Suspension of 2 AIM professors illegal – NLRC

The National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) has declared as illegal the one-year suspension meted by the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) on two senior professors who headed the institution’s faculty association.

In a decision issued last Friday, NLRC labor arbiter Napoleon Menese ordered AIM to lift the suspension it meted on Victor Limlingan and Emmanuel Leyco, chairman and president of the AIM Faculty Association (AFA), respectively, and pay the salaries and benefits withheld from them during the suspension with 10 percent interest.

The two were suspended by the AIM Board of Trustees in July 2007.

Menese found no basis in the reason cited by AIM, which claimed that Limlingan and Leyco engaged in “dysfunctional behavior” when they hired lawyers to push for AFA’s claim for the faculty professors’ rightful share of tuition increases imposed on students of the institution over the past several years.

The AIM board of trustees issued the suspension shortly after AFA’s lawyers served a demand letter to the AIM board of governors for the allocation of P984.1 million for the salary increase of the AIM faculty and other employees as their rightful share of the tuition increases imposed by AIM since the 1980s.

AFA pointed out that Republic Act 6728 provides that teachers should be given a 70 percent share of tuition fee increases imposed by an educational institution.

Menese said expressing a claim through a demand letter “is far from being a dysfunctional behavior” and that only the labor arbiter and the NLRC can determine if the AFA’s monetary claim has merit.

He also admonished AIM for failing to hold dialogues with AFA officials before meting the suspension.

“When reasonable people take time to talk things out, reasonable agreements most often are forged,” Menese said.

Limlingan and Leyco hailed the NLRC for its ruling.

“We view this decision as vindication for AFA’s position to assert the rights of faculty as AIM stakeholders and hope that this will awaken AIM management to practice what the school preaches on good governance,” they said in a joint statement.