YOLANDA
BRUGADA, ANGELINA CORPUZ, EVELYN ESCANO,
SHIRLEY GARMA, DEDAICA JUSAY, PARSIMA LERIA, SONIA
C. MAHINAY, ADELA SOLO, ELSIE SOMERA, VIRGINIA
TALICURAN, JOSE S. VALLO, and TEOFILA VILLANUEVA,
Petitioners,
-versus-
G.R.
Nos. 142332-43
January
31, 2005
THE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION, CULTURE AND SPORTS,
Respondent. x-------------------------------------------------------------------x
D
E C I S I O N
CARPIO,
J.:
The
Case
This
Petition for Review
[1]
assails the 31
July 1996 Decision
[2]
and 29 February
2000 Resolution of the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R. SP Nos. 37794-99 and
SP Nos. 37800-05. The Court of Appeals dismissed the petition for
certiorari filed by petitioners and affirmed the Resolutions issued by
the Civil Service Commission.
The
Facts
Petitioners
Yolanda Brugada, Angelina Corpuz, Evelyn Escano, Shirley Garma, Dedaica
Jusay, Parsima Leria, Sonia C. Mahinay, Adela Solo, Elsie Somera,
Virginia Talicuran, Jose S. Vallo and Teofila Villanueva
(“petitioners”) are public school teachers from various National
Capital Region schools.
In the
latter part of September 1990, petitioners incurred unauthorized
absences because of the teachers’ strike. Their mass action
called for the payment of their 13th-month differentials and clothing
allowances, as well as the recall of DECS Order No. 39, series of 1990
and passage of the debt-cap bill, among others.
Subsequently,
then Department of Education, Culture and Sports (“DECS”) Secretary
Isidro Cariño (“Secretary Cariño”) issued a memorandum to
all striking teachers, as follows:
TO
: ALL
PUBLIC SCHOOL
TEACHERS AND OTHER
DECS PERSONNEL
SUBJECT
: RETURN TO
WORK ORDER
Under
civil service law and rules, strikes, unauthorized mass leaves and
other forms of mass actions by civil servants which disrupt public
services are strictly prohibited.
Those
of you who are engaged in the above-mentioned prohibited acts are
therefore ordered, in the interest of public service, to return to work
within 24 hours from your walkout otherwise dismissal proceedings shall
be instituted against you.
[3]
Secretary
Cariño likewise issued a memorandum to the DECS officials, as
follows:
TO
: REGIONAL
DIRECTORS
DIVISION SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT
AND OTHER DECS OFFICIALS
CONCERNED
SUBJECT
: TEACHERS
AND EMPLOYEES MASS
ACTION
Please
inform immediately all DECS teachers and employees who have started a
mass protest action to the prejudice of the public service that they
will be dismissed if they do not return to their jobs within
twenty-four (24) hours from their walkout.
Regional
Directors and division superintendent are hereby directed to
accordingly initiate, in the interest of public service, dismissal
proceedings against those who continue with their action and hire their
replacements.
[4]
Petitioners
disregarded the directives of Secretary Cariño.
Consequently, Secretary Cariño filed administrative charges
against petitioners for grave misconduct, gross neglect of duty, and
gross violation of Civil Service laws and rules. Secretary
Cariño also charged petitioners with refusal to perform official
duty, gross insubordination, conduct prejudicial to the best interest
of the service and absence without leave. Secretary Cariño
gave petitioners five days to answer the charges, to secure the
assistance of counsel, and to elect a formal investigation.
However, petitioners failed to answer despite notice.
Thereafter,
Secretary Cariño created committees to investigate and hear the
cases. The investigating committees summoned the school
principals concerned to confirm reports on petitioners’ absences.
After the investigation, the committees submitted their reports to
Secretary Cariño.
Secretary
Cariño rendered decisions finding petitioners guilty as charged
and dismissed them from the service “effective immediately.”
Petitioners appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which
dismissed the appeals.
Petitioners
appealed the decisions of the Merit Systems Protection Board to the
Civil Service Commission (“CSC”). The CSC issued Resolutions
reducing the penalty to six months suspension without pay and ordering
the petitioners’ reinstatement without back wages. The CSC denied
petitioners’ motion for reconsideration.
Petitioners
filed a petition for certiorari with this Court on 9 February
1995. The Court referred the petition to the Court of Appeals
pursuant to Revised Administrative Circular No. 1-95.
The
Court of Appeals rendered a Decision, the dispositive portion of which
reads:
WHEREFORE, the
instant petition for certiorari cannot be given due course as it is
hereby DISMISSED for lack of merit.
SO
ORDERED.
[5]
Petitioners filed a motion for reconsideration which the Court of
Appeals denied in its 29 February 2000 Resolution.
Hence,
this petition.
The
Ruling of the Court of Appeals
The
Court of Appeals ruled that the CSC did not gravely abuse its
discretion in finding petitioners guilty of the administrative charges
and suspending them for six months without pay.
The
Court of Appeals cited the following grounds for its decision:
FIRSTLY, although
the constitutional right of the people to form association[s] embraces
both public and private sectors, pursuant to Article XIII, Section 3,
1987 Constitution, the right to strike is not extended to government
employees under the Civil Service Law (P.D. No. 807). Under
Republic Act 875, workers, including those from the government-owned
and controlled-corporations, are allowed to organize but they are
prohibited from striking. xxx
SECONDLY,
during the deliberation of the 1987 Constitutional Commission,
specifically on the Committee on Labor (Alliance of Government Workers,
et al. vs. Hon. Minister of Labor etc., 124 SCRA 1), acting
Commissioner of Civil Service Eli Rey Pangramuyen stated:
“It is the stand,
therefore, of this Commission that by reason of the nature of the
public employer and the peculiar character of the public service, it
must necessarily regard the right to strike given to unions in private
industry as not applying to public employees and civil service
employees. xxx
xxx”
THIRDLY,
petitioners’ contention that respondent Commission on Civil Service
gravely erred when it affirmed the decision of the then DECS Secretary,
invoking violations of constitutional due process, is without merit.
xxx In the case
at bench, it has been shown that petitioners admitted joining the mass
action and despite threats of dismissal, they disobeyed the return to
work order within 24 hours from their walk-out. Petitioners were
given an opportunity to present their side. They did not only
refuse to answer the charges filed against them. They also opted
to shy away from the investigation conducted. xxx
xxx
FINALLY,
the facts of the case clearly demonstrate strong basis for the
administrative charge[s] and justifies the subsequent penalty imposed
upon herein petitioners. Indeed, petitioners’ contention that
they did not strike but merely joined the mass action exercising their
constitutional right to assemble, is a question of semantics. In
the case of MPSTA vs. Hon. Perfecto Laguio, (G.R. No. 95445), and also
in ACT vs. Hon. Cari[ñ]o, et al., G.R. No. 95590, the Supreme
Court held that “mass actions and peaceful assemblies amounted to a
strike in every sense of the term, constituting as they did, concerted
and unauthorized stoppage of, or absence from work which it was said
teacher’s sworn duty to perform.” xxx
[6]
The
Issue
Petitioners
seek the reversal of the assailed decision on the ground that:
THE COURT OF
APPEALS COMMITTED A MOST GRIEVOUS ERROR WHEN IT DID NOT EXPRESSLY RULE
ON THE ISSUE OF THE RIGHT OF PETITIONERS TO BACKWAGES AND IN EFFECT
AFFIRMED THE TERRIBLY WRONG RULING OF THE CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION THAT
PETITIONERS HAVE NO RIGHT TO BACKWAGES.
[7]
The
Court’s Ruling
The
petition lacks merit.
Petitioners
are no longer pleading for exoneration from the administrative charges
filed against them. Instead, petitioners are merely asking for the
payment of back wages computed from the time they could not teach
pursuant to Secretary Cariño’s dismissal orders minus the six
months suspension until their actual reinstatement.
[8]
Petitioners
have no right to back wages because they were neither exonerated nor
unjustifiably suspended. Petitioners admitted participating in
the teachers’ strike which disrupted the education of public school
students. For this offense, the CSC reduced Secretary
Cariño’s dismissal orders to six months suspension without
pay. The Court has already put to rest the issue of the award of
back wages to public school teachers whom the CSC reinstated in the
service after commuting Secretary Cariño’s dismissal orders to
six months suspension without pay.
[9]
In Alipat v.
Court of Appeals,
[10]
the Court denied
the teachers’ claim for back wages stating thus:
This Court has
also resolved the issue of whether back wages may be awarded to the
teachers who were ordered reinstated to the service after the dismissal
orders of Secretary Cariño were commuted by the Civil Service
Commission to six (6) months’ suspension. The issue was resolved
in the negative in Bangalisan vs. Court of Appeals on the ground that
the teachers were neither exonerated nor unjustifiably suspended.
The Bangalisan case also ruled that the immediate implementation of the
dismissal orders, being clearly sanctioned by law, was not
unjustified. The Court held that as regards the payment of back
salaries during the period of suspension of a member of the civil
service who is subsequently ordered reinstated, the payment of back
wages may be decreed if “he is found innocent of the charges which
caused the suspension and when the suspension is unjustified.”
Citing
the Bangalisan ruling, this Court in Jacinto vs. Court of Appeals held
that when the teachers have given cause for their suspension – i.e.,
the unjustified abandonment of classes to the prejudice of their
students – they were not fully innocent of the charges against them
although they were eventually found guilty only of conduct prejudicial
to the best interest of the service and not grave misconduct or other
offense warranting their dismissal from the service; “being found
liable for a lesser offense is not equivalent to exoneration.”
[11]
The facts in this case are substantially the same as those in
Bangalisan v. Court of Appeals,
[12]
De la Cruz v.
Court of Appeals,
[13]
Alipat v. Court
of Appeals
[14]
and Secretary of
Education, Culture and Sports v. Court of Appeals.
[15]
In these cases,
the Court categorically declared that the payment of back wages during
the period of suspension of a civil servant who is subsequently
reinstated is proper if he is found innocent of the charges and the
suspension is unjustified. These two circumstances are absent in
the present case. When a court has laid down a principle of law
as applicable to a certain state of facts, it will adhere to that
principle and apply it to all future cases where the facts are
substantially the same.
[16]
WHEREFORE, we DENY the Petition. We AFFIRM the Decision dated 31 July
1996 and Resolution dated 29 February 2000 of the Court of Appeals in
CA-G.R. SP Nos. 37794-99 and SP Nos. 37800-05. Costs against
petitioners.
SO
ORDERED.
Davide,
Jr., C.J., (Chairman),
Quisumbing, Ynares-Santiago, and Azcuna, JJ., concur.
[1]
Under Rule 45 of the 1997 Rules of Civil Procedure.
[2]
Penned by Associate Justice Jainal D. Rasul, with Associate Justices
Hector L. Hofileña and Hilarion L. Aquino, concurring.
[3]
Rollo, p. 28.
[4]
Ibid., pp. 28-29.
[5]
Rollo, p. 32.
[6]
Ibid., pp. 29-32.
[7]
Ibid., p. 12.
[8]
Ibid., p. 160.
[9]
Secretary of Education, Culture and Sports v. Court of Appeals, G.R.
No. 128559, 4 October 2000, 342 SCRA 40; Alipat v. Court of Appeals,
368 Phil. 264 (1999); De la Cruz v. Court of Appeals, 364 Phil. 786
(1999); Bangalisan v. Hon. CA, 342 Phil. 586 (1997).
[10]
368 Phil. 264 (1999).
[11]
Cited in Secretary of Education, Culture and Sports v. Court of
Appeals, supra note 9.
[12]
Supra note 9.
[13]
Ibid.
[14]
Ibid.
[15]
Ibid.
[16]
De la Cruz v. Court of Appeals, supra note 9, citing Moreno, Philippine
Law Dictionary, 1988 Ed., p. 902, citing Government v. Jalandoni, 44
O.G. 1840.
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