NAGA CITY --- Five dismissed employees of the University of Saint Anthony based in Iriga City finally found requital and justice after the Labor Arbiter of the sub-regional arbitration branch of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) here ordered USANT President Atty. Santiago D. Ortega, Jr. to pay the complainants the sum of P10.3 million, more or less.

        The decision was handed down October 1, 2008 by OIC Labor Arbiter Jesus Orlando M. Quinones. A copy of the decision was obtained by Bicol Mail the other day.

        Records of the case which was earlier reported in this paper show that on Dec. 22, 2007 respondents Susan Bance, senior account officer; Arlene Dimaiwat, accounting clerk; Jean Velasco, classroom teacher; and Nancy Aguirre, account officer, all of the University of Saint Anthony, received an office memorandum from Atty. Ortega informing them that their services would be terminated effective Jan. 1, 2008.

        Eight months earlier, on April 2, 2007, Hazel Lobitania, who was employed as credit and collection officer under the Office of the Vice President for Finance who, incidentally, is Mrs. Victoria SD. Ortega, wife of the president, was issued by Atty. Ortega a letter requesting her to go on leave. She was no longer allowed by the university to report for work after March 31, 2007.

        Effort to get the side of Atty. Ortega on the labor court’s decision proved futile as he was not at his office at presstime last night.

        On April 1, 2008, the five former USANT employees simultaneously filed the case which involved two issues: illegal dismissal and money claims. Lobitania included Mrs. Ortega as the second respondent to her case.

        The complainants were assisted by Atty. Nelson Legacion as their counsel.

        In his order, Quinones said that the Ortegas “failed to discharge the burden imposed on them by law to prove by substantial evidence just and valid cause for complainants’ dismissal from service.”

        The order also noted that respondent Ortegas failed to deny specifically the complainants’ material allegations on their monetary claims.

        In sum, the order stated that the complainants’ claim for moral, exemplary and nominal damages were without doubt meritorious. “The reasons are simple,” the order said. “First, respondents failed to deny specifically material allegations of verbal abuse, coercions, intimidations and threats committed by individual respondent Atty. Ortega … Second, respondents failed to afford complainants procedural due process in effecting their dismissal…Third, complainants were deprived of substantive due process in effecting their dismissal the same being clothed with gross bad faith and done in a malevolent and oppressive manner, as a supposed valid cause was not actually in existence.”

        The labor court also ordered for the immediate reinstatement of the complainants to their former positions without loss of seniority rights and other privileges and under the same terms and conditions prevailing prior to their dismissal.

        The money claims cover complainants’ backwages, unpaid salaries, recompensation for amount a complainant paid to Atty. Ortega for alleged missing funds, nominal damages for each complainant, holiday pays, moral and exemplary damages, and attorney’s fees.