With the growing number of unemployed individuals in the Philippines, employment is deemed a privilege. A privilege that some employers tend to exploit due to the employee's lack of basic knowledge of the labor law. Some employees are well aware of their rights and exercise it when they feel that employers are already crossing the lines. There are employees that remain oblivious to the fact that they are giving more to the employers and only getting less. Part-time employment may seem less glamorous than its counterpart: the full-time employment. However, it does not necessarily mean that this type of employment will not entitle employees of the benefits they so deserve. DOLE's explanatory bulletin explains the right of a part-time employee:
On payment of wages and statutory monetary benefits
As the Labor Code benefits are generally based on the 8-hour workday schedule, the employer may pay “proportionately decrease the daily wage and wage-related benefits granted by law.” This presupposes that there is no contrary stipulation in the employment contract, company policy, CBA, requiring full payment for 8 hours a day despite a shorter work schedule.
The above rule applies the principle of fairness and equity, as well as the principle of “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s labor.”
On security of tenure
Part-time employees enjoy security of tenure.
As with full-time employees, part-time employees may only be terminated from employment after observance of due process. Due process termination requires the observance of substantive due process and procedural due process. Non-compliance with due process will result in illegal dismissal of a part-time employee.
Curiously, the Bulletin states that part-time employees are entitled to security of tenure only if they become regular employees. “Once they become regular employees, they are entitled to security of tenure under the law, and can only be separated for a just or authorized cause and after due process.”
It is respectfully submitted that this is incorrect.
The principle of security of tenure enshrined in the 1987 Constitution applies to all employees – without exception. As a part-time employee is undoubtedly and without question an employee, then the principle of security of tenure likewise applies to such employee.
Further, it should be borne in mind that a part-time employee may be a regular despite the shorter working schedule. To be clear, a regular employee may be a full-time regular or a part-time regular. The Supreme Court no less has recognized such a situation.
In Perpetual Help Cooperative, Inc. v. Faburada, it was held that a part-time employee may be a regular despite rendering less than the eight hours of work a day. “That [the employee] worked only on a part-time basis does not mean that he is a not a regular employee. Ones regularity of employment is not determined by the number of hours one works but by the nature and by the length of time one has been in that particular job.”
As the Bulletin was issued in 1996 and the Perpetual Help Cooperative case was promulgated in 2005, it is submitted that the said case law supersedes the Bulletin insofar as there may be inconsistencies.
On probationary employment
In the Bulletin, probationary employment for part-time employees may extend the prescribed six (6) months period to the extent that the total number of hours work would be equal to that of a full-time employee under probation.
The justification is anchored on the “intent of the law in allowing a probationary period prior to regularization.”[6] The employer’s main reason for insisting the 6-month probation is to test the employee’s fitness for employment during that time. Thus, the number of normal working days and hours within the probationary period should be observed. “For this reason, part-timers should become regular in status, after working for the total number of hours or days, which completes a six-month probationary period of a full-time worker in the same establishment doing the same job under normal circumstances.”
