AFTER an 11-year battle, almost a hundred members of the Talents Association of GMA (TAG), including UST alumni, won a legal victory when the Supreme Court (SC) declared them regular employees of media giant GMA Network Inc.
The TAG members, led by communication arts alumnus Christian Cabaluna, had sought better pay, benefits, and work conditions through regularization and lodged a complaint before labor arbiters. Fifty TAG members were dismissed by GMA Network in 2014.
The group wanted to end the “talent system” prevalent in the broadcast industry, where production staff were treated as “independent contractors” who issue their own receipts and are subject to a different tax scheme.
The high court’s third division denied GMA Network’s appeal against the earlier decision of the Court of Appeals (CA), which ruled in favor of the talents’ group.
“Plain as day, there exists an employer-employee relationship between GMA and respondents,” the high tribunal said.
The resolution dated July 16, 2025, which was made public on Jan. 24, also ruled that the talents’ contracts were illegally terminated or ended as the case was being heard.
The 50 illegally dismissed employees are entitled to reinstatement or separation pay according to the ruling. However, if reinstatement is no longer an option, they “may be awarded separation pay equivalent to one month’s salary for every year of service.”
The court said the termination of 15 talents was “too harsh” because they had no prior offenses. The other 35 employees received no renewal notices from GMA when their contracts expired, after they sought regularization.
The 94 talents who claimed legal victory were among 142 workers who originally filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Commission, arguing that they must be regular employees of GMA Network rather than be classified as talents. Some employees were eventually regularized by GMA Network.
Cabaluna told the Varsitarian that the high court’s decision proved “that no company, no matter how powerful, is above labor law. It tells media workers that contracts cannot erase the reality of control, supervision, and years of service.”
Cabaluna, an alumnus of the Faculty of Arts and Letters, finished his undergraduate degree in communication arts in 2002. He worked as an associate producer at GMA Network when the case began.
The case was initially filed by TAG members in 2014, after media workers had served as talents for years without receiving full benefits or security of tenure.
“When the case started, I was an associate producer earning well, providing for my family, and building a future. When I was terminated, I slowly lost everything. The work disappeared. No media company wanted to hire a labor leader,” Cabaluna said.
The SC noted that a key element in GMA’s talent agreement was “freedom from control from the principal over the means and method of their work,” contradicting the network’s own system, which bound talents by the company’s rules. The talents used network equipment and facilities, an arrangement akin to those of regular workers.
The TAG members included producers, writers, researchers, production assistants, artists, coordinators, and cameramen behind various programs under GMA News and Public Affairs.
“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,” said Lian Buan, a TAG member and now a Rappler investigative journalist, in a Facebook post.
Buan obtained her undergraduate degree in journalism from UST in 2010.
Cabaluna said: “I hope this empowers workers to speak up and reminds employers that calling someone a talent or a project employee, as they now call it, does not remove their right to security of tenure.”
“This win is not just for us. It is for those who were afraid to fight and for the new generations of media workers,” he said.
