Metrobank vs. NLRC, G.R. No. 102636 [Case Digest]

 

Metrobank vs. NLRC, 

G.R. No. 102636 September 10, 1993

Facts:

The bank entered into a collective bargaining agreement with the MBTCEU, granting a monthly P900 wage increase effective 01 January 1989, P600 wage increase 01 January 1990, and P200 wage increase effective 01 January 1991. The MBTCEU had also bargained for the inclusion of probationary employees in the list of employees who would benefit from the first P900 increase but the bank had adamantly refused to accede thereto. Consequently, only regular employees as of 01 January 1989 were given the increase to the exclusion of probationary employees.

Pursuant to the provision of R.A. 6727, Sec.4 (a) & (D), the bank gave the P25 increase per day, or P750 a month, to its probationary employees and to those who had been promoted to regular or permanent status before 01 July 1989 but whose daily rate was P100 and below. The bank refused to give the same increase to its regular employees who were receiving more than P100 per day and recipients of the P900 CBA increase.  Contending that the bank's implementation of Republic Act 6727 resulted in the categorization of the employees into (a) the probationary employees as of 30 June 1989 and regular employees receiving P100 or less a day who had been promoted to permanent or regular status before 01 July 1989, and (b) the regular employees as of 01 July 1989, whose pay was over P100 a day, and that, between the two groups, there emerged a substantially reduced salary gap, the MBTCEU sought from the bank the correction of the alleged distortion in pay. In order to avert an impeding strike, the bank petitioned the Secretary of Labor to assume jurisdiction over the case.

The labor arbiter disregard with the bank's contention that the increase in its implementation of Republic Act 6727 did not constitute a distortion because "only 143 employees or 6.8% of the bank's population of a total of 2,108 regular employees" benefited.  NLRC reversed the decision of the Labor Arbiter.

 

Issue:

Whether or not NLRC acted with grave abuse of discretion by its refusal "to acknowledge the existence of a wage distortion in the wage or salary rates between and among the employee groups of the respondent bank as a result of the bank's partial implementation" of Republic Act 6727.”

 

Held:

Yes.

 

Ratio:

The term "wage distortion", under the Rules Implementing Republic Act 6727, is defined, thus:

(p) Wage Distortion means a situation where an increase in prescribed wage rates results in the elimination or severe contradiction of intentional quantitative differences in wage or salary rates between and among employee groups in an establishment as to effectively obliterate the distinctions embodied in such wage structure based on skills, length of service, or other logical bases of differentiation.

The definition of "wage distortion," 10 aforequoted, shows that such distortion can so exist when, as a result of an increase in the prescribed wage rate, an "elimination or severe contraction of intentional quantitative differences in wage or salary rates" would occur "between and among employee groups in an establishment as to effectively obliterate the distinctions embodied in such wage structure based on skills, length of service, or other logical bases of differentiation." In mandating an adjustment, the law did not require that there be an elimination or total abrogation of quantitative wage or salary differences; a severe contraction thereof is enough. As has been aptly observed by Presiding Commissioner Edna Bonto-Perez in her dissenting opinion, the contraction between personnel groupings comes close to eighty-three (83%), which cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be considered less than severe.