Fired legally for loss of trust and confidence

San Miguel Corp. is one of the best companies, which you should recommend to your children to work in. Under the able stewardship of Mr. Ramon S. Ang for the last decade or so, SMC was founded by Don Andres Soriano in 1890. I spent no less than 12 years of my career there, as director for employee relations, labor relations, and labor litigations. It gave me much job satisfaction, working for a corporation whose motto is: Profit with Honor. But when it comes to dishonesty of employees, management is uncompromising. This case is an indubitable example.

SMC has the best compensation package and it gave me tremendous opportunities to learn, to network, and to travel the world. It was there that I formulated the HR Diamond, comprising four quadrants, representing the four components of HR, namely: talent acquisition or recruitment, total rewards or compensation and benefits, learning and development, and my area, organizational justice or employee and labor relations. Organizational justice stands on two pillars; employee discipline and employee grievance management. This case we are presenting here is about employee discipline and dismissal. This was decided by the Supreme Court on August 24, 2020, entitled SMC vs. RAG (hidden to protect her reputation). SMC lost before the Court of Appeals but won in the Supreme Court.

It saddens me to note that this lady joined SMC in the same year I did in 1986, when management offered to engage my services while I was then HR manager of Petron (PNOC) then called Petrophil. She was an executive secretary of SMC's security department and later promoted as coordinator of the mailing department (before the advent of digital communications, SMC had thousands of mailing matters, parcels and packages each day). Thus, at those times SMC mailing was a multi-million business, which management outsourced to a mailing service outfit. The case was triggered by audit findings showing millions in money lost due to alleged overcharging and other forms of defalcations. Then the owner of the mailing outfit testified that this lady was demanding 25% commission from the outfit, or a kickback, in plain language. She was allegedly getting such amounts for a number of years. She was fired in 2002 after due process, of course.

She lost no time in suing SMC but her case was dismissed in 2006 by the labor arbiter who found that she was guilty. The NLRC reversed the ruling in 2009. The Court of Appeals also ruled in favor of the employee in 2012. The Supreme Court in 2020, reversed the NLRC and the CA and decided in favor of SMC. I just don't like the delay. Why did it take the arbiter four years, the NLRC three years, the CA three years and the Supreme Court eight years to rule on a simple issue of illegal dismissal? With due respect, this is not only justice delayed, this is also justice denied. Remember that the company had to reinstate the dismissed employee pending appeal. Can you imagine paying the salaries from 2009 to 2020 if the company did reinstate her on the payroll?

The affidavit of the mailing outfit which identified her as having received actual kickbacks were more than enough for the highest court of the land to rule in favor of the management. I remember another case involving a cement company in Tinaan, Naga, which fired a high-ranking manager for demanding money from the supplier. He was also fired and management also won in that case. There was a nurse in St. Luke’s who was fired for attempting to bring home some hospital supplies. Management won in that case too. During my time, we fired many salesmen for malversing funds owned by SMC, and to my recollection, we always won our cases too. Dishonesty by employees holding confidential positions is unforgivable in the rules of SMC.

The Supreme Court held in this case. "We find that RAG willfully, intentionally, knowingly, purposely and without justifiable excuse, disregarded SMC's rules and regulations in the workplace". I am proud to say that I was one of those who formulated these rules from 1986 to 1998. Today, my good friend, Atty. Noel Balsicas, from Cebu, is doing the work I used to handle, and he is exceptionally good. Cebuanos are trusted by SMC and we do honor to our province and city.