Regular Employee, defined

1. Price v InnoData Phils. Inc., G.R. No. 178505, September 30, 2008
Regular employment has been defined by Article 280 of the Labor Code, as
amended, which reads:
Art. 280. Regular and Casual Employment. The provisions of
written agreement to the contrary notwithstanding and regardless of
the oral agreement of the parties, an employment shall be deemed to
be regular where the employee has been engaged to perform activities
which are usually necessary or desirable in the usual business or trade
of the employer, except where the employment has been fixed for a
specific project or undertaking the completion or termination of which
has been determined at the time of engagement of the employee or
where the work or services to be performed is seasonal in nature and
employment is for the duration of the season.
An employment shall be deemed to be casual if it is not covered
by the preceding paragraph. Provided, that, any employee who has
rendered at least one year of service, whether such service is
continuous or broken, shall be considered a regular employee with
respect to the activity in which he is employed and his employment
shall continue while such activity exists.
Based on the afore-quoted provision, the following employees
are accorded regular status: (1) those who are engaged to perform
activities which are necessary or desirable in the usual business or
trade of the employer, regardless of the length of their employment;
and (2) those who were initially hired as casual employees, but have
rendered at least one year of service, whether continuous or broken,
with respect to the activity in which they are employed.
2. San Miguel Jeepney
November 28, 1996

Services

NLRC,

G.R.

No.

92772,

The primary standard, x x x, of determining a regular (as against casual)

employment is the reasonable connection between the particular activity
performed by the employee in relation to the usual business or trade of the
employer. The test is whether the former is usually necessary or desirable in
the usual business or trade of the employer. The connection can be
determined by considering the nature of the work performed and its relation
to the scheme of the particular business or trade in its entirety. Also, if the
employee has been performing the job for at least one year, even if the
performance is not continuous or merely intermittent, the law deems the
repeated and continuing need for its performance as sufficient evidence of
the necessity if not indispensability of that activity to the business.

On the other hand, we should hasten to add that while in this particular case,
these commission-basis employees involved were regular employees (by
operation of law, plus of course, the fact that their status as employees had
never been challenged at any stage of the present case), it does not follow
that every employee paid (whether wholly or partly) on commission basis can
be considered a regular employee, or an employee at all, for that
matter. While this caveat may seem rather elementary, it is still needful to
stress that there are many lines of business legally and legitimately engaging
the services of workers, who are paid on commission basis to perform
activities desirable and necessary for such businesses, without creating any
kind of employer-employee relationship at any time.
3. Grandspan
Devt
Corp.
v
Bernardo,
141464, September 21, 2005, 470 SCRA 461

G.R.

No.

The Court held that the principal test for determining whether particular
employees are properly characterized as project employees, as distinguished
from regular employees, is whether or not the project employees were
assigned to carry out a specific project or undertaking, the duration and
scope of which were specified at the time the employees were engaged for
that project. As defined, project employees are those workers hired (1) for a
specific project or undertaking, and (2) the completion or termination of such
project or undertaking has been determined at the time of engagement of the
employee.
4. Bernarte v PBA, G.R. No. 192084, September 14, 2011
In other words, unlike regular employees who ordinarily report for work
eight hours per day for five days a week, petitioner is required to
report for work only when PBA games are scheduled or three times a
week at two hours per game. In addition, there are no deductions for
contributions to the Social Security System, Philhealth or Pag-Ibig,
which are the usual deductions from employees salaries. These
undisputed circumstances buttress the fact that petitioner is an
independent contractor, and not an employee of respondents.