G.R. No. 184262 . April 24, 2017
UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS (UST), Petitioner, vs. SAMAHANG MANGGAGAWA NG UST, FERNANDO PONTESOR, RODRIGO CLACER, SANTIAGO BUISA, JR., and JIMMY NAZARETH, Respondents.

FACTS

The respondents were repeatedly hired by the University of Santo Tomas (UST) on various periods from 1990 to 1999 to perform maintenance duties such as masonry, painting, electrical work, and carpentry. They were engaged under successive Contractual Employee Appointments (CEAs), which specified fixed terms tied to particular projects. Upon the completion or expiration of each project, their employment was terminated. The respondents filed a complaint for regularization and illegal dismissal, arguing that their tasks were necessary and desirable to UST’s ongoing operations as an educational institution, thus making them regular employees.
UST contended that the respondents were legitimate project employees, as evidenced by the CEAs they voluntarily signed. The university asserted that their employment was co-terminous with specific projects, and their termination was valid upon project completion. The Labor Arbiter ruled in favor of the respondents, declaring them regular employees who were illegally dismissed. The NLRC reversed this, classifying them as fixed-term casual employees, not regular employees, and dismissing the complaint. The Court of Appeals reinstated the Labor Arbiter’s decision, prompting UST’s appeal to the Supreme Court.

ISSUE

Whether the Court of Appeals correctly ruled that the respondents are regular employees of UST and were illegally dismissed.

RULING

The Supreme Court denied the petition and affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals. The Court held that the respondents are regular employees under Article 295 (formerly Article 280) of the Labor Code. Regular employment status attaches either when the employee is engaged in activities that are necessary and desirable to the usual business of the employer, or when the employee has rendered at least one year of service, whether continuous or broken.
The legal logic applied is twofold. First, the nature of the respondents’ work—maintenance of campus buildings, classrooms, and facilities—is indispensable to UST’s primary business of providing education. These tasks are clearly necessary and desirable to the normal operations of an educational institution. Second, the repeated and successive rehiring of the respondents over many years, under contracts that described projects in overly broad or general terms (e.g., “maintenance”), demonstrates that their employment was not genuinely limited to a specific, singular project with a defined completion timeline. Instead, it pertained to a continuing need for maintenance work. The use of fixed-term contracts under these circumstances was a deliberate scheme to circumvent security of tenure. Consequently, as regular employees, their dismissal without just or authorized cause was illegal. The Court emphasized that the determination of regular status is based on the factual circumstances of the employment, not merely on the contractual stipulations devised by the employer.