Abandonment is a form of neglect of duty; hence, a just cause for termination of employment under Article 297 of the Labor Code, as amended.

Ordinarily, a common impression is that an employee who never reports for work for a certain period of time and without notice to the employer has abandoned his work.

This is not accurate. Mere absence does not amount to abandonment. There are requisites which must concur before an unauthorized absence can be considered as abandonment.

To constitute abandonment, however, there must be a clear and deliberate intent to discontinue one’s employment without any intention of returning.

Two (2) elements must concur:

1. The employee must have failed to report for work or must have been absent without valid or justifiable reason; and
2. There must have been a clear intention on the part of the employee to sever the employer-

   

   employee relationship manifested by some overt

Absenteeism per se is not an overt act which would prove an unequivocal intent on the part of the employee to discontinue employment.

Otherwise stated, absence must be accompanied by overt acts unerringly pointing to the fact that the employee simply does not want to work anymore.

The second element above is the more determinative factor being manifested by some overt acts from which it may be deduced that the employee has no more intention to work. The intent to discontinue the employment must be act.

Abandonment is a matter of intention and cannot lightly be presumed from certain equivocal acts

(Hantex Trading Co., Inc. vs. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 148241, September 27, 2002).

It cannot be argued that the fact that employees “simply disappeared” from their work, they are guilty of abandonment. Absence must be accompanied by overt acts unerringly pointing to the fact that the employee simply does not want to work anymore. And the burden of proof to show that there was unjustified refusal to go back to work rests on the employer.

For abandonment to exist, two requisites must con- cur: first, the employee must have failed to report for work or must have been absent without valid or justifiable reason; and second, there must have been a clear intention on the part of the employee to sever the employer-employee relationship as manifested by some overt acts.

The second element is the more determinative factor. Abandonment as a just ground for dismissal thus requires clear, willful, deliberate, and unjustified refusal of the employee to resume employment. Mere absence or failure to report for work, even after notice to return, is not tantamount to abandonment.

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