Facts: The petitioner Philippine Blooming Mills Employees Organization (PBMEO) is a legitimate labor union composed of the employees of the respondent Philippine Blooming Mills Co., Inc., and petitioners. Benjamin Pagcu and Rodulfo Munsod are officers and members of the petitioner Union. Petitioners claim that on March 1, 1969, they decided to stage a mass demonstration at Malacañang on March 4, 1969, in protest against alleged abuses of the Pasig police. PBMEO thru Pagcu confirmed the planned demonstration and stated that the demonstration or rally cannot be cancelled because it has already been agreed upon in the meeting. Pagcu explained further that the demonstration has nothing to do with the Company because the union has no quarrel or dispute with Management. The Management, thru Atty. C.S. de Leon, Company personnel manager, informed PBMEO that the demonstration is an inalienable right of the union guaranteed by the Constitution but emphasized that any demonstration for that matter should not unduly prejudice the normal operation of the Company. Workers who without previous leave of absence approved by the Company, particularly , the officers present who are the organizers of the demonstration, who shall fail to report for work the following morning shall be dismissed, because such failure is a violation of the existing CBA and, therefore, would be amounting to an illegal strike. Because the petitioners and their members numbering about 400 proceeded with the demonstration despite the pleas of the respondent Company that the first shift workers should not be required to participate in the demonstration and that the workers in the second and third shifts should be utilized for the demonstration from 6 A.M. to 2 P.M. on March 4, 1969, filed a charge against petitioners and other employees who composed the first shift, for a violation of Republic Act No. 875(Industrial Peace Act), and of the CBA providing for 'No Strike and No Lockout.' Petitioners were held guilty in by CIR for bargaining in bad faith, hence this appeal.
Issue: Whether or Not the petitioners right to freedom of speech and to peaceable assemble violated.
Held: Yes. A constitutional or valid infringement of human rights requires a more stringent criterion, namely existence of a grave and immediate danger of a substantive evil which the State has the right to prevent. This is not present in the case. It was to the interest herein private respondent firm to rally to the defense of, and take up the cudgels for, its employees, so that they can report to work free from harassment, vexation or peril and as consequence perform more efficiently their respective tasks enhance its productivity as well as profits. Herein respondent employer did not even offer to intercede for its employees with the local police. In seeking sanctuary behind their freedom of expression well as their right of assembly and of petition against alleged persecution of local officialdom, the employees and laborers of herein private respondent firm were fighting for their very survival, utilizing only the weapons afforded them by the Constitution — the untrammelled enjoyment of their basic human rights. The pretension of their employer that it would suffer loss or damage by reason of the absence of its employees from 6 o'clock in the morning to 2 o'clock in the afternoon, is a plea for the preservation merely of their property rights. The employees' pathetic situation was a stark reality — abused, harassment and persecuted as they believed they were by the peace officers of the municipality. As above intimated, the condition in which the employees found themselves vis-a-vis the local police of Pasig, was a matter that vitally affected their right to individual existence as well as that of their families. Material loss can be repaired or adequately compensated. The debasement of the human being broken in morale and brutalized in spirit-can never be fully evaluated in monetary terms. As heretofore stated, the primacy of human rights — freedom of expression, of peaceful assembly and of petition for redress of grievances — over property rights has been sustained. To regard the demonstration against police officers, not against the employer, as evidence of bad faith in collective bargaining and hence a violation of the collective bargaining agreement and a cause for the dismissal from employment of the demonstrating employees, stretches unduly the compass of the collective bargaining agreement, is "a potent means of inhibiting speech" and therefore inflicts a moral as well as mortal wound on the constitutional guarantees of free expression, of peaceful assembly and of petition. Circulation is one of the aspects of freedom of expression. If demonstrators are reduced by one-third, then by that much the circulation of the Issue raised by the demonstration is diminished. The more the participants, the more persons can be apprised of the purpose of the rally. Moreover, the absence of one-third of their members will be regarded as a substantial indication of disunity in their ranks which will enervate their position and abet continued alleged police persecution.
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