The Supreme Court ordered Tuesday Philippine Airlines (PAL) to reinstate more than a thousand flight attendants the company retrenched back in 1998.
The retrenchments, PAL argued, were due to huge losses the flag carrier incurred at the height of the 1998 Asian financial crisis, which saw the airline come near the brink of liquidation and forced it to downsize and come under receivership with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
In a 32-page decision penned by Associate Justice Consuelo Ynares-Santiago, the court said PAL is guilty of illegal dismissal when the company sacked the flight attendants under a retrenchment and demotion scheme dated June 15, 1998 and made effective July 15, 1998.
The Supreme Court cited three reasons: one, the company was not able to substantiate its claims that the airline was incurring huge losses; two, the retrenchment was not done in good faith because less than two months after the retrenchment the airline asked some of the sacked employees to go back and hired other people in place of the sacked employees; and three, PAL did not follow a criteria when it selected the sacked flight attendants.
The court ordered the airline to reinstate the sacked cabin crew without loss of seniority, rights, and other privileges, as well as the payment of back wages, benefits, and other privileges due them. PAL was also ordered to pay attorney's fees.
The decision was released a day after the Supreme Court ordered a P1 billion tax refund for Fortune Tobacco, a company also owned by PAL's owner Lucio Tan.
The court said Tuesday's decision is not in any way connected to the earlier decision, and the timing of the two decisions is only coincidental. With a report from Marieton Pacheco, ABS-CBN News