Backwage claims

Dear Atty. Kathy,

I won my case in the NLRC and Company B was ordered to reinstate me immediately with backwages. I immediately reported for work to Company B when I received the notice to report for work. I was then told by the HR officer that I have to submit again a new set of pre-employment requirements. I felt this was unfair since I already submitted these before and it will cost me a lot to get them again. Because of Company B’s unreasonable demands, I did not return to the company, and I want to complain again in the NLRC that my backwages should include the period I could not report for work due to Company B’s unreasonable demands. Do I have valid ground to claim more backwages?

Christine

***

Dear Christine,

Based solely on your narration, there is no showing that you were dismissed from employment, or that you abandoned your work. The Supreme Court has ruled that where the parties fail to prove the presence of either the dismissal of the employee or the abandonment by the employee of his work, the remedy is to reinstate such employee without payment of backwages. Thus, the employee may go back to his/her work and the employer must then accept the employee because the employment relationship between them was never actually severed.

Since there was no dismissal, there can be no backwages because backwages are only available to unjustly dismissed employees since its purpose is to allow the employee to recover from the employer that which he had lost by way of wages as a result of his/her dismissal. Thus, aside from your initial backwages up to the day you received the notice to report for work, you are not entitled to backwages, under the principle of “no work, no pay.”

(Richard M. Libranda vs. Ishida Philippines Grating Inc., et al., G.R. No. 259178, 15 August 2022)

Atty. Kathy Larios