G.R. No. 239385 , April 17, 2024
FLORDIVINA M. GASPAR, PETITIONER, VS. M.I.Y. REAL ESTATE CORP., AND MELISSA ILAGAN YU, RESPONDENTS.

FACTS

Petitioner Flordivina M. Gaspar filed a Complaint for illegal dismissal with money claims against M.I.Y. Real Estate Corporation (M.I.Y.) and its director, Melissa Ilagan Yu. Petitioner alleged she was hired on April 10, 2013, as Facilities Maintenance and Services (FM&S) personnel at the Goldrich Mansion, where M.I.Y. conducted its business and Yu maintained a residence. Her duties included cleaning and maintaining the building’s floors, transient rooms, spa, massage parlor, salon, bar, agency, and Yu’s penthouse office. She claimed respondents forced her to sign resignation letters every six months to prevent her from attaining regular status. Her services were terminated on July 2, 2014. Respondents countered that petitioner was not an employee of M.I.Y., a small company with only four registered employees. They asserted petitioner was a domestic worker (kasambahay) hired by Yu’s mother for Yu’s household in Pasig City and later transferred to Yu’s Makati penthouse, paid PHP 4,000 monthly to clean and maintain it. The Labor Arbiter and the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) dismissed the complaint, finding no employer-employee relationship between petitioner and M.I.Y. and instead declaring her a domestic worker of Yu. The Court of Appeals affirmed these rulings.

ISSUE

Whether the Court of Appeals committed grave abuse of discretion in affirming the findings that petitioner was not an employee of M.I.Y. but was a domestic worker of Yu, thereby upholding the dismissal of her complaint for lack of jurisdiction.

RULING

No, the Court of Appeals did not commit grave abuse of discretion. The Supreme Court denied the Petition for lack of merit. Petitioner failed to establish with substantial evidence the existence of an employer-employee relationship with M.I.Y. The four-fold test (selection and engagement of employees, payment of wages, power of dismissal, and power of control) was not satisfied. M.I.Y. demonstrated it had only four employees, with petitioner’s name absent from its statutory contribution records. In contrast, the evidence supported the finding that petitioner was a domestic worker of Yu, performing household services in Yu’s personal residence. Domestic workers are explicitly excluded from the coverage of Title I, Book III of the Labor Code (Articles 82 to 96) on working conditions and rest periods, and are governed instead by Republic Act No. 10361 (Domestic Workers Act or Batas Kasambahay). Consequently, the labor tribunals correctly dismissed the complaint for lack of jurisdiction over the employer-employee aspect, and the CA committed no grave abuse of discretion in affirming these findings.