The Labor Code with Comments and Cases Volume II (2010 Edition)[Clothbound]

A book has to build and keep its own tradition. This seventh edition is an effort to do that.

Republic Act No. 9481 of 2007 amends a number of Labor Code articles to strengthen the self-organizational right of employees. Because of this law the Department of Labor and Employment had to make numerous changes to the rules implementing the law on labor relations, through Department Order No. 40-F-03 released in October 2008.

Aside from these legislative and administrative changes, significant rulings were also issued by the Supreme Court, affecting some statutory provisions and previous decisions. Among these are those declaring as unconstitutional Section 10 of R.A. No. 8042; the precedent-setting rulings on labor contracting and cooperatives; the debatable ruling on jurisdiction to determine employer-employee relationship; and again, the reversal of the ruling on the effect of employee’s defeat in an illegal dismissal case.

These developments—and many more—are all reflected in this new edition.

Unchanged, however, are the underlying objective and the features and methodology of the book. The objective is to analyze and explain, as clearly and authoritatively as possible, the country’s labor law anchored to the Labor Code. The aim, in other words, is to build knowledge—to form cohesive and retainable understanding of concepts comprising a defined subject. This being the aim I have resisted (in this and the past editions) the easier work of merely rattling off court rulings without integrating or synthesizing them. The harder and more meaningful task is determining what materials to include, what to exclude, and how to tie them together, correctly and clearly, so as to create compact, graspable concepts. Those tasks this edition does. This book therefore continues to feature annotations consisting of authoritative explanations and court rulings, including the most significant and recent ones. The codal articles and the annotations are linked, analyzed and synthesized objectively and academically.*Figuratively, my aim is not to scatter seedlings in a forest but to build a well-designed landscape with pathways and plants neatly lined up. The features and the methods of explanations, I hope, enhance the objective of offering accessible knowledge of Philippine labor law.

Because this has been the book’s mission since its birth some twenty years ago and because the book has been generously accepted in that light by generations of students, lawyers, and nonlawyers, this edition has to keep faith with that tradition.

All these twenty years, of course, I have always acknowledged my boundless debt of gratitude to my readers inside and outside the universities.