8/26/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly employee must be given an opportunity to be heard.[56] Here, petitioners were only verbally dismissed, without any notice given or having been informed of any just cause for their dismissal. This Court cannot rest easy on respondents' insistence that petitioners voluntarily terminated their employment. Contrary to their assertion, petitioners were left with no choice but to accept the Compromise Agreement and to go back to the Philippines. After accumulating a huge amount of debt to work abroad, petitioners were burdened to continue working for respondents that they were constrained to sign the piece-ratebased contract upon arriving in Taiwan. As a result, they were paid less than if they were paid on a monthly basis and, worse, they were deprived of their overtime premium. Petitioners inevitably defaulted on their loan obligations. To make matters worse, they were terminated from employment on a whim and were left homeless. One can only imagine how all these compounded a heavy burden upon petitioners. Overseas Filipino workers venture out into unfamiliar lands in the hope of providing a better future for their families. They endure years of being away from their loved ones while bearing a life of toil abroad. Our laws afford protection to our workers, whether employed locally or abroad. It is this Court's bounden duty to uphold these laws and dispense justice for petitioners. With their right to substantive and procedural due process denied, it is clear that petitioners were illegally dismissed from service. As a consequence of the illegal dismissal, petitioners are also entitled to moral damages, exemplary damages, and attorney's fees. In Torreda v. Investment and Capital Corporation of the Philippines:[57] Moral damages are recoverable when the dismissal of an attended by bad faith or fraud or constitutes an act oppressive done in a manner contrary to good morals, good customs or Exemplary damages, on the other hand, are recoverable when employee is to labor, or is public policy. the dismissal was done in a wanton, oppressive, or malevolent manner.[58] Petitioners have sufficiently shown how bad faith attended respondents' actions. They were made to sign a new employment contract on a piece-rate basis, which violates the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act. Under that contract, petitioners were underpaid and deprived of their overtime premium. Moreover, petitioners' employment contracts were unilaterally terminated. After their meeting before the Bureau of Labor, respondents told petitioners that they were no longer employed. As the Court of Appeals noted, respondents did not refute petitioners' narration that they were immediately escorted back to the factory, ordered to pack their possessions, and were left at a train station.[59] Petitioners were forced to stay in shelters for months without any means of livelihood. Worse, they were deprived of due process when they were terminated without any notice or opportunity to be heard. Being deprived of their hard-earned salaries and, eventually, of their employment, caused petitioners mental anguish, wounded feelings, and serious anxiety. The award https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/65230 9/19