1987 PH CONSTITUTION

ARTICLE II
SECTION 9. The State shall promote a just and dynamic social order that will ensure
the prosperity and independence of the nation and free the people from poverty through
policies that provide adequate social services, promote full employment, a rising
standard of living, and an improved quality of life for all.
SECTION 10. The State shall promote social justice in all phases of national
development.
SECTION 11. The State values the dignity of every human person and guarantees full
respect for human rights.

ARTICLE III
SECTION 8. The right of the people, including those employed in the public and private
sectors, to form unions, associations, or societies for purposes not contrary to law shall
not be abridged.

SECTION 18. (1) No person shall be detained solely by reason of his political beliefs
and aspirations.
(2) No involuntary servitude in any form shall exist except as a punishment for a crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.

ARTICLE IX, B
SECTION 2. (1) The civil service embraces all branches, subdivisions, instrumentalities,
and agencies of the Government, including government-owned or controlled
corporations with original charters.

ARTICLE XII
SECTION 1. The goals of the national economy are a more equitable distribution of
opportunities, income, and wealth; a sustained increase in the amount of goods and
services produced by the nation for the benefit of the people; and an expanding
productivity as the key to raising the quality of life for all, especially the underprivileged.
The State shall promote industrialization and full employment based on sound
agricultural development and agrarian reform, through industries that make full and
efficient use of human and natural resources, and which are competitive in both
domestic and foreign markets. However, the State shall protect Filipino enterprises
against unfair foreign competition and trade practices.
In the pursuit of these goals, all sectors of the economy and all regions of the country
shall be given optimum opportunity to develop. Private enterprises, including
corporations, cooperatives, and similar collective organizations, shall be encouraged to
broaden the base of their ownership.

SECTION 6. The use of property bears a social function, and all economic agents shall
contribute to the common good. Individuals and private groups, including corporations,
cooperatives, and similar collective organizations, shall have the right to own, establish,
and operate economic enterprises, subject to the duty of the State to promote
distributive justice and to intervene when the common good so demands.

SECTION 12. The State shall promote the preferential use of Filipino labor, domestic
materials and locally produced goods, and adopt measures that help make them
competitive.

ARTICLE XIII
SECTION 1. The Congress shall give highest priority to the enactment of measures that
protect and enhance the right of all the people to human dignity, reduce social,
economic, and political inequalities, and remove cultural inequities by equitably diffusing
wealth and political power for the common good.
To this end, the State shall regulate the acquisition, ownership, use, and disposition of
property and its increments.
SECTION 3. The State shall afford full protection to labor, local and overseas,
organized and unorganized, and promote full employment and equality of employment
opportunities for all.
It shall guarantee the rights of all workers to self-organization, collective bargaining and
negotiations, and peaceful concerted activities, including the right to strike in
accordance with law. They shall be entitled to security of tenure, humane conditions of
work, and a living wage. They shall also participate in policy and decision-making
processes affecting their rights and benefits as may be provided by law.
The State shall promote the principle of shared responsibility between workers and
employers and the preferential use of voluntary modes in settling disputes, including
conciliation, and shall enforce their mutual compliance therewith to foster industrial
peace.
The State shall regulate the relations between workers and employers, recognizing the
right of labor to its just share in the fruits of production and the right of enterprises to
reasonable returns on investments, and to expansion and growth.

CIVIL CODE
Article 1700. The relations between capital and labor are not merely contractual. They
are so impressed with public interest that labor contracts must yield to the common
good. Therefore, such contracts are subject to the special laws on labor unions,
collective bargaining, strikes and lockouts, closed shop, wages, working conditions,
hours of labor and similar subjects.

Article 1701. Neither capital nor labor shall act oppressively against the other, or impair
the interest or convenience of the public.

Article 1702. In case of doubt, all labor legislation and all labor contracts shall be
construed in favor of the safety and decent living for the laborer.

Article 1703. No contract which practically amounts to involuntary servitude, under any
guise whatsoever, shall be valid.
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Social justice is “neither communism, nor despotism, nor atomism, nor anarchy,” but the
humanization of laws and the equalization of social and economic forces by the State so
that justice in its rational and objectively secular conception may at least be
approximated. Social justice means the promotion of the welfare of all the people, the
adoption by the Government of measures calculated to insure economic stability of all
the competent elements of society, through the maintenance of a proper economic and
social equilibrium in the interrelations of the members of the community, constitutionally,
through the adoption of measures legally justifiable, or extra-constitutionally, through the
exercise of powers underlying the existence of all governments on the time-honored
principles of salus populi estsuprema lex.

DOCTRINE OF CO-DETERMINATION
The principle of co-determination states that it is a joint responsibility of the employer
and the employee to establish terms and conditions of employment. In establishing such
terms and conditions of employment, the employer and the employee must take into
consideration existing laws and regulations.

The basis for the principle of codetermination is Paragraph 3, Section 3 of Art XIII of the
Constitution which states, in part, that the State shall promoted the principle of shared
responsibility between workers and employers.

PRINCIPLE OF SHARED RESPONSIBILITY

Both management and labor share a social responsibility in the promotion of industrial
peace which redounds in the end to the benefit of all.

The State is mandated to promote the principle of shared responsibility between

workers and employers and the preferential use of voluntary modes, instead of strikes,
lockouts and compulsory arbitration, in settling disputes.

DOCTRINE OF COMPASSIONATE JUSTICE

Doctrine which states that harsh provisions of law and the rigid rules of procedure may
sometimes be tempered and dispensed with to give room for compassion.