BPI v.

BPI Employees

Facts: there is a merger between BPI and FEBTC.

Issue: won the absorbed employees should join to the certified labor union.

Held:

Time and again, this Court has ruled that the individual employees right not to join a union may be validly
restricted by a union security clause in a CBA[49] and such union security clause is not a violation of the
employees constitutional right to freedom of association.[50]

It is unsurprising that significant provisions on labor protection of the 1987 Constitution are found in Article XIII on
Social Justice. The constitutional guarantee given the right to form unions[51] and the State policy to promote
unionism[52] have social justice considerations. In Peoples Industrial and Commercial Employees and Workers
Organization v. Peoples Industrial and Commercial Corporation,[53] we recognized that [l]abor, being the weaker
in economic power and resources than capital, deserve protection that is actually substantial and material.

The rationale for upholding the validity of union shop clauses in a CBA, even if they impinge upon the individual
employees right or freedom of association, is not to protect the union for the unions sake. Laws and jurisprudence
promote unionism and afford certain protections to the certified bargaining agent in a unionized company because
a strong and effective union presumably benefits all employees in the bargaining unit since such a union would be
in a better position to demand improved benefits and conditions of work from the employer. This is the rationale
behind the State policy to promote unionism declared in the Constitution, which was elucidated in the above-cited
case of Liberty Flour Mills Employees v. Liberty Flour Mills, Inc.[54]

In the case at bar, since the former FEBTC employees are deemed covered by the Union Shop Clause, they are
required to join the certified bargaining agent, which supposedly has gathered the support of the majority of
workers within the bargaining unit in the appropriate certification proceeding. Their joining the certified union
would, in fact, be in the best interests of the former FEBTC employees for it unites their interests with the majority
of employees in the bargaining unit. It encourages employee solidarity and affords sufficient protection to the
majority status of the union during the life of the CBA which are the precisely the objectives of union security
clauses, such as the Union Shop Clause involved herein. We are indeed not being called to balance the interests of
individual employees as against the State policy of promoting unionism, since the employees, who were parties in
the court below, no longer contested the adverse Court of Appeals decision. Nonetheless, settled jurisprudence has
already swung the balance in favor of unionism, in recognition that ultimately the individual employee will be
benefited by that policy. In the hierarchy of constitutional values, this Court has repeatedly held that the right to
abstain from joining a labor organization is subordinate to the policy of encouraging unionism as an instrument of
social justice.