CA affirms COVID pay for GMA workers

At least 500 employees of GMA Network are entitled to P240.6 million in total hazard pay for rendering work during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Court of Appeals (CA) ruled in a decision dated Sept. 16.

The appellate court ruled that the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) did not commit grave abuse of discretion when it ordered GMA and its chairman and CEO, Felipe Gozon, to pay 500 employees their hazard pay and cover the legal expenses they incurred in pursuing their unfair labor practice case against the broadcasting network.

It dismissed the petition for certiorari filed by Gozon to overturn the NLRC’s multiple rulings in 2023 in favor of the employees, who were members of GMA Channel 7 Employees Union, and the award of their hazard pay covering Mar. 17, 2020, to Mar. 31, 2021.

After these rulings became final and executory in October 2023, GMA workers filed a motion for execution and recomputation more than three months later, this time asking that they be entitled as well to hazard pay for the period April 1, 2021, to July 20, 2023.

This covers the period that the country remained under a public health emergency due to the pandemic. President Marcos lifted the emergency status on July 21, 2023.

Writ of execution

The recomputation was also granted by the labor arbiter, which brought the total hazard pay due the employees to P240.6 million.

This prompted the company to file a motion to quash writ of execution, claiming that they were not notified of the final recomputation nor given the chance to comment on the matter.

But the CA, in its ruling, said the execution writ by the NLRC was “validly issued.”

“The NLRC aptly ruled that the petitioners failed to establish that the writ of execution was improvidently issued, much less to show that the amount of the judgment award as indicated in the said writ of execution was erroneously computed,” the appellate court said in a decision written by Associate Justice Carlito Calpatura.

‘Due process’

Contrary to the network’s claim, CA said it was not deprived of due process because it had the opportunity to counter the recomputation of the judgment award during the mandatory pre-execution conference conducted by the labor arbiter.

“The court has consistently held that the essence of due process is the opportunity to be heard. In other words, there is no denial of the right to due process if there was an opportunity for the parties to defend their interests in due course,” CA said.

It said that GMA was aptly notified of the recomputed award because it did not complain when the new amount was attached to the court documents sent to it as party to the case, and the company’s lawyers did not point out any specific errors in the computation by the NLRC.

The broadcast giant also lost a labor case last year when the Supreme Court upheld that 94 members of the Talents Association of GMA were regular employees—not just independent contractors—who were thus entitled to monetary benefits. This covers individuals who were hired from 2003 to 2013.

The same ruling affirmed that about half of them were illegally terminated and were entitled to reinstatement and privileges, including back pay and allowances.