Tag: labor

Definition

Republic Act No. 875, the Industrial Peace Act — formally “An Act to Promote Industrial Peace and for Other Purposes,” approved June 17, 1953 — is the statute that made collective bargaining, not compulsory arbitration, the declared policy of Philippine labor relations. Its Declaration of Policy announces the purpose “to eliminate the causes of industrial unrest by encouraging and protecting the exercise by employees of their right to self-organization” for collective bargaining, and to seek “sound stable industrial peace” through bargaining and government conciliation and mediation; in the International Labour Organization’s account, the Act was the enabling legislation for the conventions on freedom of association the Philippines ratified in the same year, and “the policy of the State in regulating industrial relations and employment relations shifted from compulsory arbitration to collective bargaining” when it passed. (LawPhil — RA 875, ILO — Working Paper No. 41)

The Act’s machinery gave the policy teeth. Section 3 guarantees employees the right to form, join, or assist labor organizations of their own choosing for collective bargaining; Section 4 codifies unfair labor practices on both sides — for employers, interference, requiring non-union membership as a hiring condition, dominating a union, discrimination, retaliation, and refusal “to bargain collectively”; for unions, coercion of employees, causing employer discrimination, refusing to bargain as exclusive representative, and exacting pay “for services which are not performed or not to be performed.” Enforcement ran through the existing Court of Industrial Relations — the industrial court created by Commonwealth Act No. 103 in 1936, which the Act redeployed as the tribunal with exclusive jurisdiction over unfair labor practices — alongside a 30-day strike and lockout notice, a registration system for unions administered by a Registrar of Labor Organizations, and certification-election machinery, the rebuilding this wiki’s Katipunan ng mga Anak-Pawis entry records. The Act was repealed by the Labor Code of 1974, whose absorptions and abolition provisions closed the regime it had built. (LawPhil — RA 875, LawPhil — PD 442)

Identities

Also Known As

• The Industrial Peace Act — the statute’s universal short title, used by the ILO literature and the decisions
• RA 875
• An Act to Promote Industrial Peace and for Other Purposes (long title)
• The IPA — the initialization used in the ILO working papers

Examples and Analogies

• From judge to referee: before 1953 the state’s industrial umpire was a court that could impose terms — compulsory arbitration before the Court of Industrial Relations; the Act converted the model into one where the parties bargain and the state polices the bargaining, the referee who enforces rules rather than sets scores. (ILO — Working Paper No. 41, LawPhil — RA 875)
• A bill of rights with a loyalty oath: the same statute that guaranteed self-organization and outlawed employer interference required each union officer to swear on registration that he was “not a member of the Communist Party” — labor’s Magna Carta and the Cold War’s signature on the same pages. (LawPhil — RA 875)
• An American transplant on Philippine soil: the ILO’s papers describe the Act as introducing a model “based on the National Labor Relations Act of the United States” and patterned after the American system — decentralized, enterprise-level bargaining with unions free to federate — the design Philippine labor relations still wears. (ILO — Strengthening Unionism, ILO — Working Paper No. 41)
• Verified statutory register:
• Approval: June 17, 1953, as printed in the LawPhil text’s header and approval line, and as dated in the ILO’s citation of the Act (LawPhil — RA 875, ILO — Strengthening Unionism)
• Declaration of policy: Section 1 — eliminate industrial unrest by protecting self-organization for collective bargaining; sound stable industrial peace through bargaining and conciliation (LawPhil — RA 875)
• Unfair labor practices: Section 4(a) for employers, Section 4(b) for labor organizations (LawPhil — RA 875)
• The Court: Section 2(a) defines “Court” as the Court of Industrial Relations “established by Commonwealth Act Numbered One hundred and three, as amended”; Section 5 gives it exclusive ULP jurisdiction, cease-and-desist and reinstatement powers, 30-day decision deadlines, and appeals to the Supreme Court on questions of law (LawPhil — RA 875)
• Timing rules: Section 13 — 30 days’ written notice to terminate or modify a collective bargaining agreement; Section 14(d) — notice of strike or lockout “thirty days prior thereto” (LawPhil — RA 875)
• Registration: Section 23 — Registrar of Labor Organizations; constitution, by-laws, officer lists, a ₱5 fee, and officers’ sworn statements that they are not Communist Party members; cancellation after notice and hearing (LawPhil — RA 875)
• Repeal: the LawPhil text is marked “[REPEALED BY PRESIDENTIAL DECREE NO. 442]” (LawPhil — RA 875)

Usage Scenarios

1. Practicing Labor Relations Under the Act, 1953–1974

For two decades every union drive, bargaining deadlock, and dismissal dispute ran through the Act’s register — ULP charges to the Court of Industrial Relations, certification of bargaining representatives, the 30-day strike notice, and registration under Section 23 — the machinery this wiki’s Katipunan ng mga Anak-Pawis and PAFLU entries show in operation. (LawPhil — RA 875)

2. Litigating Union Registration

Section 23’s registration and cancellation machinery produced the era’s leading cases: in PAFLU v. Secretary of Labor (G.R. No. L-22228, February 27, 1969) the Supreme Court upheld the system, holding registration “merely a condition sine qua non for the acquisition of legal personality by labor organizations” and finding “no incompatibility between Republic Act No. 875 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” (LawPhil — G.R. No. L-22228)

3. Tracing the Industrial-Court Lineage

Legal historians locate the Act inside a precise sequence: the Court of Industrial Relations created by Commonwealth Act No. 103 (October 29, 1936, in this wiki’s NLRC entry’s record) as a compulsory-arbitration court; the Act’s 1953 redeployment of that court inside a bargaining regime; the interim NLRC under Presidential Decree No. 21 after martial law; and the Code-created NLRC that Article 298 of PD 442 installed when it abolished both predecessors. (LawPhil — RA 875, LawPhil — PD 442)

4. Teaching the Cold War in Labor Law

The Act is a primary document of the anti-communist 1950s: passed in the decade that broke the left-led federations, it paired the era’s most generous organizing rights with a statutory loyalty oath for union officers — the double face scholars teach through the CLO’s suppression and PAFLU’s refounding, which this wiki’s entries document. (LawPhil — RA 875, LawPhil — G.R. No. L-22228)

Strategies

• Legislate a policy shift by redeploying a court: the Act did not build a new tribunal; it kept the CIR (already existing under CA 103) and redirected it — from imposing terms to policing practices — the cheapest institutional conversion available to a reforming Congress. (LawPhil — RA 875)
• Import a tested model: patterning the system on the American labor-statute lineage gave the new law doctrine and precedent to borrow, though on Philippine conditions — enterprise-level bargaining with federation allowed. (ILO — Working Paper No. 41, ILO — Strengthening Unionism)
• Cool disputes by calendar: the 30-day strike and lockout notice and the 30-day CBA termination notice built cooling-off periods into every confrontation — time as the statutory conflict absorber. (LawPhil — RA 875)
• Gatekeep through registration: Section 23 made legal personality turn on a filing with an anti-communist affidavit — a filter that both legitimated unions and exposed them to cancellation, the lever tested in the 1969 PAFLU litigation. (LawPhil — RA 875, LawPhil — G.R. No. L-22228)

Security and Safety Measures

• Rights with a registry: the Act’s protections operated only inside its registration system — an unregistered organization bargained and struck without statutory personality, the exposure the 1969 PAFLU decision confirmed. (LawPhil — G.R. No. L-22228)
• The loyalty oath as vulnerability: Section 23’s sworn anti-communist statements made union officers’ politics a statutory matter — false papers could void personality, a weapon of the anti-communist decade documented in this wiki’s PAFLU entry. (LawPhil — RA 875)
• For researchers: cite the approval date to the statute text — June 17, 1953 — and treat the widely repeated “June 17, 1950” as an error (see Challenges); the LawPhil mirror and the ILO’s citation agree on 1953. (LawPhil — RA 875, ILO — Strengthening Unionism)

Historical Context

The Act replaced a compulsory-arbitration regime. The Court of Industrial Relations, created by Commonwealth Act No. 103 on October 29, 1936, adjudicated labor disputes by imposing terms — the model the ILO’s papers describe as the state resolving employer-employee conflict directly. After the war and independence, the design changed: in the ILO working paper’s account, the Philippines became an ILO member in 1948, ratified Conventions Nos. 87 and 98 in 1953, and “immediately thereafter, Congress enacted the Industrial Peace Act (IPA) as the enabling legislation to implement the Conventions” — shifting policy “from compulsory arbitration to collective bargaining” and patterning the system on the American labor-statute lineage. (ILO — Working Paper No. 41, ILO — Strengthening Unionism)

The Act’s life ran through the Cold War and the labor left’s suppression years. Its rights guarantees arrived in the same decade that saw the left-led Congress of Labor Organizations broken and its leaders prosecuted, and its own Section 23 registered the climate — the ₱5 fee, the anti-communist affidavits, the cancellation machinery litigated to the Supreme Court in 1969. Unions organized, bargained, federated, and struck under the Act’s rules for two decades, in the decentralized system the ILO describes. (LawPhil — RA 875, LawPhil — G.R. No. L-22228, ILO — Working Paper No. 41)

Martial law ended the regime in two steps. In 1972 the new government “curtailed or severely restricted the democratic provisions in the IPA, including the right to organize, to engage in collective bargaining and to go on strike”; an interim National Labor Relations Commission was created under Presidential Decree No. 21. On May 1, 1974, Presidential Decree No. 442 — the Labor Code, effective November 1, 1974 — consolidated the labor statutes: its Article 213 created the permanent NLRC, its Article 298 abolished “the Court of Industrial Relations and the National Labor Relations Commission established under Presidential Decree No. 21,” and its Article 302 repealed “all labor laws not adopted as part of this Code either directly or by reference” — the clause under which RA 875, its policies absorbed into the Code’s labor-relations book, passed off the books. (ILO — Working Paper No. 41, LawPhil — PD 442)

Challenges and Controversies

The Approval Date: 1953, Not 1950

A persistent secondary tradition dates the Act to June 17, 1950 — a date repeated in lecture notes and popular summaries, and supplied to this wiki’s drafting as a premise. The statute texts verified here print June 17, 1953, in both the header and the approval line of the LawPhil mirror; the ILO Country Office’s citation dates it June 17, 1953; and the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence describes R.A. No. 875 as approved June 17, 1953. The 1950 date should be treated as the common error; citations should carry 1953. (LawPhil — RA 875, ILO — Strengthening Unionism)

Did It Create or Abolish the Court of Industrial Relations? Neither

Accounts differ about the Act’s relationship to the industrial court — some say it created the Court of Industrial Relations system, others that it abolished the court. The text does neither: Section 2(a) defines the “Court” as the CIR “established by Commonwealth Act Numbered One hundred and three, as amended” — a court already seventeen years old — and Section 5 simply lodges exclusive unfair-labor-practice jurisdiction in it, with Section 27 processing pending cases under the old arbitration acts. The Court’s abolition came twenty-one years later, by Article 298 of the Labor Code, after PD 21’s interim commission. (LawPhil — RA 875, LawPhil — PD 442)

A Wagner Act with a Loyalty Oath

The Act’s two faces are its standing paradox: the same statute that imported American-style organizing rights and outlawed employer interference wrote the Cold War into union registration — sworn statements that officers were not Communists, in a decade of prosecutions of the left-led federations. The ILO papers credit the Act with establishing “trade unionism and collective bargaining as democratic institutions”; the registration cases show how the same machinery policed the movement’s politics. (ILO — Working Paper No. 41, LawPhil — G.R. No. L-22228)

Which American Statute Was the Model?

Retellings name the Wagner Act of 1935 alone as the pattern. The ILO’s account is layered: the working paper says the Act was “patterned after the American system of labour relations,” while the Country Office study describes a model “based on the National Labor Relations Act of the United States” — footnoting the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which superseded the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 and the Wagner Act of 1935. The Philippine statute drew on the American lineage as it stood, not on the Wagner Act alone. (ILO — Working Paper No. 41, ILO — Strengthening Unionism)

Related Topic

• Court of Industrial Relations
• Labor Code of the Philippines
• National Labor Relations Commission
• Katipunan ng mga Anak-Pawis sa Pilipinas
• Philippine Association of Free Labor Unions
• Congress of Labor Organizations
• May Day in the Philippines
• Collective bargaining
• Unfair labor practice
• Commonwealth Act No. 103
• Presidential Decree No. 442
• Elpidio Quirino

References

1. Republic Act No. 875, An Act to Promote Industrial Peace and for Other Purposes (June 17, 1953) — The LawPhil Project
2. Presidential Decree No. 442 — The Labor Code of the Philippines (May 1, 1974) — The LawPhil Project
3. Industrial relations and collective bargaining in the Philippines — ILO Working Paper No. 41
4. Strengthening Unionism and Collective Bargaining in the Philippines — ILO Country Office for the Philippines
5. Philippine Association of Free Labor Unions v. Secretary of Labor, G.R. No. L-22228 (February 27, 1969) — The LawPhil Project