16,500 Napocor workers ask SC to allow their oral argument

On Nov. 28, 2008, some 16,500 employees of the National Power Corp. (NPC) had reason to celebrate. The complaint they had filed a year earlier, i.e. on  Dec. 28, 2007 asking that  NPC  be made to restore their long withheld Cost of Living Allowance  (COLA) and Amelioration Allowance (AA) was granted  favorably by  Judge Luisito G. Cortez of Branch 84 of the Regional Trial Court of Quezon City.

The case, docketed as Civil Case No. Q-07-61728, had been filed after the passage of Rep. Act 6758 or  the Salary Standardization Law (SSL) which was passed on July 1, 1989.  Concomitantly, the Department of Budget and Management  (DBM) issued Corporate Circular No. 10, ordering the discontinuance of NPC employees’ allowances save those enumerated under Section 12 of Rep. Act 6758 (like travel allowance for official travel). As a result, except for the incumbents  classified as A (who received their COLA/AA but only up to Dec. 31, 1993), all the NPC employees’  COLA/AA  hired under category B and C from July 1, 1989 to March 15, 1999 (a total of ten years), were not given to them.

Understandably  the law proved to be a nightmare for  the employees.

I learned about the case when I met  Abner P. Eleria, president of the Napocor Employees Consolidated Union,   and Melito B. Lupanggo, president of  the Napocor Employees and Workers Union, and over coffee at the Via Mare restaurant on the UP Diliman campus,   they  talked  about the  disappointment of thousands of workers who lost their COLA/AA which had helped augment the family budget for food and other expenses.  “These allowances helped put their body and soul together, so to speak,” said Eleria.

Lupanggo said  COLA is  40 percent of an employee’s basic salary, and AA, 10 percent. Therefore,  if  an office secretary’s  basic pay is P3,000, her COLA and AA mean P1,500. See how much she can bring food home with the extra P1,500?  You can imagine how much a janitor’s family  suffers without those allowances.

It was only  on Dec. 28, 2007 that the employees filed a class suit against NPC, with Atty. Napoleon Uy Galit as their legal counsel. This was after they learned of en banc decisions of the Supreme Court, which ruled that petitioners’ COLA/AA were not deleted by the SSL but were only ordered integrated into their standardized salaries. These cases were Rodolfo de Jesus vs. Commission on Audit (COA); Philippine Port Authority (PPA) vs. COA;  Metropolitan  Water Sewerage Sewerage System (MWSS) vs/ Genaro Bautista;  NECU vs. NPC,  and Victoria Gutierrez et.al,  vs. DBM et.al. The  petitioners had argued that  DBM had not published CCC No. 10  regarding  the discontinuance of the allowances in the Official Gazette, a required protocol, thereby  rendering  the disallowance of the COLA/AA ineffective.

The SC decisions, according to  Attorney Galit, “decreed quite clearly that all the NPC workers were all entitled, as a matter of right, to their COLA/AA from July 1, 1989 to March 15, 1999.”

Galit further said, “Taking  guidance from the Supreme Court’s decisions, DBM caused the publication of  CCC No.  12  on March 20, 2006, directing all agencies to study and compute workers’ unpaid COLA/AA, subject to their respective company/corporation presidents, vice presidents for  human resource, and finance officers’ certifications.”

Complying with the directives, NPC  management ordered the creation of a task committee headed by its president, vice president for human resource, and finance officer, to study and compute the NPC workers’ withheld COLA/AA, which task involved tens of millions of 16,500 workers’ individual service records for the period  1989 to 1999.

The study and computation having been finished,  a computation sheet was prepared by the NPC showing the workers’ unpaid COLA/AA –  amounting to P6.7 billion by payroll and P1.8 billion by vouchers –  accompanied by the NPC board of  directors’ and accountants’ various certifications, and  acknowledgment of  Napocor’s indebtedness to the employees.

The big problem, said Attorney  Galit, was those ten years of unpaid COLA/AA which were included in the fiscal years 1989 to 1999 budget outlays for Napocor, could no  longer be accounted for. “Pushed against the wall, the employees  filed a mandamus case at Branch 84 of the Quezon City RTC, presenting as evidence, the NPC prepared computation sheet and various  certifications  as well as testimonies from the NPC  accountant, records custodian and vice president for human resource.”

“Against the above array of evidence,”  said Attorney Galit, “all that the Office of the Solicitor General/Department of Budget and Management  presented was an NPASA of an Ernesto Camagong (one of the NPC workers).” Based on documents bared  by the NPC  employees’ representations, the  RTC ordered NPC to pay the employees’ COLA/AA  as computed. Said decision being  reflective of NPC’s own records, and Napocor unable to file an appeal,  the RTC’s decision was made final and executory, and a writ of execution was issued anchored not only on finality, but on account of the NPC’s continued disposal and dissipation of its assets.”

The workers’ initial feeling of triumph caused by the RTC’s decision in their favor evaporated and  “gave way to desperation, when the case ended up in the Supreme Court promulgated  on  Feb. 7, 2017, which invalidated the local court’s decision,”  said Lupanggo. It had been a long wait for the living NPC employee/petitioners, to have their COLA/AA restored, which wait turned out to be  in vain. Some of the employees in fact have already died.

What exactly happened was that the Office of the Solicitor General and the Department of Budget and Management filed a certiorari with the Supreme Court, questioning the rightness of the RTC decision.  Ironically, said Attorney Galit, the High Tribunal, en banc, set aside the RTC decision, using as evidence only Ernesto Camagong’s NPASA (Notice of Position Allocation and Salary Adjustment which is like a voucher, indicating all of an employee’s wages including allowances)  and two pay slips of two workers which had not even been presented in the trial court. 

The Supreme Court struck down the RTC’s decision. Using rules and regulations as bases for its rejection of the petition,  saying, in summary, that  “There was no legal basis to grant the back payment of additional COLA and AA to Napocor personnel from July 1, 1989 to March 16, 1999.”

Galit comments that  the decision’s ponente,  Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, “ abandoned the doctrine held in the case of Philippine Port Authority (G.R. No. 160396 of September 6, 2005), which abandonment of an equally en banc doctrinal pronouncement, was made with retroactive application imputing upon the  workers and the RTC of an alleged constitutional breach, holding that to give the workers’ withheld COLA/AA, would amount to a double compensation, which is  prohibited by law.”

The workers, obviously severely hurt and wondering what constitutional breach they have done, have prevailed upon Atty. Galit to file a Motion for Reconsideration with the Supreme Court, earnestly praying that they be allowed to make an oral argument  and  that the justices  “have an open mind for the reappreciation of evidence on records which seek to reinstate the RTC decision.”

Eleria’s parting shot to me was that while only  the evidence of  Camagong and two female assistants were presented before the SC magistrates, the NPC records would be a mountain of documents showing a preponderance of evidence of their COLA/AA having been deprived of them.  

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