This case has been cited 1 times or more.
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2001-08-31 |
BELLOSILLO, J. |
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| To be sure, it is not unprecedented to order the payment of back salaries and other economic benefits to one who has been harshly penalized for otherwise very negligible omissions. This principle is well entrenched in labor law, and there is no reason to deny civil servants of its salutary effects. After all, both are workers in our compassionate understanding of this term. Thus, in Sampung v. Inciong[9]we awarded full back wages to an employee who was unduly dismissed from work when the penalty of suspension was enough. Citing Almira v. B.F. Goodrich Philippines, Inc.,[10] we said therein that "[i]t would imply at the very least that where a penalty less punitive would suffice, whatever missteps may be committed by labor ought not to be visited with a consequence so severe. It is not only because of the law's concern for the workingman. There is, in addition, his family to consider. Unemployment brings untold hardships and sorrows on those dependent on the wage-earner. The misery and pain attendant on the loss of jobs then could be avoided if there be acceptance of the view that under all circumstances of this case, petitioners should not be deprived of their means of livelihood. Nor is this to condone what had been done by them. For all this while, since private respondent considered them separated from the service, they had not been paid. From the strictly juridical standpoint, it cannot be strongly stressed, to follow Davis in his masterly work, Discretionary Justice, that where a decision may be made to rest on informed judgment rather than rigid rules, all the equities of the case must be accorded their due weight. Finally, labor law determinations, to quote from Bultmann, should be not only secundum rationem but also secundum caritatem." | |||||