And then, there is this case of a pretty teacher who got pregnant by her boyfriend and lost her teaching job in a private, probably Catholic, school in Bohol. Both the girl and the boyfriend were single at that time but the pregnancy happened outside of marriage, which caused serious discomfiture for the school management.
So, what to do? Fire her, fire her, or else the clear-white reputation of the educational institution would be sullied. Or, god himself/herself,itself will throw fire and brimstone, diatribes and vitriols on the school, enrollment would suffer, with financial ruin not far behind.
It is good that the girl knows her rights, and is ready to reclaim them through the legal process. She contested the decision to remove her from her job through a labor complaint.
The complainant started teaching at Bohol Wisdom School, a Christian institution, on June 7, 2007. She taught language, physical education, arts, mother tongue and writing.
On Sept. 21, 2016, she informed the grade school principal and administrator Raul Deloso that she was two months pregnant. The following day, Deloso said, she was suspended and will remain so until she married the father of her child. Five days later, the teacher received a written notice that she was indefinitely suspended without pay on the grounds of immorality.
She subsequently filed a complaint for illegal suspension. While the teacher did get married, she declined to return to work and filed for separation pay. The labor arbiter ruled that she was constructively dismissed, but the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) reversed this decision. While the appellate court ruled out constructive dismissal, it found her suspension illegal.
The CA ruling was affirmed by the Supreme Court, which said that the teacher’s premarital sexual relations and pregnancy were “not disgraceful or immoral within the contemplation of the law.”
The high court agreed with the appellate court’s finding that “on a secular level, premarital sex is not immoral per se. (The teacher) did not have sexual relations with a married man; neither was she married at the time.”
We hail the Supreme Court justices for upholding that administrative rules involving labor relations should be free from religious bias.
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