19 Pan American World Airways v. Pan American Employees Association (TIGLAO)
19 Pan American World Airways v. Pan American Employees Association (TIGLAO)
RATIO:
Petitioner, perhaps, without so intending it, betrayed an inexcusable lack of confidence in the responsibility of
union officials and ultimately in the validity of the collective bargaining process itself. It is the basic premise
under which a regime of collective bargaining was instituted by the Industrial Peace Act that through the
process of industrial democracy, with both union and management equally deserving of public trust, labor
problems could be susceptible of the just solution and industrial peace attained.
Implicit in such a concept is the confidence that must be displayed by management in the sense of
responsibility of union officials to assure that the two indispensable elements in industry and production could
work side by side, attending to the problems of each without neglecting the common welfare that binds them
together.
The moment management displays what in this case appears to be grave but unwarranted distrust in the union
official discharging their functions just because a strike was resorted to, then the integrity of the collective
bargaining process itself is called into question. It would have been different if there were a rational basis for
such fears, purely speculative in character. The record is bereft of the slightest indication that any danger,
much less one clear and present, is to be expected from their return to work. Necessarily, the union
officials have the right to feel offended by the fact that, while they will be paid their salaries in the meanwhile,
they would not be considered as fit persons to perform the duties pertaining to the positions held by them. Far
from being generous, such an offer could rightfully be considered insulting.
The greater offense is to the labor movement itself, more specifically to the right of self-organization. There is
both a constitutional and statutory recognition that laborers have the right to form unions to take care of their
interests vis--vis their employers. Their freedom to form organizations would be rendered nugatory if
they could not choose their own leaders to speak on their behalf and to bargain for them.
If the petitioner were to succeed in their demand, the laborers in this union would thus be confronted with the
sad spectacle of the leaders of their choice condemned as irresponsible, possibly even constituting a menace to
the operations of the enterprise.
What is worse, the result, even if not intended, would be to call into question their undeniable right to choose
their leaders, who must be treated as such with all the respect to which they are legitimately entitled. The fact
that they would be paid but not allowed to work is, to repeat, to add to the infamy that would thus attach, to
them necessarily, but to respondent union equally.
The demand would have resulted in the deprivation of the rank and file of their freedom of choice as to who
should represent them. For what use are leaders so undeserving of the minimum confidence.
DISSENTING/CONCURRING OPINION(S):