Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 21) — The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of five dismissed delivery riders of e-commerce site Lazada, ordering the company to reinstate them with full backwages.
In a 24-page ruling dated Sept. 21, 2022 but publicly released on Jan. 20, Friday, the high court ordered Lazada E-Services Philippines, Inc. to reinstate Chrisden Cabrera Ditiangkin, Hendrix Masamayor Molines, Harvey Mosquito Juanio, Joselito Castro Verde, and Brian Anthony Cubacub Nabong.
Lazada must also pay the riders’ full backwages, 13th month pay, cash bond deposit, and other benefits and privileges they are entitled to, computed from the time of dismissal up to the time of actual reinstatement.
The case is sent to the Labor Arbiter, which is ordered to compute the total monetary benefits due to the riders.
Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, who penned the promulgation, said the riders were regular workers and not independent contractors, overturning the previous decision of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) and the Court of Appeals (CA).
“When the status of the employment is in dispute, the employer bears the burden to prove that the person whose service it pays for is an independent contractor rather than a regular employee with or without fixed terms,” Leonen said.
He explained the Supreme Court applied the four-fold and economic-dependence tests in determining whether an employer-employee relationship existed between Lazada and the petitioners.
It found that the four factors — employer’s selection and engagement of the employee, payment of wages, power to dismiss, and power to control the employee’s conduct — were present.
For the second test, the court found that petitioners, who were directly hired by the respondents at that time, have been economically dependent on them.
On the argument that there is no employer-employee relationship between them based on the contract, the Supreme Court explained: “However, protection of the law afforded to labor precedes over the nomenclature and stipulations of the Contract…Thus, it is patently erroneous for the labor tribunals to reject an employer-employee relationship simply because the Contract stipulates that this relationship does not exist.”
The petitioners filed the complaint before the NLRC in Jan. 2017, after finding out that they were removed from their usual routes and would no longer be given any schedule.
