Napocor ordered to pay P4.7-b back wages to 5,648 workers

THE Supreme Court has ordered state-run National Power Corp.’s top officials to explain why they should not be held in contempt for ignoring its order to compensate 5,648 of its employees who were dismissed in 2003.

Those workers were dismissed as a result of the power producer’s restructuring, but in 2008 the Supreme Court ordered it to give them their separation pay, back wages and wage adjustments, saying they had been dismissed illegally.

The high court’s Third Division also ordered Napocor’s chairman, president and other officials to prepare a list of all the illegally dismissed employees and to submit it to a court in Quezon City, where the case was tried, 10 days after they received its order, and to give the dismissed workers their due within 30 days.

The Court said Napocor owed the employees P4.7 billion in back wages—plus 12 percent interest a year—that had been due them from January 2003 up to December 2006. It also owed the employees money due them from the day they were dismissed up to Sept. 14, 2007, the Court said.

The Court ordered the state-run Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp., the company privatizing Napocor’s power plants and other assets, to assume the power firm’s liabilities on the those assets after those had been sold off.

In September 2006 the Supreme Court rejected a resolution terminating the services of the 5,648 employees by Napocor’s board, which is made up of Napocor’s president and eight government secretaries. It ordered it to reinstate the employees or give them a separation package.

The employees who filed their suits against Napocor were members of the NPC Drivers and Mechanics Association and the NPC Employees and Workers’ Union.

Their two lawyers are entitled to 10 percent of all the money they can recover from the power firm. –Rey E. Requejo, Manila Standard Today