SC rules GMA ‘talents’ are regular employees

By Joseph Bernard A. Marzan

GMA Network’s ‘talents’ can heave a sigh of relief after 11 years, as the Supreme Court (SC) decided that they were regular employees of the network.

In a 33-page resolution of the Court’s Third Division, dated July 16, 2025, and publicized only last Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, the SC denied consolidated petitions filed by GMA and its president and CEO, Felipe L. Gozon.

The high court upheld decisions of the Court of Appeals (CA) and the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) in two labor disputes involving around 94 on-air and off-air personnel, who have also organized themselves as the Talents Association of GMA (TAG).

The court ruled that the TAG members were not independent contractors, contrary to GMA’s argument that they were merely tied to programs assigned by the network depending on its needs.

The finding was based on the ‘Talent Agreement’ or contract signed by the workers, which included stipulations such as their attendance at program production activities with schedules set by GMA; prohibiting them from engaging in work for other broadcast media entities without GMA’s written consent; and GMA retaining all “creative, editorial, administrative, financial and legal” aspects of the programs—and talents should defer to their judgment on those aspects of production.

“[R]espondents cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be considered as independent contractors. The court will not countenance the provision in the Talent Agreement classifying respondents as independent contractors when the contract, taken as a whole, shows otherwise. After all, employment contracts are not ordinary agreements since they are imbued with public interest,” the SC said in its resolution.

The court also refuted GMA and Gozon’s citing of the 2004 case of Sonza vs. ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation, where it ruled that Jay Sonza was an independent contractor of ABS-CBN.

They pointed out the difference between the respective compensation given to Sonza by ABS-CBN in 1994 and that of the talents at the time they filed their case against GMA.

“GMA cannot seek refuge in the court’s ruling in Sonza, where the court did not consider the exclusivity clause in Sonza’s contract as a form of control,” the court said.

“Essentially, the monthly talent fee received by Sonza in 1994 amounted to at least PHP 300,000, whereas respondents’ salaries ranged from PHP 13,000 to PHP 84,000 in 2015.”

“The staggering difference in the level of compensation does not place herein respondents on equal footing with Sonza. Worse, GMA and Atty. Gozon did not adduce proof to support their claim that their regular employees earn less than their talents,” they added.

They cited Article 295 of the Labor Code to rule that the talents were regular employees, and the four-fold test that they have used in previous cases to determine that there was an employer-employee relationship between GMA and the TAG workers.

“Herein respondents occupy various positions in GMA, such as segment producer, researcher, action center coordinator, cameraman, executive producer, associate producer, head writer, production assistant, graphic artist, transcriber, writer, video researcher, and production coordinator,” they said.

“Quite tellingly, in their Notice of Appeal with Memorandum of Appeal, GMA and Atty. Gozon recognized the indispensability of the skills of respondents, for without them, there would be no program to air. From this admission, it can be reasonably inferred that respondents perform activities usually necessary or desirable in the usual business or trade of the network,” they added.

The SC also stated that 50 employees were illegally dismissed, including 15 on the basis of unauthorized absences and 35 on non-renewal of their contracts.

The court noted the provision in the network’s memorandum classifying unauthorized absences as ‘Breach “A”,’ which merits first-time offenses to be punishable by a simple written reminder.

“GMA utterly failed to show that Cabaluna et al. missed one to two schedules when they incurred the purported absences. Likewise, nothing in the records suggests that they committed previous offenses of the same nature,” the resolution read.

“This being so, terminating the Talent Agreements of Cabaluna et al. was too harsh a penalty, given that the prescribed penalty for the first offense under Breach ‘A’ was a mere written reminder,” it added.

The court ordered GMA to reinstate the dismissed talents without loss of seniority rights and other privileges, with full back wages, including allowances and other benefits or their monetary equivalen,t computed from the time compensation was withheld from them until they were actually reinstated.

But for those who could not be reinstated, they are entitled to separation pay equivalent to one month’s salary for every year of service.

Full back wages will be computed from the date of their dismissal to the date of finality of the resolution.

The case started after GMA ordered talents to follow the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s policy to issue official receipts for talent fees given to independent contractors.

Labor Arbiter Julio Gayaman in 2015 declared the TAG workers as regular employees, a decision upheld by the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) in 2016 when GMA elevated the case.

The Court of Appeals also sustained the NLRC’s ruling in 2019 when GMA appealed the case, and subsequently junked the network’s motion for reconsideration, pushing them to bring the case further to the SC in January 2020.

VICTORY ALREADY CLAIMED

TAG, while recognizing that GMA still has the right to file a motion for reconsideration under the rules of procedure, already claimed victory, citing precedent for future generations of media workers.

“Talents are regular employees, deserving of security and statutory benefits. We believed that since the beginning, and now there is jurisprudence to protect the next generation of media workers in the Philippines,” TAG said in their statement on the decision.

“This is 11 years in the making, during which our members have emotionally and mentally suffered from having to take to court what we considered our home network. It was not an easy decision to file the very first case in 2014, and it has not been easy since.”

“We saw our friends leave one by one, their sudden departures heavily impacting livelihoods and careers, when all we ever wanted was to tell stories for the Filipino people,” they added.

TAG also dedicated the SC’s ruling to James Arce, a former GMA cameraman who was also one of the respondents in the case but died in 2023.

“This is for [Arce], and his family, for their sacrifices in the name of public service,” they said.

Lian Buan, now a senior investigative reporter at Rappler and one of the respondents in the case, also expressed relief at the court’s resolution.

“After 11 years, the labor case that everyone told me not to file, that many people said would ruin my career, has finally been decided by the Supreme Court. And we won,” Buan said.

“I can now look back at the past 15 years and call this my best achievement. I stood up for the right cause, helped amplify the voice of the anti-contractualization movement, and left a lasting legacy to all future media workers,” she added.