CA to hear Coke’s plea for TRO today

The Court of Appeals will hear today the petition of Coca-Cola Bottlers Philippines, Inc. for the issuance of a temporary restraining order against the ruling of the Regional Trial Court that denied CCBPI’s request for another TRO against the Cosmos Visayas Bottlers, Inc. employees’ union.

In a resolution issued last Thursday, CA Justices Stephen Cruz, Antonio Villamor, and Francisco Acosta ordered RTC Judge Simeon Dumdum and the CVBI employees’ union to file their comments to the Petition for Certiorari filed by CCBPI.

Dumdum and the employees union also have until today to file their comments. After the hearing of the request for TRO this morning, the appellate court may immediately render its resolution.

In its petition CCBPI contended that Dumdum acted with grave abuse of discretion amounting to excess of jurisdiction when he ruled there is a labor dispute between CCBPI and the union and that jurisdiction over the issuance of TRO and injunction now rests with the National Labor Relations Commission.

CCBPI alleged that Dumdum “isolated and disjoined” a portion of the definition of a labor dispute under Article 212 (1) of the Labor Code and failed to broadly take the statutory definition of a labor dispute in its entirety to come up with a rational view.

“Public respondent judge gravely erred as his finding and conclusion was based on a mere fragment of the definition of a ‘labor dispute’- that is, that the same may exist ‘regardless of whether the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee,’ without taking into account all the other material portions of the said definition and more importantly, without considering the meaning, scope and intent of the anti-injunction ban or policy,” CCBPI said.

CCBPI had contended that a labor dispute does not exist between the company and the members of the CVBI employees union within the meaning, scope and intent of the Labor Code. CCBPI also said there is no controversy over matters concerning terms and conditions of employment between CCBPI and the union members.

Likewise, there is reportedly no controversy or matter between CCBPI and the union concerning the association or representation of persons in negotiating, fixing, maintaining, changing or arranging the terms and conditions of employment.

With these, CCBPI said the phrase “regardless of whether the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer-employee relation” earlier used by the RTC does not apply.

Like in its case before the RTC, CCBPI asked the CA to enjoin the members of the union from staging concerted activities in its sales office in Cebu City and/or from obstructing CCBPI’s plant in Tipolo, Mandaue City.

Last month, CVBI, a subsidiary of CCBPI, terminated the services of 142 workers earlier this month for economic reasons. The picket being held outside the plant in Mandaue City is preventing Cosmos from moving its products from the Coca-Cola Plant.

Although the termination takes effect on October 15 yet, the firm told the workers to stop reporting to work last September 5 to give them time to look for another job.  — Joeberth M. Ocao/BRP