SC: Airlines freed from paying customs workers OT

Overtime work rendered by airport personnel should be charged not against private airlines or similar entities but against the national government, the Supreme Court said in a ruling published Saturday.

The SC said its decision was in accordance with a 2016 law that repealed portions of the Tariff and Customs Code of the Philippines that charged airlines the overtime pay of customs personnel.

The Bureau of Customs Employees Association in 2013 sued the government before the SC for stopping the long-standing practice of saddling airlines with overtime pay for BoC workers.

The SC said that prior to the law's passage in 2016, the administrative issuances of BoC and the Department of Finance that stopped the collection of the OT pay from airlines violated Section 3506 of the TCCP, and went against established jurisprudence.

"Respondents committed grave abuse of discretion correctible by certiorari when they prohibited Customs employees from collecting overtime pay from airline companies and other private entities prior to the effectivity of RA 10863 on June 16, 2016," the SC ruling said.

Nonetheless, the SC said customs employees were only prejudiced to the extent of the difference between the overtime rates of private firms and those paid by the BoC before 2016.

"Any resulting monetary prejudice to the government or to petitioners is essentially evidentiary in nature and must be raised in the proper administrative and/or judicial proceeding," the SC said.

"In any event, these matters are best addressed to the trial courts because they entail the submission of evidence and the Supreme Court is not a trier of facts," the SC said.