NAGA CITY -- Twice in a row, a labor arbiter of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC), has slammed the talent contract of ABS-CBN local network here and ordered the regularization of the complaining dismissed employees, including payment of unpaid benefits and remuneration.

        Labor Arbiter Jesus Orlando M. Quiñones, of the NLRC Sub-Regional Arbitration Branch No. V, junked the claim of the ABS-CBN local network manager, for the second time around on December 19, 2007, on the contractual status of four dismissed employees the network management considered talents by virtue of contract.

        Quiñones, who rendered similar decision against ABS-CBN station manager Amalia Villafuerte versus a cameraman and a news anchor on July 18, 2005, debunked Villafuerte’s claim that the complaining employees were hired talents based on signed contracts that fixed the term of their employment.

        In his decision in 2005 on the complaint of illegal dismissal filed by former local news anchor N.V. Dominique Borja and cameraman Herbert Herras, the labor arbiter also ordered Villafuerte to reinstate the two complaining employees and pay them attorney’s fee, moral damages, backwages including allowances and other benefits.

        “In trying to avoid the benefits granted to regular employees, respondent (Villafuerte) would only fix the term of their employment to three months, six months, or one year so as to make it appear that they were contractual or project employees with fixed term, although TV Patrol Bicol (Bicol-language news program aired all over the region from Monday to Friday before the TV Patrol World), continued from 1996 up to the present” the arbiter’s Dec. 19, 2007 decision reads.

        Reached to comment on the second slap of penalty imposed by the NLRC on the ABS-CBN management here regarding unceremoniously dismissing employees previously hired under talent contract, Villafuerte responded that it would be prudent for her to leave it to her lawyer to work on the case, hinting they would pursue the entire length of judicial process.

        She said the ABS-CBN here is entirely under the direct supervision and control of the Lopez-owned mother company in Manila which started its local television broadcast in 1995 in Naga City.

        Villafuerte recalled the FM radio network of the ABS-CBN has been established earlier where she once worked as disc jockey until she was hired manager of the ABS-CBN Naga television station the day it opened in Panganiban Drive here.

        Complainants news reporters Monina Avila-Llorin and Christina Sumayao and cameramen Gener Del Valle and Nelson Begino once worked as team in the TV Patrol Bicol.

        When their contracts were not renewed last year by Villafuerte, they were effectively dismissed from work with Avila-Llorin to have worked for some five years while Sumayao, Del Valle and Begino some 11 years of continuous employment at ABS-CBN local television station.

        Consequently, the four dismissed employees filed the complaint for regularization and demand for payments and benefits at the NLRC sub-regional office here, which was favorably decided for Avila-Llorin, Sumayao, Del Valle and Begino.

        “We resolve two issues. The first pertains to whether complainants were indeed regular employees of respondents (ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. and Villafuerte). The second is whether complainants are entitled to their money claims, as consequence of regularization,” the decision reads.

        Deciding on the complaint, Quiñones declared the four dismissed employees regular after he determined Villafuerte exercised direct control and supervision over them when they were still hired, that also established employer-employee relations, he added.

        The labor arbiter also cited the essential role of the complaining employees in the production and broadcast of news program for years that without their labor the network cannot do business, following the same standard and discipline imposed on regular employees of the ABS-CBN local television station here.

        Aside from the judgment rendering the dismissed employees regular and an order of reinstatement, Quiñones also ordered ABS-CBN to pay them some P2.44 million, representing salariy differentials, holiday pay, service incentive leave pay and 13th month pay, to include 10 percent of the judgment award as attorney’s fees of the judgment.