Loss of Trust and Confidence Applies to Confidential Employees

There are rank-and-file employees who hold highly confidential positions due to their fiduciary responsibilities and proximity to the management that makes important decisions pertaining to labor relations.

In one of my clients’ organizational setup, an employee who used to be a holder of supervisory position being an assistant to the SVP for Marketing was demoted to rank-and-file status. But he was classified as a confidential employee. This kind of confidential employee is not a holder of a trusted position but was classified as such due to his proximity with the person having charge with labor relation matters.

There is another kind of confidential employee. The one involving a rank-and-file whose position is classified as confidential due to the nature of his position.

A confidential employee is not necessarily immune from breach of trust. He can be dismissed for betrayal of the confidence reposed in him by his employer.

In a case, a rank-and-file employee whose position is classified as “high priority” has a job involving a

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high degree of responsibility requiring a substantial amount of trust and confidence on the part of her employer. Hence, her dismissal based on loss of trust and confidence is valid.

A senior bookkeeper designated as an Acting Finance Officer found herself in a confidential position. When she used her position to procure reports damaging to her employer and later on disseminated such information to the prejudice of her company her dismissal was upheld for committing acts in betrayal of trust reposed in her.

Being a person charged with supervision of the maintenance of computer hardware and the installation of computers for his company in its entire branches nationwide, one is in a position of trust. Although he is a rank-and-file employee, he is not an ordinary one. His breach of such confidence constitutes a valid dismissal from service.

An interesting scenario may involve an employee who would argue that he is just an ordinary rank-and-file employee as shown by the fact that he is not involved in the labor relation matters of his company. In effect, what he is trying to say is that he is not a rank-and-file employee to whom the doctrine of loss of trust and confidence would apply.

But the Supreme Court sees it in a different light. Thus, in the case of Santos vs. Shing Hung Plastics Co., Inc., the Court differentiated the nature of confidence existing in being an employee involved in labor relation matters and one who is charged with the care and custody of the employer’s money or property. An administrative assistant whose responsibilities included purchasing equipment and supplies of the company holds a position of trust where breach would result in his valid dismissal, although he is not involved in delicate labor relation matters of the company.

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