Supreme Court Ruling Project Employees and Regular Employees 2016
Supreme Court Ruling Project Employees and Regular Employees 2016
Supreme Court Ruling Project Employees and Regular Employees 2016
The principal test for determining whether employees are project employees is two-fold:
(1) Is the employee assigned to carry out a specific project or undertaking?
(2) Is the completion or termination of the project specified or determined at the time the employee
was engaged for that project?
Definition of project
The term project must be properly defined in order to safeguard the rights of workers against the
arbitrary use of the word project by employers to prevent them from attaining the status of regular
employees.
(1) The project would ordinarily have some relationship to the usual business of the
employer.
For example, a construction company ordinarily carries out two or more [distinct] identifiable
construction projects: a twenty-five-storey hotel in Makati; a residential condominium building in
Baguio City; and a domestic air terminal in Iloilo City. Employees who are hired for the carrying out
of one of these separate projects (the scope and duration of which has been determined and made
known to the employees at the time of employment), are properly treated as project employees,
and their services may be lawfully terminated at completion of the project.
(2) Exceptionally, the project job or undertaking is not within the regular business of the
employer. The job or undertaking is identifiably separate and distinct from the ordinary or regular
business operations of the employer. The job or undertaking also begins and ends at determined or
determinable times. For example, a steel-making company, for one reason or another, undertakes
the breeding and production of fish or the cultivation of vegetables.
A project employee or a member of a work pool may acquire the status of a regular employee
when the following concur:
(1) The project employee is continuously rehired even after a project has ended; and
(2) The alleged project employee performs tasks are vital, necessary, and indispensable to the usual
business or trade of the employer.