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A LABOR
agency ordered a business school to reinstate and pay
back wages to two professors suspended last year for
demanding salary hikes for employees worth nearly a
billion pesos.
In a
ruling issued
February 26, 2008,
the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) said that
the Asian Institute of Management’s (AIM) decision to
suspend Professors Victor S. Limlingan and Emmanuel A.
Leyco for one year, owing to their “dysfunctional
behavior,” was “illegal.”
“Accordingly, complainants must be paid their salaries
and benefits which were withheld as a result of their
illegal suspension beginning July 9, 2007,” said the
decision, which was penned by NLRC labor arbiter
Napoleon M. Menese.
Withheld
salaries and benefits of both professors for eight
months, including lawyers’ fees, are estimated to reach
more than P2 million. However, the NLRC denied both
professors’ claims for moral and exemplary damages.
Last
September, Limlingan and Leyco, chairman and president
respectively, of the AIM Faculty Association (AFA),
filed the complaint after they were penalized for their
supposed “dysfunctional behavior” when they decided to
send letters to school officials, demanding additional
compensation for employees worth P984 million.
The
letter, received by AIM’s Board of Governors, whose
members included foreign and local business leaders,
said that Republic Act 6728 entitled the school’s 40
professors and 100 employees to receive 70 percent of
AIM’s tuition increases. The law mandates that a certain
portion of a private school’s tuition hikes should go to
its teachers and workers.
Citing
their “dysfunctional behavior,” the school’s management,
through AIM president Francis G. Estrada, suspended both
professors for a year.
But
Limlingan’s and Leyco’s actions, according to the NLRC
decision, was “far from being dysfunctional behavior as
intended in the Policy Manual of AIM.”
“While
respondents may have a different view of the matter, the
employees right to air their demands/claims should and
must be heard,” the decision said. “Thus, whether AFA’s
or complainants’ demands are meritorious or not,
expressing the same via a demand letter is far from
being a ‘dysfunctional behavior.’ To hold otherwise
would to stifle such right.”
The NLRC
decision added that “it is not for AIM management to
unilaterally determine whether or not the monetary
demands of the members of AFA, as employees, are
meritorious or not for the same is within the
jurisdiction of the labor arbiter and/or the NLRC.”
According to its rules, NLRC decisions are immediately
executory, indicating that both professors can already
go back to work, even before an appeal is filed by AIM,
whose web site (http://www.aim.edu)
remains restricted as of this writing.
Leyco
told BusinessMirror over the weekend that the AFA will
meet anytime this week “to determine the demeanor of
management.”
Estrada
was unavailable for comment. |
