Supreme Court ruling: Pabriga and his co-workers were regular

employees, not project employees, and they were illegally dismissed

The Supreme Court affirmed the findings of the NLRC and the CA that Pabriga and his co-workers
were GMA7s regular employees and that they were illegally dismissed.The Court ruled:
(1) Pabriga and his co-workers were not project employees because the manning of the operations
center to air commercials, acting as transmitter/VTR men, maintaining the equipment, and acting as
cameramen were not undertakings separate or distinct from the business of a broadcasting
company.
(2) Even if Pabriga and his co-workers are to be considered as project employees, they attained
regular employment status because GMA7 continuously rehired them.
(3) GMA7 did not report the completion of its projects and the dismissal of Pabriga and his coworkers in its finished projects to the nearest Public Employment Office as required by Policy
Instruction No. 20 of the Department of Labor and Employment. Based on jurisprudence, the failure
of an employer to report to the nearest Public Employment Office the termination of its workers
services every time a project or a phase is completed indicates that the workers are not project
employees.
(4) GMA7s practice of hiring and rehiring of workers on fixed terms, without end, is unjustifiable.

Difference between regular employee and project employee

A regular employee performs
activities that are usually
necessary or desirable in the
employers usual business or
trade.

A project employee performs

activities that may or may not be
usually necessary or desirable in
the usual business or trade of
the employer.
The services of the project
employees are legally and
automatically terminated when
the project ends or is completed.

The principal test for determining whether employees are project employees is two-fold:
(1) Is the employee assigned to carry out a specific project or undertaking?
(2) Is the completion or termination of the project specified or determined at the time the employee
was engaged for that project?

Definition of project
The term project must be properly defined in order to safeguard the rights of workers against the

arbitrary use of the word project by employers to prevent them from attaining the status of regular
employees.
(1) The project would ordinarily have some relationship to the usual business of the
employer.
For example, a construction company ordinarily carries out two or more [distinct] identifiable
construction projects: a twenty-five-storey hotel in Makati; a residential condominium building in
Baguio City; and a domestic air terminal in Iloilo City. Employees who are hired for the carrying out
of one of these separate projects (the scope and duration of which has been determined and made
known to the employees at the time of employment), are properly treated as project employees,
and their services may be lawfully terminated at completion of the project.
(2) Exceptionally, the project job or undertaking is not within the regular business of the
employer. The job or undertaking is identifiably separate and distinct from the ordinary or regular
business operations of the employer. The job or undertaking also begins and ends at determined or
determinable times. For example, a steel-making company, for one reason or another, undertakes
the breeding and production of fish or the cultivation of vegetables.

Examples of regular employee and a project employee

Philippine Long Distance
Telephone Company v. Ylagan,
537 Phil. 840 (2006)
Although essentially a telephone
company, PLDT maintains its own
accounting department to which
Ylagan was assigned. PLDT was
not able to prove that accounting
duties were distinct, separate and
identifiable from its usual
undertakings.

San Miguel Corporation v.

National Labor Relations
Commission, 357 Phil. 954
(1998)
The private respondent was
hired to repair furnaces, which
are needed by San Miguel
Corporation to manufacture
glass, an integral component of
its packaging and manufacturing
business.

Ylagan is therefore a regular

San Miguel Corporation is not
employee, not a project employee. engaged in the business of
repairing furnaces. Although the
activity was necessary to enable
it to continue manufacturing
glass, the necessity for the
repairs arose only when a
furnace reached the end of its
life or operating cycle.
Private respondent is therefore a
project employee.

A project employee or a member of a work pool may acquire the status of a regular employee
when the following concur:
(1) The project employee is continuously rehired even after a project has ended; and
(2) The alleged project employee performs tasks are vital, necessary, and indispensable to the usual
business or trade of the employer.

Difference between project employment and fixed period/fixed term

employment
GMA7 interchangeably characterized Pabriga and his co-workerss service as project employment
and fixed term employment. But these types of employment are not the same.