SC rejects bid of Napocor workers for p8.5-b back pay

The Supreme Court has rejected the decades-long attempt of the employees of the National Power Corp. (Napocor) to collect some P8.5 billion in unpaid additional allowances from the government.

In a ruling, the high court unanimously voted to grant the petition for certiorari filed by the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) in 2009 questioning the decision of a Quezon City Regional Trial Court (RTC), which favored the Napocor employees.

“The [lower court] should have been more prudent in granting the immediate execution, considering that the … judgment award involves the payment of almost P8.5 billion in public funds,” said the tribunal in its Feb. 7 decision, which was released only recently.

The high court’s ruling, penned by Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, overturned the Nov. 28, 2008, decision of Judge Luisito Cortez of Quezon City RTC Branch 84, which ordered Napocor to pay the cost of living allowance and amelioration allowance of its workers.

As claimed by the OSG, Cortez committed grave abuse of discretion when he directed the state-run power company to pay the additional benefits of the Napocor employees from July 1, 1989 to March 16, 1999.

The tribunal also agreed with the contention of the OSG that such allowances of government employees were already included in their salaries when Republic Act No. 6758, or the Compensation and Position Classification Act, was enacted in 1989.

“To grant any back payment of [the allowances] despite their factual integration into the standardized salary would cause salary distortions in the civil service,” read a portion of the ruling.

“It would also provide unequal protection to those employees whose [allowances] were proven to have been factually discontinued from the period of [the law’s] effectivity,” it said.