The Supreme Court En Banc (via a 9-5 vote) finally laid to rest the jurisprudential conflict on the computation of backwages to be awarded to an illegally dismissed probationary employee.
While the Labor Code, as amended, clearly provides that the award of backwages is reckoned from the date of illegal or constructive dismissal until the employee’s actual reinstatement, the same, however, has been applied differently, particularly in the case of probationary employees.
In its 2011 Decision in Robinsons Galleria, et. al. v. Ranchez, the Supreme Court held that backwages for an illegally or constructively dismissed probationary employee must be computed only up to the end of their probationary employment contract, and not the employee’s actual reinstatement. (G.R. 177937, 19 January 2011)
The foregoing fairly recent ruling in Robinsons Galleria was decided differently as opposed to the 1996 Decision in Lopez v. Hon. Javier, et. al., 2003 Decision in Cebu Marine Beach Resort v. NLRC, and 2010 Decision in SHS Perforated Materials, Inc. v. Diaz. (G.R. 102874, 22 January 1996, G.R. 143252, 23 October 2003; G.R. 185814, 13 October 2010) In these cases, the Supreme Court consistently pronounced that probationary employees who are unjustly dismissed from work during the probationary period shall be entitled to reinstatement and payment of full backwages from the time they were dismissed up to their actual reinstatement.
Thus, a hospital employer invoked the Supreme Court’s 2011 ruling in Robinsons Galleria and argued that the award of backwages in favor of a probationary employee should only be up to the end date of the probationary employment contract, and not until actual reinstatement.
However, in its 2024 Decision in C.P. Reyes Hospital, et. al. v. Barbosa, (as commented on in a previous article) the Supreme Court En Banc categorically ruled that illegally dismissed probationary employees, like regular employees, are entitled to backwages up to their actual reinstatement. In case reinstatement is proven to be infeasible due to strained relations between the employer and the employee and other analogous causes, backwages shall be computed from the time compensation was withheld up to the finality of the Decision. (G.R. 228357, 16 April 2024)
Clearly, the ruling in Robinsons Galleria where the computation of backwages is only until the end of the probationary contract is now abandoned.
The Supreme Court En Banc’s ruling is more in keeping (a) with the constitutional guarantee of security of tenure extended to employees regardless of whether they are regular or probationary, (b) with the Labor Code awarding backwages from the time compensation was withheld up to the time of actual reinstatement applicable to probationary employees, and (c) with the constitutional and statutory guarantees in favor of labor. As both the constitution and the law did not distinguish entitlement to security of tenure and entitlement to backwages, the Court should not as well.
After all, probationary employees need strong protection from the exploitation of employers since they are usually the lowliest of the lowly and the most vulnerable to abuses of management, who would rather suffer in silence than risk losing their jobs. (Cebu Marine Beach Resort v. NLRC, G.R. 143252, 23 October 2003)
