Aside from stealing co-employee’s personal belongings as a just cause for dismissal, there are also authorized causes for termination, read here: Authorized causes in termination of employment
It has been settled by numerous decisions by the Supreme Court that, theft involving company properties or stealing the properties of the company is considered as a form of serious misconduct under Article 297 (a) of the Labor Code of the Philippines (Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company v. National Labor Relations Commission, G.R. No. L-80609, August 23, 1988, 164 SCRA 671, 679-680, Reno Foods, Inc. vs. Nagkakaisang Lakas ng Manggagawa (NLM)-Katipunan 615 SCRA 240 , March 15, 2010).
However, what if the employee stole a property belonging to his or her co-employee? Can theft committed by an employee against his or her co-employee be a ground for just cause of dismissal from employment? The answer to these questions will be discussed by the informative case below.
In the 2008 case of John Hancock Life Insurance Corporation and/or Michael Plaxton vs. Joanna Cantre Davis (G.R. No. 169549), Patricia, a corporate affairs manager of an insurance corporation discovered that her wallet was missing. Her wallet contains, among others, her identifications cards and credit cards issued by AIG and BPI. To her surprise, she was informed by the said banks that she has just made substantial purchases using her credits cards from various stores in the City of Manila, and some were actually disapproved because the user during the transaction gave a wrong information upon verification. This prompted Patricia to initiate an investigation through the National Bureau and Investigation (NBI) as regards her stolen credit cards and the unauthorized used thereof.
Upon investigation, the NBI identified the suspect as one of Patricia’s co- employees. Because of this, the management of the insurance corporation placed the erring employee under preventive suspension since she is deemed a threat to the Company’s properties and the personal belongings of the other employees as well. The suspected employee was not happy of the management’s decision of placing her under preventive suspension. As such, she immediately filed a case for illegal dismissal. Her main contention was that, the ground for her dismissal was not work-related, as the theft was committed not to the Company or employer himself but against one of its employees, therefore, she could not be dismissed for serious misconduct.
In ruling against the erring employee, the Supreme Court justified the dismissal of the employee by explaining that, Article 282(e) (now Article 297 [e]) of the Labor Code of the Philippines talks of other analogous causes or those which are susceptible of comparison to another in general or in specific detail. Specifically, for an employee to be validly dismissed for such cause, it must be analogous to those enumerated in Article 282 (297) of the Labor Code, and that the cause must involve a voluntary and/or willful act or omission of the employee. A cause analogous to serious misconduct is a voluntary and/or willful act or omission attesting to an employee’s moral depravity.
Thus, the Supreme Court, through the words of Justice Renato Corona dictates that, theft committed by an employee against a person other than his employer, if proven by substantial evidence, is a cause analogous to serious misconduct. Hence, stealing of co-employee’s personal belongings is a just cause for dismissal from employment.
Alburo Alburo and Associates Law Offices specializes in business law and labor law consulting. For inquiries, you may reach us at info@alburolaw.com, or dial us at (02)7745-4391/0917-5772207.
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