G.R. No. L-74262 October 29, 1987
General Rubber and Footwear Corporation, petitioner, vs. Bureau of Labor Relations, National Association of Trade Union of Monthly Paid Employees-NATU, respondents.

FACTS

Petitioner General Rubber and Footwear Corporation is a manufacturing company. After the expiration of its collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the General Rubber Workers Union (Independent) in October 1985, the daily-paid rank-and-file employees formed the Samahang Manggagawa sa General Rubber Corporation ANGLO. Separately, in July 1985, the monthly-paid employees formed the National Association of Trade Unions of Monthly Paid Employees (NATU) and filed a petition for direct certification for a separate bargaining unit.
The Med-Arbiter ordered a certification election, a decision affirmed by the Bureau of Labor Relations (BLR). Petitioner corporation opposed, arguing that the creation of a second bargaining unit was improper, that the monthly-paid employees included managerial personnel ineligible to unionize, and that these employees had historically been excluded from the rank-and-file unit by mutual agreement since 1963.

ISSUE

Whether the monthly-paid employees of General Rubber and Footwear Corporation have the right to form a separate and distinct collective bargaining unit.

RULING

The Supreme Court dismissed the petition, upholding the BLR’s order. The legal logic centers on the right to self-organization and the correct classification of employees. First, the Court found that the monthly-paid employees were not managerial. Under the Labor Code, a managerial employee is vested with powers to execute management policies or to hire, discharge, assign, or discipline employees, or to effectively recommend such actions. The monthly-paid employees’ functions, which merely involved recommending managerial actions in disciplinary cases, did not meet this threshold. They were correctly classified as rank-and-file employees.
Second, the historical exclusion of monthly-paid employees from the existing daily-paid bargaining unit, as stipulated in the expired CBA, did not permanently bar them from forming their own union. Such an exclusionary agreement could not curtail the constitutional and statutory right to self-organization for subsequent unions. The policy against the proliferation of bargaining units within a single establishment yields to the compelling reason of granting a distinct class of employees, long excluded from representation, their right to collective bargaining. Therefore, the monthly-paid rank-and-file employees were entitled to form their own separate bargaining unit or, alternatively, to join the existing rank-and-file union of the daily-paid workers.