The Bureau of Customs (BOC) is pressing Philippine Airlines (PAL) and Cebu Pacific to settle the long-delayed overtime pay of Customs personnel at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA), which the agency said has remained unpaid despite a 2012 Supreme Court ruling favoring the workers’ claims.
In a report to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon said that, on behalf of the Customs personnel at the Cebu-Mactan airport, he has written PAL president Jaime Bautista and Cebu Pacific president Lance Gokongwei to remind them of their financial obligations under the Supreme Court ruling.
The ruling referred to the case of Office of the President versus the Board of Airline Representatives (BAR), which ordered the BOC to immediately implement a Customs administrative order prescribing an increase in overtime pay of personnel rendering service to international airline companies at the country’s airports.
The order took effect in 2005 while the SC decision became final and executory on Jan. 11, 2012. The Customs order required airlines that were BAR members to increase the overtime pay of customs personnel at the airports.
An earlier customs order said that BOC officers and employees at the airport were to receive P30 to P28 hourly overtime pay, P50 traveling allowance per way and P50 allowance per meal.
A newer order increased the hourly overtime pay of airport Customs personnel from the previous rates to a range of P66 to P83 and also included a P110 flat rate for traveling allowance and P110 allowance per meal.
Faeldon said he has also written BAR chair Jose Perez de Tagle to likewise call his attention to the need for the “speedy and full settlement” of the obligations of PAL and Cebu Pacific to the MCIA customs personnel, some of them already retired from the service.
“It is unfortunate that, up to now, the customs personnel of MCIA have yet to receive their overtime pay from two major airlines … which had the biggest number of international flights served during the period from the year 2005 to 2010,” Faeldon said in his Oct. 19 letter to the BAR.
“The delay in the execution of the judgment in favor of the BOC personnel within the five-year period from the date of its entry on Jan. 11, 2012 or until Jan. 11, 2017 (or about three months from now) may amount to denial of justice and further inconvenience on the part of the claimant,” Faeldon added.
Faeldon informed the BAR that his letter was, in effect, a follow-up to the earlier efforts of his predecessors, Commissioners Rufino Biazon and Alberto Lina, to assert the rightful claims of the Customs workers over PAL and Cebu Pacific.
He recalled that Biazon issued the necessary directives and letter-appeals for the implementation of the SC ruling, while Lina issued a written authority to the MCIA Customs’ unit to negotiate and enter into an amicable settlement with the airline members of BAR to aid in the long-overdue implementation of the SC decision.
In separate letters to Gokongwei and Bautista, the Customs chief said: “We believe that it is fair, just and right to settle already with finality all the pending claims of the customs personnel which has become long overdue, thus, this appeal. We hope for the speedy and full settlement of your obligations to our customs personnel, some of them already retired from the service.”