Project Employees: Rights and When They Become Regular

Article 295 [280] of the Labor Code ([280] is its number before the 2015 renumbering) makes employment regular when the work is usually necessary or desirable in the employer's business. Project employment is one of its exceptions:

Two things stand out in this text:

• the project must be specific; and
• its end must be determined at the time of engagement, that is, when the worker was hired, not later.

In Engineering & Construction Corporation of Asia v. Palle (2020), the Supreme Court said the principal test is whether the employees "were assigned to carry out a 'specific project or undertaking,' the duration and scope of which were specified at the time the employees were engaged for that project." The Court took this test from an earlier ruling.

The Court also said:

• The employer carries the proof. There was no proof that the workers were told of the project's duration and scope when hired. "Therefore, without such proof, it is presumed that respondents are regular employees."
• Reports to DOLE matter. The employer's failure to report to DOLE the end of the workers' employment each time a project was completed was "an indication that the workers were not project employees but regular ones."
• Long service is not the test in construction. The Court said length of service "may not necessarily be applicable in a construction industry". What counts is how each hiring was made.

The Court denied the employer's petition and affirmed that the workers were regular and illegally dismissed. In Quebral v. Angbus Construction (2016), the Court also applied Article 295 to construction workers and reinstated an NLRC decision declaring them regular employees who were illegally dismissed.

The term is also explained in regular employee.

A project employee is an employee of the company that hired him or her, not a contractor. When the project ends, the employment can end with it, because that end was set at the start. But if the worker turns out to be regular, ending the job "because the project is over" is a dismissal that needs a just or authorized cause. If there was none, the worker is entitled to reinstatement and full backwages under [Article 294 [279]](/law/labor-code/article-294). See Illegally dismissed: what can you get?

For an overview of employment status, see probationary, regular and project employees.

No. A project employee is hired directly by the employer for a project. An agency worker is hired by a contractor that supplies workers to a principal. Those arrangements are governed by Article 106 on contracting. See Endo and labor-only contracting.

These are made-up examples to show how the rules work. They are not advice for any real case.

Dino is a construction helper in Laguna. For 12 years the same company rehires him for project after project, but no one ever tells him at hiring what the project is or when it will end. As in Engineering & Construction Corporation of Asia, without that proof he is presumed regular.

Mila is hired as a mason for a two-storey building. Her contract names the building and says her work ends when the masonry phase is done. If this was made known at hiring, she is a project employee and her job can end with that phase.

Jake is hired as a "project employee" by a call center, but his job is to answer customer calls every day, which is the company's main business. The label does not decide his status. Under Article 295, the question is whether the work was fixed for a specific project with an end set at hiring.

Talk to a lawyer if you have been rehired for many projects without written terms, if you were let go "because the project ended" while the same work continued, or if you are an employer setting up project contracts. These cases depend on documents and on how each hiring was made. If you cannot afford a lawyer, see Free legal help in the Philippines.