Phil. Long Distance Telephone Co. v.

NLRC
No. L-80609, 23 August 1988

FACTS:

Marilyn Abucay, a traffic operator of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone

Company, was accused by two complainants of having demanded and received
from them the total amount of P3,800.00 in consideration of her promise to
facilitate approval of their applications for telephone installation. Investigated and
heard, she was found guilty as charged and accordingly separated from the
service.
She went to the Ministry of Labor and Employment claiming she had been illegally
removed. After consideration of the evidence and arguments of the parties, the
company was sustained and the complaint was dismissed for lack of merit and
was affirmed by the NLRC.

ISSUE:

Whether the award of financial assistance to an employee who had been dismissed
for cause is justified.

HELD: NO

RATIO:

The rule embodied in the Labor Code is that a person dismissed for cause as
defined therein is not entitled to separation pay. The cases which constitute an
exception to the rule is based upon considerations of equity. Equity has been
defined as justice outside law, being ethical rather than jural and belonging to the
sphere of morals than of law. It is grounded on the precepts of conscience and not
on any sanction of positive law. Hence, it cannot prevail against the expressed
provision of the labor laws allowing dismissal of employees for cause and without
any provision for separation pay.

Applying the above considerations, we hold that the grant of separation pay in the
case at bar is unjustified. The private respondent has been dismissed for
dishonesty, as found by the labor arbiter and affirmed by the NLRC and as she
herself has impliedly admitted. The fact that she has worked with the PLDT for
more than a decade, if it is, to be considered at all, should be taken against her as
it reflects a regrettable lack of loyalty that she should have strengthened instead
of betraying during all of her 10 years of service with the company. If regarded as
a justification for moderating the penalty of dismissal, it will actually become a prize
for disloyalty, perverting the meaning of social justice and undermining the efforts
of labor to cleanse its ranks of all undesirables.