Professors win dismissal case against AIM

THE National Labor Relations Commission has declared as illegal the one-year suspension of two officers of the Asian Institute of Management Faculty Association and ordered the educational institution to pay the mentors the salaries and benefits that were withheld from them.

In a 13-page decision dated Feb. 26, 2008, Labor Arbiter Napoleon Menese said the suspension for “dysfunctional behavior” imposed on Victor Limlingan, chairman of the AIM Faculty Association, and Emmanuel Leyco, its president, “should and must be declared illegal” because of the circumstances surrounding the disciplinary action of the management.

The school is expected to appeal the decision.

Menese said the act of employees asserting a claim “which in their view is grounded on an existing law” was far from being dysfunctional behavior.

He added that the employees’ right to air their demand must be heard.

“It is not for AIM management to unilaterally determine whether or not the monetary demands of the members of the AFA, as employees, are meritorious or not for the same is within the jurisdiction of the Labor Arbiter or the [commission],” Menese said.

Limlingan and Leyco filed the complaint against the AIM management in September 2007 for illegal suspension. They sought their reinstatement as faculty members and the payment of their back wages.

In the complaint, the two mentors said that their ordeal began when the association asked management for the unpaid salary adjustments and backpay due to AIM’s teachers based on the provisions of Presidential Decree 451 as amended by Republic Act 6728, which allots 70 percent of tuition increases to the salaries and wages of the faculty and the employees of the school.

The AFA had also claimed its 50-percent share of program revenues that it said had been distributed voluntarily by the AIM management for the past 20 years.

Limlingan and Leyco claimed that the school refused to talk to them, and instead offered “a glaringly inadequate one-time ex-gratia payment equivalent to one month’s salary.”

The AFA then hired a law firm to serve a copy of the demand letter to the school and to the members of the Board of Governors during the school’s leadership week.

The school then issued notices to the two mentors that they were being charged with dysfunctional behavior because of the distribution of the demand letter to the members of the Board of Governors and the Board of Trustees and the timing of the distribution. The school said their claim had no merit because there had been no tuition increases in the past three years.

The two teachers replied that the charges had no legal or factual basis, but they were nonetheles suspended for one year beginning July 9, 2007.

The school management claimed that the demand for more than P984 million in salaries for the faculty and employees was exorbitant. But the labor commission said the management had failed to say what was not exorbitant, and that by merely dismissing the demand “it does not necessarily follow that the claimants are not legally titled to the claimed benefits.”

The monetary claim is now the subject of a separate complaint.

The management had also claimed that the timing of the distribution of the demand letter had caused damage to the school.

In his decision, Menese said that, with regard to the timing of the distribution, the fact that the AFA was not granted a dialogue by the management “prompted AFA, through the complainants, to reach out to the members of the Board of Trustees and Board of Governors during the AIM leadership week.”

Menese also said that the awareness generated by the demand letter would “definitely encourage the parties to dialogue.”

“On hindsight, had AIM management taken steps to dialogue with the AFA officers/representatives on the latter’s demands, this unfortunate incident could have been prevented,” Menese said. –Manila Standard