Republic of the Philippines
SUPREME COURT
Manila

SECOND DIVISION

G.R. No. 170734             May 14, 2008

ARCO METAL PRODUCTS, CO., INC., and MRS. SALVADOR UY, petitioners,
vs.
SAMAHAN NG MGA MANGGAGAWA SA ARCO METAL-NAFLU (SAMARM-NAFLU), respondent.

D E C I S I O N

TINGA, J.:

This treats of the Petition for Review¹ of the Resolution² and Decision³ of the Court of Appeals dated 9 December 2005 and 29 September 2005, respectively in CA-G.R. SP No. 85089 entitled

Samahan ng mga Manggagawa sa Arco Metal-NAFLU (SAMARM-NAFLU) v. Arco Metal Products Co., Inc. and/or Mr. Salvador Uy/Accredited Voluntary Arbitrator Apron M. Mangabat,⁴ which ruled that the 13^th month pay, vacation leave and sick leave conversion to cash shall be paid in full to the employees of petitioner regardless of the actual service they rendered within a year.

Petitioner is a company engaged in the manufacture of metal products, whereas respondent is the labor union of petitioner’s rank and file employees. Sometime in December 2003, petitioner paid the 13^th month pay, bonus, and leave encashment of three union members in amounts proportional to the service they actually rendered in a year, which is less than a full twelve (12) months. The employees were:

Respondent protested the prorated scheme, claiming that on several occasions petitioner did not prorate the payment of the same benefits to seven (7) employees who had not served for the full 12 months. The payments were made in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2003, and 2004. According to respondent, the prorated payment violates the rule against diminution of benefits under Article 100 of the Labor Code. Thus, they filed a complaint before the National Conciliation and Mediation Board (NCMB). The parties submitted the case for voluntary arbitration.

The voluntary arbitrator, Apron M. Mangabat, ruled in favor of petitioner and found that the giving of the contested benefits in full, irrespective of the actual service rendered within one year has not ripened into a practice. He noted the affidavit of Joselito Baingan, manufacturing group head of petitioner, which states that the giving in full of the benefit was a mere error. He also interpreted the phrase "for each year of service" found in the pertinent CBA provisions to mean that an employee must have rendered one year of service in order to be entitled to the full benefits provided in the CBA.⁵

Unsatisfied, respondent filed a Petition for Review⁶ under Rule 43 before the Court of Appeals, imputing serious error to Mangabat’s conclusion. The Court of Appeals ruled that the CBA did not intend to foreclose the application of prorated payments of leave benefits to covered employees. The appellate court found that petitioner, however, had an existing voluntary practice of paying the aforesaid benefits in full to its employees, thereby rejecting the claim that petitioner erred in paying full benefits to its seven employees. The appellate court noted that aside from the affidavit of petitioner’s officer, it has not presented any evidence in support of its position that it has no voluntary practice of granting the contested benefits in full and without regard to the service actually rendered within the year. It also questioned why it took petitioner eleven (11) years before it was able to discover the alleged error. The dispositive portion of the court’s decision reads:

Petitioner moved for the reconsideration of the decision but its motion was denied, hence this petition.

Petitioner submits that the Court of Appeals erred when it ruled that the grant of 13^th month pay, bonus, and leave encashment in full regardless of actual service rendered constitutes voluntary employer practice and, consequently, the prorated payment of the said benefits does not constitute diminution of benefits under Article 100 of the Labor Code.⁸

The petition ultimately fails.

First, we determine whether the intent of the CBA provisions is to grant full benefits regardless of service actually rendered by an employee to the company. According to petitioner, there is a one-year cutoff in the entitlement to the benefits provided in the CBA which is evident from the wording of its pertinent provisions as well as of the existing law.

We agree with petitioner on the first issue. The applicable CBA provisions read:

There is no doubt that in order to be entitled to the full monetization of sixteen (16) days of vacation and sick leave, one must have rendered at least one year of service. The clear wording of the provisions does not allow any other interpretation. Anent the 13^th month pay and bonus, we agree with the findings of Mangabat that the CBA provisions did not give any meaning different from that given by the law, thus it should be computed at 1/12 of the total compensation which an employee receives for the whole calendar year. The bonus is also equivalent to the amount of the 13^th month pay given, or in proportion to the actual service rendered by an employee within the year.

On the second issue, however, petitioner founders.

As a general rule, in petitions for review under Rule 45, the Court, not being a trier of facts, does not normally embark on a re-examination of the evidence presented by the contending parties during the trial of the case considering that the findings of facts of the Court of Appeals are conclusive and binding on the Court.¹⁰ The rule, however, admits of several exceptions, one of which is when the findings of the Court of Appeals are contrary to that of the lower tribunals. Such is the case here, as the factual conclusions of the Court of Appeals differ from that of the voluntary arbitrator.

Petitioner granted, in several instances, full benefits to employees who have not served a full year, thus:

Petitioner claims that its full payment of benefits regardless of the length of service to the company does not constitute voluntary employer practice. It points out that the payments had been erroneously made and they occurred in isolated cases in the years 1992, 1993, 1994, 1999, 2002 and 2003. According to petitioner, it was only in 2003 that the accounting department discovered the error "when there were already three (3) employees involved with prolonged absences and the error was corrected by implementing the pro-rata payment of benefits pursuant to law and their existing CBA."¹² It adds that the seven earlier cases of full payment of benefits went unnoticed considering the proportion of one employee concerned (per year) vis à vis the 170 employees of the company. Petitioner describes the situation as a "clear oversight" which should not be taken against it.¹³ To further bolster its case, petitioner argues that for a grant of a benefit to be considered a practice, it should have been practiced over a long period of time and must be shown to be consistent, deliberate and intentional, which is not what happened in this case. Petitioner tries to make a case out of the fact that the CBA has not been modified to incorporate the giving of full benefits regardless of the length of service, proof that the grant has not ripened into company practice.

We disagree.

Any benefit and supplement being enjoyed by employees cannot be reduced, diminished, discontinued or eliminated by the employer.¹⁴ The principle of non-diminution of benefits is founded on the Constitutional mandate to "protect the rights of workers and promote their welfare,"¹⁵ and "to afford labor full protection."¹⁶ Said mandate in turn is the basis of Article 4 of the Labor Code which states that "all doubts in the implementation and interpretation of this Code, including its implementing rules and regulations shall be rendered in favor of labor." Jurisprudence is replete with cases which recognize the right of employees to benefits which were voluntarily given by the employer and which ripened into company practice. Thus in Davao Fruits Corporation v. Associated Labor Unions, et al.¹⁷ where an employer had freely and continuously included in the computation of the 13^th month pay those items that were expressly excluded by the law, we held that the act which was favorable to the employees though not conforming to law had thus ripened into a practice and could not be withdrawn, reduced, diminished, discontinued or eliminated. In Sevilla Trading Company v. Semana,¹⁸ we ruled that the employer’s act of including non-basic benefits in the computation of the 13^th month pay was a voluntary act and had ripened into a company practice which cannot be peremptorily withdrawn. Meanwhile in Davao Integrated Port Stevedoring Services v. Abarquez,¹⁹ the Court ordered the payment of the cash equivalent of the unenjoyed sick leave benefits to its intermittent workers after finding that said workers had received these benefits for almost four years until the grant was stopped due to a different interpretation of the CBA provisions. We held that the employer cannot unilaterally withdraw the existing privilege of commutation or conversion to cash given to said workers, and as also noted that the employer had in fact granted and paid said cash equivalent of the unenjoyed portion of the sick leave benefits to some intermittent workers.

In the years 1992, 1993, 1994, 1999, 2002 and 2003, petitioner had adopted a policy of freely, voluntarily and consistently granting full benefits to its employees regardless of the length of service rendered. True, there were only a total of seven employees who benefited from such a practice, but it was an established practice nonetheless. Jurisprudence has not laid down any rule specifying a minimum number of years within which a company practice must be exercised in order to constitute voluntary company practice.²⁰ Thus, it can be six (6) years,²¹ three (3) years,²² or even as short as two (2) years.²³ Petitioner cannot shirk away from its responsibility by merely claiming that it was a mistake or an error, supported only by an affidavit of its manufacturing group head portions of which read:

In cases involving money claims of employees, the employer has the burden of proving that the employees did receive the wages and benefits and that the same were paid in accordance with law.²⁵

Indeed, if petitioner wants to prove that it merely erred in giving full benefits, it could have easily presented other proofs, such as the names of other employees who did not fully serve for one year and thus were given prorated benefits. Experientially, a perfect attendance in the workplace is always the goal but it is seldom achieved. There must have been other employees who had reported for work less than a full year and who, as a consequence received only prorated benefits. This could have easily bolstered petitioner’s theory of mistake/error, but sadly, no evidence to that effect was presented.

IN VIEW HEREOF, the petition is DENIED. The Decision of the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R. SP No. 85089 dated 29 September 2005 is and its Resolution dated 9 December 2005 are hereby AFFIRMED.

SO ORDERED.

Quisumbing,Chairperson, Carpio-Morales, Velasco, Jr., JJ., concur.
Brion, J., Separate Concurring Opinion.

Footnotes