PLDT secures favorable CA ruling over DOLE regularization orders

MANILA, Philippines — The Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of PLDT Inc. after the company questioned the regularization orders by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), the telco giant said yesterday.

PLDT said it received yesterday a copy of the CA ruling which granted the company’s request for an injunction against DOLE’s regularization orders.

“In sum, the CA set aside the regularization orders...and remanded to the DOLE for further proceedings, the matters of determining which contractors, and which individuals deployed by these contractors, are performing installation, repair and maintenance of PLDT lines; and properly computing monetary awards for benefits such as unpaid overtime or 13th month pay, which in the regularization orders amounted to P51.8 million,” the firm said.

PLDT said the CA agreed with its contention that Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello’s regularization order was “tainted with grave abuse of discretion” because it did not meet the “substantial evidence” standards set out by the Supreme Court in landmark jurisprudence.

The telco giant said the CA also noted that the DOLE’s appreciation of evidence leaned in favor of the contractor workers, and that Bello had “lost sight” of distinctions involving the labor law concepts of “control over means and methods,” and “control over results.”

DOLE had previously ordered PLDT to regularize 7,344 workers from 38 of PLDT’s third-party service contractors through a series of orders, including a Compliance Order issued by the DOLE Regional Office on July 3, 2017 that was partly affirmed by Bello in his resolutions dated Jan. 10, 2018 and April 24, 2018.