME INSTEAD. MY BEST
REGARDS.”

Thereafter, Laplana sent a letter to Mrs.
Arogo on May 15, 1984, expatiating on her telex message and reiterating her
request to “be retrenched,” as follows:

“Dear Mrs. Arogo:

Thank you for the job
offer in Manila. However, I cannot
accept the said offer because I have established Baguio City as my permanent
residence. Considering the high cost of
living in Manila it will surely involve additional expenses on my part. My salary alone will not be enough to
sustain my expenses. Furthermore, a far
assignment will be a big sacrifice on my part keeping me away from my husband
which might affect my health due to an entirely new environment and climate,
thereby affecting my efficiency.

In view of the above reasons, I hereby
request management to retrench me.

* *
* * *.”

Termination of Laplana’s employment on account of retrenchment
thereupon followed. On May 19, 1984, PT
& T issued an “Employee’s Service Report” which contained the
following remarks regarding Laplana: “Services terminated due to retrenchment with corresponding
termination pay effective May 16, 1984.” And on June 30, 1984, Mrs. Arogo
sent a Memorandum to the company’s Baguio Branch Manager embodying the
computation of the separation and 13th month pay due to Laplana, together with
a check for the amount thereof, P2,512.50 and a quitclaim deed, and instructing
said manager to “have the quitclaim signed by Alicia Laplana before releasing
the check and return all copies of said form ** immediately.” On July 4,
1984, Laplana signed the quitclaim and received the check representing her 13th
month and separation pay.

On October 9, 1984, Laplana filed with the Labor Arbiters’ Office
at Baguio City, thru the CLAO, a complaint against PT & T, its “Baguio
Northwestern Luzon Branch, Baguio City,” and Paraluman Bautista, Area
Manager. In her complaint, she set forth substantially the facts just narrated,
and alleged, as right of action, that “when she insisted on her right of
refusing to be transferred, the Defendants made good its warning by terminating
her services on May 16, 1984 on alleged ground of ‘retrenchment,’ although the
truth is, she was forced to be terminated and that there was no ground at all
for the retrenchment;” that the company’s “act of transferring is not
only without any valid ground but also arbitrary and without any purpose but to
harass and force ** (her) to eventually resign.”

In answer, the defendants alleged that –

1)     
Laplana “was being transferred to Laoag City because of
increase in sales due to the additional installations of vodex line;”

2)     
in connection with her transfer, Laplana had been informed
“that she would be given ten (10) days relocation allowance and transportation
expense from Baguio to Laoag City;”

3)     
the company “was exercising management prerogatives in
transferring complainant ** and there is no showing that this exercise was
arbitrarily and whimsically done;”

4)     
Laplana’s services were terminated on her explicit declaration
that “she was willing to be retrenched rather than be assigned to Laoag
City or Manila;”

5)     
in any event, the company had been actually suffering losses;
in fact, in June, 1984, several employees “were retrenched because of
losses incurred due to rising costs in wages, rentals production supplies and
other operational costs.”

Upon the issues thus raised, judgment was rendered on March 28,
1985 by the Labor Arbiter in Laplana’s favor.^[1] The
Arbiter’s verdict was made to rest essentially on the following pronouncements
(made avowedly in reliance on the doctrine laid down by this Court in Helmut Dosch v. NLRC and
Northwest Airlines, Inc., G.R. No.51182, July 5, 1983^[2]), to
wit:

“Transferring an employee from one place to another is not by
itself unlawful. It is within the
inherent right of an employer to transfer or assign an employee in the pursuit
of its legitimate business interests. However, this right is not absolute.

Transfer becomes unlawful where it is motivated by discrimination
or in bad faith, or is effected as a form of punishment or demotion without
sufficient cause.

The transfer of the complainant from Baguio City to Laoag City or
to Manila is patently a demotion and a form of punishment without just cause
and would cause untold suffering on the part of the complainant. * * .”

With these premises in mind, the Arbiter ruled “that the
complainant was illegally dismissed * * (and her) acceptance of separation pay
* * cannot cure the illegality of her dismissal because it was forced upon her
– she was compelled to accept the lesser evil,” and that there was
“no evidence to show that the complainant was retrenched to prevent
losses,” but that on the contrary, “it is continuously expanding and
improving its facilities, and hiring new employees.” Accordingly, he
ordered –

1)     
PT & T “to reinstate immediately the complainant,
Alicia R. Laplana, to her former position or equivalent position without loss
of seniority rights and benefits earned with full backwages and benefits less
P2,512.50, the amount she received as separation, from the time her
compensation was suspended until reinstated;”

2)     
the dismissal of the claim for moral and exemplary damages for
lack of merit; and

3)     
the dismissal of the case against Mrs. Paraluman Bautista also
for lack of merit.

The National Labor Relations Commission affirmed the Arbiter’s
judgment and dismissed the respondents’ appeal, by Resolution dated August 5,
1986.^[3]

There can be no quarrel with the Arbiter’s formulation of the
general principle governing an employer’s prerogative to transfer his employees
from place to place or from one position to another. The Arbiter acknowledges “the inherent right of an employer
to transfer or assign an employee in the pursuit of its legitimate business
interests” subject only to the condition that it be not “motivated by
discrimination or (made) in bad faith, or ** effected as a form of punishment
or demotion without sufficient cause.” This is a principle uniformly
adhered to by this Court.^[4]

The case law on the matter is succinctly set out by a noted
commentator on Labor Relations Law as follows:^[5]

” ** Except as limited by special laws, the employer is free
to regulate, according to his own discretion and judgment, all aspects of
employment, including hiring, work assignments, working methods, time, place
and manner of work, tools to be used, processes to be followed, supervision of
workers, working regulations, transfer of employees, work supervision, lay-off
of workers, and the discipline, dismissal and recall of workers. This flows from the established rule that
labor law does not authorize the substitution of the judgment of the employer
in the conduct of his business and does not deprive the employer of the right
to select or dismiss his employees for any cause, except in cases of unlawful discrimination
(NLU v. Insular-Yebana Tobacco Corp., 2 SCRA 924, 931; Republic Savings Bank v.
CIR, 21 SCRA 226, 235).

” * * The employer has the prerogative of making transfers and
reassignment of employees to meet the requirements of the business. Thus, where the rotation of employees from
the day shift to the night shift was a standard operating procedure of
management, an employee who had been on the day shift for some time may be transferred to the night shift
(Castillo v. CIR, 39 SCRA 81). Similarly, transfers effected pursuant to a company policy to transfer employees from one theater to
other theaters operated by the employer, in order to prevent connivance among
them, was sustained (Cinema, Stage and Radio Entertainment Free Workers v. CIR,
18 SCRA 1071). Similar transfers and
re-assignments of employees have been upheld such as the re­-assignment of one
from a postion of
supervisor to that of engineer at the power house (Interwood Employees Assn. v.
Interwood, 99 Phil. 82), or the transfer of the union president from his
position of messenger clerk in a hotel to purely office work and two other
unionists from the position of hotel guard to line and elevator men, without
diminution of pay or other employees’ rights (Bay View Hotel Employees Union v.
Bay View Hotel, L-10393, March 30, 1960), or the temporary assignment of a
sales clerk to another section of the store (Marcaida v. PECO, 63 O.G.
8559).”

Subsequent decisions of this Court have made no deviation from
the doctrine. In Philippine Japan Active Carbon Corp. v. NLRC, promulgated on March 8, 1989,^[6]
this Court made the following pronouncement, to wit:

“It is the employer’s prerogative, based on its assessment and
perception of its employees’ qualifications, aptitudes, and competence, to move
them around in the various areas of its business operations in order to
ascertain where they will function with maximum benefit to the company. An employee’s right to security of tenure
does not give him such a vested right in his position as would deprive the
company of its prerogative to change his assignment or transfer him where he
will be most useful. When his transfer
is not unreasonable, nor inconvenient, nor prejudicial to him, and it does not
involve a demotion in rank or diminution of his salaries, benefits, and other
privileges, the employee may not complain that it amounts to a constructive
dismissal.

In Yuco Chemical
Industries, Inc. v. MOLE, et al. (judgment
promulgated on May 28, 1990),^[7] the
same “general principles on transfer” were restated. The Court said:

” * * . In a number of
cases, the Court has recognized and upheld the prerogative of management to
transfer an employee from one office to another within the business
establishment provided that there is no demotion in rank or diminution of his
salary, benefits and other privileges. This is a privilege inherent in the employer’s right to control and
manage its enterprise effectively. Even
as the law is solicitous of the employees’ welfare, it cannot ignore the right
of the employer to exercise what are clearly and obviously management
prerogatives. The freedom of management
to conduct its business operations to achieve its purpose cannot be denied.

But like all other rights, there are limits. The managerial prerogative to transfer personnel
must be exercised without grave abuse of discretion and putting to mind the
basic elements of justice and fair play. Having the right should not be confused with the manner in which that
right must be exercised. Thus it cannot
be used as a subterfuge by the employer to rid himself of an undesirable
worker. Nor when the real reason is to
penalize an employee for his union activities and thereby defeat his right to
self-organization. But the transfer can
be upheld when there is no showing that it is unnecessary, inconvenient and
prejudicial to the displaced employee.”

The acceptability of the proposition that transfers made by an
employer for an illicit or underhanded purpose — e.g., to evade the duty to
bargain collectively, or to defeat the employees’ right of collective
bargaining, or discriminate against one or some of them on account of their
union activities — is self-evident and cannot be gainsaid. The difficulty lies in the situation where
no such illicit, improper or underhanded purpose can be ascribed to the
employer, the objection to the transfer being ground solely upon the personal
inconvenience or hardship that will
be caused to the employee by reason of the transfer. What then?

In Dosch v. NLRC,
supra, this Court
found itself unable to agree with the NLRC that the petitioner employee was
guilty of disobedience and insubordination in refusing to accept his transfer
from the Philippines to an overseas
post. Said the Court:

” * * . The only piece
of evidence on which (respondent employer) Northwest bases the charge of
contumacious refusal is petitioner’s letter dated August 28, 1975 to R. C.
Jenkins wherein petitioner acknowledged receipt of the former’s memorandum
dated August 18, 1975, appreciated his promotion to Director of International
Sales but at the same time regretted ‘that at this time for personal reasons
and reasons of my family, I am unable to accept the transfer from the
Philippines’ and thereafter expressed his ‘preference to remain in my position
of Manager-Philippines until such time that my services in that capacity are no
longer required by Northwest Airlines.’ From this evidence, We cannot discern
even the slightest hint of defiance, much less imply insubordination on the
part of petitioner.”

Withal, it is evident that the courteous
tone of the employee’s letter did not alter the actuality of his refusal to
accept the transfer decreed by his employer in the exercise of its sound
business judgment and discretion; and that the transfer of an employee to an
overseas post cannot be likened to a transfer from a city to another within the
country, as in the case at bar.

In this case, the employee (Laplana) had to all intents and
purposes resigned from her position. She had unequivocally asked that she be considered dismissed, herself
suggesting the reason therefor -? retrenchment. When so dismissed, she accepted separation pay. On the other hand, the employer has not been
shown to be acting otherwise than in good faith, and in the legitimate pursuit
of what it considered its best interests, in deciding to transfer her to
another office. There is no showing
whatever that the employer was transferring Laplana to another work place, not
because she would be more useful there, but merely “as a subterfuge to rid
** (itself) of an undesirable worker,” or “to penalize an employee
for ** union activities ** .” The employer was moreover not unmindful of
Laplana’s initial plea for reconsideration of the directive for her transfer to
Laoag; in fact, in response to that plea not to be moved to the Laoag Office,
the employer opted instead to transfer her to Manila, the main office, offering
at the same time the normal benefits attendant upon transfers from an office to
another.

The situation here presented is of an employer transferring an
employee to another office in the exercise of what it took to be sound business
judgment and in accordance with pre-determined and established office policy
and practice, and of the latter having what was believed to be legitimate
reasons for declining that transfer, rooted in considerations of personal
convenience and difficulties for the family. Under these circumstances, the solution
proposed by the employee herself, of her voluntary termination of her
employment and the delivery to her of corresponding separation pay, would
appear to be the most equitable. Certainly, the Court cannot accept the proposition that when an employee
opposes his employer’s decision to transfer him to another work place, there
being no bad faith or underhanded motives on the part of either party, it is
the employee’s wishes that should be made to prevail. In adopting that proposition by way of resolving the controversy,
the respondent NLRC gravely abused its discretion.

WHEREFORE, the writ of certiorari prayed
for is GRANTED and the Resolution of August 5, 1986 of respondent NLRC is
thereby nullified and set aside, and the termination of services of private
respondent is declared legal and proper. No costs.

SO ORDERED.

Cruz, Gancayco, Griño-Aquino, and
Medialdea, JJ., concur.

^[1]
Rollo, pp. 44-55. The decision was written by Labor Arbiter Ricardo Q. Encarnacion.

^[2]
123 SCRA 296

^[3]
Rollo, pp. 74-79. The resolution was promulgated by the Third Division, composed of
Presiding Commissioner Guillermo C. Medina, Commissioner Miguel B. Varela, and
Commissioner Gabriel M. Gatchalian, the first two concurring “IN THE
RESULTS.”

^[4]
The rule is the same in American
Law: 51A CJS, 225-226; 48 Am Jur 2d,
745-746: e.g., while it is “the
normal right of an employer to transfer employees in the course of business,
the transfer of an employee, or the change in status of an employee from
permanent to temporary, traceable to membership or nonmembership in a labor
union, or to activities on behalf of a bargaining agency, constitutes
discrimination within the interdiction of the statute. ** “

^[5]
Fernandez, P. V., Labor Relations Law, 1985 ed., pp. 44, 45

^[6]
By the First Division, Griño-Aquino, J.,
ponente: 171 SCRA 164

^[7]
By the Third Division, Fernan, C.J., ponente: 185 SCRA 727