contractual employment question

Hello po, I would just want to ask regarding the legality of having 2 years renewable contract in employment. Here is the case po.

I'm working in a healthcare company po that hired lot of employees and giving them 2 years contract renewable at the option of the company (as stipulated in the contract). At the end of the contract, only few employees are renewed, others were not renewed and terminated their contract. Those who were renewed were given another 1 year contract. So parang wala po kami security dahil every renew ng contract eh may fear po kami na alisin lang even if we are doing fine.

My questions are a) Is it legal to terminate our employment knowing that we are regular employees already.

b) Wala po ba kami proteksyon even if we are under a contract. Can the company just have the option not to renew our contract even if we are having good performance at work?

Also I think that the company terminated the contracts without due process since lot of employees who were terminated held no major violations against the company rules.

Please enlighten me cause a lot of employees are devastated by the way the management of our company is treating us.

thanks so much!

pls help us....

Hi Lightbringer,

As per reading of your facts, you are a contractual employee. While generally contractual employment is frowned upon since this can be utilized to circumvent the law on regularization, still there are permissible contractual employment.

Under the Labor Code, "contractual employee" includes one employed by a contractor or subcontractor to perform or complete a job, work or service pursuant to an arrangement between the latter and a principal."

This is currently an ill (for me) scheme of companies today, instead of absorbing the employees as its own regular employees, they will ask the employees to simply sign a contractual contracts.

If it can be shown that contractual employees are being renewed over a long period of time, their work becomes indispensable to the business of the company hence, they cannot hide under the cloak of contractual employment contract.

If they can validly prove otherwise, sad to say, you are only considered as contractual employee of the company and the discretion to renew your contract is under the helm of your company.

I suggest you clarify the matter to your HR Department.

Atty. Lawddesign

tnx so much for that info atty. lawddesign. i will clarify that on our HR, thanks po! god bless!

another thing pa po pala, we enjoy benefits such as sick leaves, vacation leaves and 13th month pay like regular employees. So I don't know if we really are contractual or regular employees.

we also have this in our contract:

"should your performance during the probationary period prove satisfactory to the company, your appointment shall be converted to regular employment for a fixed period of 18 months, renewable at the option of the company"

And also, we work directly under the company. No contractors or what so ever.

lightbringer, what kind of services or products does this healthcare company provide and what is your job description.

my thinking is that this is some form of circumvention of labor law if you are performing duties which directly benefit the core business of the company.

our company owns several dialysis clinics all over the Philippines. They also manufacture dialysis machines and sell it to hospitals and other dialysis centers. We are nurses in those dialysis clinics, we perform the dialysis treatments for the patients. That's why I think na our job directly benefit the core business of the company.

i would argue that you are entitled to permanent regular status after your 6th month of work. there's no such thing as a temporary regular employee.

i think lightbringer we got the same company en you're also looking an answer for of questions regarding s pagtatangal ng company ntin ng mga nurses...
atty.i read te first contract and it said the PROBATIONARY PERIOD 180 days from date of employment...
and in second page;
REGULARIZATION ; should your performance during the probationary period prove satisfactory to the company, your appointment shall be converted to regular employment for a fixed period of 18 months, renewable at the option of the company...
ano poh b dapat nmin gawin for this matter lot o my co-nurses are terminated for no clear or valid reason and the company said they are not able to get a seperation pay,worse part is some of the nurses hindi makapagclearance dahil kailangan daw bayara ung ginastos ng company for their review..pls help us

the recourse of an illegally terminated employee is to file a complaint at nlrc.

ano poh pede makuha or mangyari s mga na terminate nmin kasama and ung mga nakapag renew ng contract pero they have to wait another year to become a regular all in all 3 years before maging regular, ano din poh pede nilang gawin???thanks again

for those terminated, they can file complaints at the nlrc. for those who renewed, they can also file a complaint for regularization.

thank you so much atty.for the advices u gave us....god.bless you always, so you can help lot of people.take care

tnx for all your advices! we are planning on how to deal with this na po, we'll heed all your advices. question lang po, what do you mean po pala ng illegally terminated? may definition po ba iyon sa law?

they were terminated by the end of the contract, but by operation of law, they should be already considered regular employees; therefore they were not terminated for a just or authorized cause under the labor code and the termination is illegal.