Asia-Pacific employment law bulletin 2025

Philippines

2024 was an uneventful year in the Philippine employment law landscape. With the ongoing political turmoil and the 2025 midterm elections looming, the Philippine lawmakers’ focus appears to have veered away from enacting important legislation on labour and employment. It is doubtful, therefore, whether the current Congress would have enough time to enact additional legislation addressing both persistent and emerging employment issues.

New and pending labour legislation

The few labour statutes enacted in 2024 were geared towards addressing the concerns of specific employment groups. For example, Republic Act no. 11965, known as the ‘Caregivers’ Welfare Act’, aims to institutionalise policies in order to develop globally competitive caregivers and to protect the rights of caregivers while also ensuring decent employment and income for them. On the other hand, Republic Act no. 11996, known as the ‘Eddie Garcia Law’, seeks to protect the workers’ welfare in the movie and television industry. Finally, Republic Act no. 12021, known as the ‘Magna Carta of Filipino Seafarers’, aims to protect the rights and overall welfare of Filipino seafarers, promote their full employment, and ensure equal opportunities in the maritime industry. 

Meanwhile, a number of bills have seen lack of traction and are still in the course of the legislative process. For instance, two bills that aim at strengthening platform workers’ rights have been pending since 2023. These are:

• The Senate bill no. 1373, or the ‘Protected Online Workers, Entrepreneurs, Riders at Raketera Act of 2022’ which is aimed at establishing clear and comprehensive regulatory standards to ensure that workers performing services mediated or organised by way of digital labour platforms are provided with access to social protection programs; treated in a fair, transparent, and non-discriminatory manner; and allowed to freely exercise all of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and applicable law, regardless of their employment status; and
• The Senate bill no. 1275, or the ‘Delivery Platform Riders Protection Act of 2022’ which, as the name implies, seeks to safeguard the rights of delivery platform riders and establishes an employer-employee relationship between the delivery platform rider and the digital platform he or she is engaged with.

Bills seeking to regulate the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the workplace have also been introduced in the Congress. House bill no. 9448 proposes to invest in education and reskilling programs to help workers adapt to the changing workplace, and prohibits the use of either AI or automation technologies to displace workers, unless an alternative equivalent employment opportunity for the affected workers is made available. Furthermore, House bill no. 10460, seeks to protect employees from termination due to AI automation.  It does not prohibit employers from displacing employees because of AI, but it does provide more stringent requirements and requires employers to pay significant severance to employees displaced by AI. It will be interesting to see how these bills will be tackled by the Congress. Lawmakers will have to address the responsible and ethical use of AI, and balance the management’s right to regulate their business and their right to a reasonable return on investment with the employees’ right to security of tenure.

Recent jurisprudence

With respect to jurisprudence, some of the significant employment-related decisions of the Supreme Court (decisions of which form part of the legal system of the Philippines) include the following:

• In Bison Management Corporation v. AAA (G.R. No. 256540, 14 February 2024), the Supreme Court affirmed that the Constitutional guarantee of security of tenure extends to Filipino overseas contract workers, as well as ruling that it is illegal to dismiss an employee solely on the basis of testing positive for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
• In Bohol Wisdom School v. Mabao (G.R. No. 252124, 23 July 2024), the Supreme Court declared as illegal an employee’s suspension on the ground of engaging in premarital sexual relations resulting in pregnancy out of wedlock, since sexual intercourse between two consenting adults who have no legal impediment to marry is not deemed as immoral.
• In C.P. Reyes Hospital v. Barbosa (G.R. No. 228357, 16 April 2024), the Supreme Court recognized the jurisprudential conflict on the reckoning periods in computing back wages of illegally dismissed probationary employees, and explicitly stated that illegally dismissed probationary employees, like regular employees, are entitled to back wages up to their actual reinstatement, not just the end of their probationary period.

The Supreme Court, in several cases, also reiterated the requirements for the validity of a quitclaim, and invalidated quitclaims executed by employees for failing to meet these requirements. In Naldo, Jr. v. Corporate Protection Services, Phils., Inc. (G.R. No. 243139, 03 April 2024), for example, the Supreme Court held that there should be no fraud or deceit on the part of any party in the execution of quitclaims, and declared as void the quitclaims executed by the employees therein on the ground that the employer tricked the employees into signing the quitclaims by deceiving them into believing that they would be paid their money claims in full. In Abad v. San Roque Metals, Inc. (G.R. No. 255368, 29 May 2024), the Court held that the consideration for a quitclaim should be credible and reasonable, and invalidated the quitclaims executed therein since the considerations for the compromise agreements were not reasonable (ranging only from 5.20% to 23.42% of what the employees stood to receive under the final judgment of the Executive Labour Arbiter).

The Congress is set to change with the midterm elections in May 2025. The hope is for the incoming Congress to work harmoniously with the current administration and focus on enacting important employment legislation, particularly those aimed at regulating the gig economy and the use of AI in the workplace, which have been pending for some time. The incoming Congress is expected to be sensitive to protecting workers’ rights, while recognizing and balancing the employer’s right to reasonable returns on investments, and to expansion and growth.

Contributors: Emmar Benjoe B. Panahon, and Kevin Joseph C. Berbaño
- SyCipLaw Center