Labor Relations

Labor Relations
POLICY AND DEFINITIONS

By: Atty. John Richard A. Delos Reyes
Declaration of Policy
It is the policy of the State:
• To promote and emphasize the primacy of free collective bargaining

and negotiations, including voluntary arbitration, mediation and
conciliation, as modes of settling labor or industrial disputes;
• To promote free trade unionism as an instrument for the
enhancement of democracy and the promotion of social justice and
development;
• To foster the free and voluntary organization of a strong and united
labor movement;
• To promote the enlightenment of workers concerning their rights and
obligations as union members and as employees;
• To provide an adequate administrative machinery for the expeditious
settlement of labor or industrial disputes;
• To ensure a stable but dynamic and just industrial peace; and
• To ensure the participation of workers in decision and policy-making
processes affecting their rights, duties and welfare.
• To encourage a truly democratic method of regulating the relations
between the employers and employees by means of agreements
freely entered into through collective bargaining, no court or
administrative agency or official shall have the power to set or fix
wages, rates of pay, hours of work or other terms and conditions of
employment, except as otherwise provided under this Code.
DEFINITIONS
“Commission” means the National Labor Relations Commission or any of
its divisions, as the case may be, as provided under this Code.
“Bureau” means the Bureau of Labor Relations and/or the Labor Relations
Divisions in the regional offices established under Presidential Decree No.
1, in the Department of Labor.
“Board” means the National Conciliation and Mediation Board established

under Executive Order No. 126.
“Council” means the Tripartite Voluntary Arbitration Advisory Council

established under Executive Order No. 126, as amended.
“Employer” includes any person acting in the interest of an employer,

directly or indirectly. The term shall not include any labor organization or
any of its officers or agents except when acting as employer.
“Employee” includes any person in the employ of an employer. The term

shall not be limited to the employees of a particular employer, unless the
Code so explicitly states. It shall include any individual whose work has
ceased as a result of or in connection with any current labor dispute or
because of any unfair labor practice if he has not obtained any other
substantially equivalent and regular employment.
“Labor organization” means any union or association of employees which

exists in whole or in part for the purpose of collective bargaining or of
dealing with employers concerning terms and conditions of employment.
“Legitimate labor organization” means any labor organization duly

registered with the Department of Labor and Employment, and includes
any branch or local thereof.
“Labor organization” means any union or association of employees which
exists in whole or in part for the purpose of collective bargaining or of
dealing with employers concerning terms and conditions of employment.
“Legitimate labor organization” means any labor organization duly
registered with the Department of Labor and Employment, and includes
any branch or local thereof.
“Company union” means any labor organization whose formation, function
or administration has been assisted by any act defined as unfair labor
practice by this Code.
“Bargaining representative” means a legitimate labor organization whether

or not employed by the employer.
“Unfair labor practice” means any unfair labor practice as expressly defined
by the Code.
“Labor dispute” includes any controversy or matter concerning terms and

conditions of employment or the association or representation of persons in
negotiating, fixing, maintaining, changing or arranging the terms and
conditions of employment, regardless of whether the disputants stand in
the proximate relation of employer and employee.
“Managerial employee” is one who is vested with the powers or
prerogatives to lay down and execute management policies and/or to hire,
transfer, suspend, lay-off, recall, discharge, assign or discipline employees.
Supervisory employees are those who, in the interest of the employer,
effectively recommend such managerial actions if the exercise of such
authority is not merely routinary or clerical in nature but requires the use of
independent judgment. All employees not falling within any of the above
definitions are considered rank-and-file employees for purposes of this
Book.
“Voluntary Arbitrator” means any person accredited by the Board as such

or any person named or designated in the Collective Bargaining Agreement
by the parties to act as their Voluntary Arbitrator, or one chosen with or
without the assistance of the National Conciliation and Mediation Board,
pursuant to a selection procedure agreed upon in the Collective Bargaining
Agreement, or any official that may be authorized by the Secretary of Labor
and Employment to act as Voluntary Arbitrator upon the written request and
agreement of the parties to a labor dispute.
“Strike” means any temporary stoppage of work by the concerted action of

employees as a result of an industrial or labor dispute.
“Lockout” means any temporary refusal of an employer to furnish work as a
result of an industrial or labor dispute.
“Internal union dispute” includes all disputes or grievances arising from any
violation of or disagreement over any provision of the constitution and by
laws of a union, including any violation of the rights and conditions of union
membership provided for in this Code.
“Strike-breaker” means any person who obstructs, impedes, or interferes

with by force, violence, coercion, threats, or intimidation any peaceful
picketing affecting wages, hours or conditions of work or in the exercise of
the right of self-organization or collective bargaining.
“Strike area” means the establishment, warehouses, depots, plants or

offices, including the sites or premises used as runaway shops, of the
employer struck against, as well as the immediate vicinity actually used by
picketing strikers in moving to and fro before all points of entrance to and
exit from said establishment.
To be free, the workers must have choice. To have choice, they must retain
in their own hands the right to determine under what conditions they will
work.
-SAMUEL GOMPERS
Labor Relations in Perspective
The term “labor relations” is not defined either the Labor Code or its
Implementing Rules.
It is generally accepted, however that it refers to the interaction between
employers and employees or their representatives and the mechanisms for
regulating such interactions. The interactions between the employers and
employees are about terms and conditions of employment, and labor
relations is the system by which those standards of employment are
negotiated, adjusted and administered or enforced.
In their broadest sense, the interactions referred to include those between
or among or within, labor organizations, because cannot be dissociated
from interactions with employers which are, after all, the principal objective
of such organizations.
Substantive Law vs. Procedural Law
Labor relations law partakes of the nature of both substantive and adjective
law. Substantive law is that which creates or establishes rights and
obligations.
Adjective law (or remedial or procedural law), on the other hand, lays down
the procedural rules for the exercise or enforcement of those rights and
obligations.
Book V of the Labor Code creates rights and obligations of employers and
employees. In that sense it is substantive law. But because it also provides
the machinery and the modalities for their implementation, it is considered
adjective law as well.
Labor Standards vs. Labor Relations
Labor relations and labor standards laws complement each other. They are
so inextricably linked that one is useless without the other. Labor standards
law supplies the grist for the mill, so to speak; labor relations law is the mill
itself.
In this context labor standards provisions lay down the bottom line or
the absolute minima in collective bargaining negotiations in the sense that
the terms and conditions of employment agreed upon cannot fall below
those standards. These two are the main components of labor legislation.
WHY IS LABOR RELATIONS IMPORTANT?
The opposing interest of employers and employees define a natural breach
between them which is a likely source of disputes. The law simply has to
step into that breach in order to prevent serious controversies from
erupting, if that is at all possible, or at least to cushion, as it were, the
points of collision so that a speedy and judicious settlement of labor-
management disputes could be enhanced.
Labor relations, therefore, can also be described as an integrated
mechanism for labor dispute settlement. Since, by the very nature of the
relationship between employers and employees, disputes between them
are bound to arise, one of the thrusts of labor relations in how to resolve
disputes in a fair and expeditious manner.
Policy.
Internal Reconciliation
The policy, however, is for the government to intervene only where self-
help modes of dispute settlement available in employers and employees
have failed to achieve their purpose. The parties are first allowed to seek
their own solutions to their problems within the frame work of industrial
democracy. There interactions in this regard illustrate industrial democracy
at work. Experience has demonstrated that solutions arrived by the
disputants themselves are more realistic, effective and lasting than those
imposed of them by third parties.
Article 218 of the Labor Code clearly stresses that policy. It mentions the
prepared modes of labor dispute settlement, such as free collective
bargaining and negotiations, voluntary arbitration, mediation and
conciliation, ahead to establishment by the government of an adequate
administrative machinery for the expeditious settlement of labor disputes.
The primacy of such modes is not only recognized but, in the words of
Article 218, promoted and emphasized.
“Labor Disputes”
A “labor dispute,” according to Article 219(1), “includes any controversy and
matter concerning terms and conditions of employment or the association
or presentation of persons in negotiating, fixing, maintaining, changing or
arranging the terms and conditions of employment, regardless of whether
the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee.
It is easy enough to determine the existence of a labor dispute where
the controversy is between the employers and employees concerning the
terms and condition of employment of the latter, or between or among labor
organizations that seek to represent the employees in collective bargaining
for the purpose of fixing, etc. the terms and condition of employment. It is
not quite so easy to make the determination where the disputants do not
stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee. And yet, even
in the latter situation, a labor dispute may exist.
De Guzman v. NLRC
In labor disputes, it is not required that the claim for relief should directly
result from employer-employee relationship, it being sufficient that there be
showing of a reasonable causal connection between the claims asserted
and the employer-employee relations.
Of such nature is a claim for damages by former employees of a
company against a former general manager thereof who was impleaded
together with the company for having sold part of the company’s assets
and applying the proceeds, as well as the remaining assets, to satisfy his
own claims against the company, to the prejudice of the employees’
pending claims for illegal dismissal and nonpayment of monetary benefits.
Labor Disputes: A Bird’s Eye View
There are two broad categories of labor disputes, namely;
i) Labor Management Disputes, and ii) Organizational Disputes.
Two Categories
Under the first category are 1) labor standards disputes, which involve
wages and wage-related matters, others benefits of employment, and
conditions of the work place, and 2) labor relations disputes, including
unfair labor practices, collective bargaining deadlocks, contract
interpretation, strikes and lockouts, company personnel policy
implementation, and termination of employment.
Under the second category are 1) inter-union disputes, or between or
among unions, usually over the issue of representation; and 2) intra-union
disputes or disputes within the same union, over union leadership and/or
administration, or claims of violation of the union’s constitution and by-laws.
Remedies
The available remedies for the said dispute, or the modes of settlement
thereof, include negotiations/collective bargaining, grievance machinery
under the CBA, conciliation and mediation, administration and
enforcement, injunction, strikes and lockouts, and arbitration which is either
voluntary or compulsory.
It will be noted that collective bargaining, as well as strikes and

lockouts, are included in the list of remedies, even as they are also
classified as disputes. The reason for this will be given in the relevant
succeeding chapters.
The study of labor relations, particularly the labor dispute settlement
aspects thereof, entails a proper matching of disputes and remedies, which
is a determination of which modes of settlement apply to which disputes. It
also includes an inquiry into the matter of jurisdiction, or identifying which
agency has the authority to hear and decide which dispute.
The agencies involved within the Department of labor and
Employment are the Office of the Secretary, the National Labor Relations
Commission, the Bureau of Labor Relations, the National Conciliation and
Mediation Board, the National Wages and Productivity Commission, the
Employees Compensation Commission, and the Regional Offices. The
workings of the Regional Offices, the ECC, the NWPC, and, partially, the
Office of the Secretary, in the exercise of their respective functions in the
settlement of labor disputes will be studied in the succeeding chapters.
CONCLUSION
Seen in the context of the role that it plays in the life of the country, labor
relations may be described as instrument for attaining peace in the
workplace, or to the borrow language of the law. Industrial peace could
very well be the harbinger of tranquility in the entire nation; if there is
harmony between employers and employees in every enterprise or
undertaking, there is that much less to worry about in terms of the whole
national situation.

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Labor Relations

POLICY AND DEFINITIONS

• To promote and emphasize the primacy of free collective bargaining

“Board” means the National Conciliation and Mediation Board established

“Council” means the Tripartite Voluntary Arbitration Advisory Council

“Employer” includes any person acting in the interest of an employer,

“Employee” includes any person in the employ of an employer. The term

“Labor organization” means any union or association of employees which

“Legitimate labor organization” means any labor organization duly

“Bargaining representative” means a legitimate labor organization whether

“Labor dispute” includes any controversy or matter concerning terms and

“Voluntary Arbitrator” means any person accredited by the Board as such

“Strike” means any temporary stoppage of work by the concerted action of

“Strike-breaker” means any person who obstructs, impedes, or interferes

“Strike area” means the establishment, warehouses, depots, plants or

It will be noted that collective bargaining, as well as strikes and

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