The Philippine Supreme Court has ruled that an employee’s prolonged, unauthorized absences are not by themselves enough to justify dismissal for abandonment of work, reversing earlier findings by labor authorities and the Court of Appeals in a case involving agricultural firm Green Era Biotech and its manpower service provider, Great Value. In an 18-page decision dated Nov. 19 and issued by the tribunal’s Third Division, the high court found the two companies liable for the illegal dismissal of a production utility worker who had been absent from work for at least 18 days in 2018.

The worker, initially hired by Green Era Biotech in 2015 and later transferred to Great Value, was first absent for eight consecutive days due to illness. Great Value required him to explain his unauthorized absences, citing a company policy that allowed dismissal for at least five days of unexplained absence. He later incurred another nine straight days of absence, prompting the issuance of an absence without leave (AWOL) notice that characterized his conduct as serious misconduct and abandonment of work. After taking another leave with his supervisor’s permission, he was barred from entering the workplace and informed by his foreman that he had been declared AWOL, leading him to file a complaint for illegal dismissal.

In overturning the earlier rulings of the Labor Arbiter, the National Labor Relations Commission and the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court stressed that abandonment as a just cause for dismissal has two elements: absence without a valid reason and a clear intention on the part of the employee to sever the employment relationship. The Court underscored that the second element is the more critical requirement and that the burden of proving both elements rests with the employer. “Mere absence from work, without more, will ordinarily fail to support a finding of abandonment of work, absent any overt act from the employee clearly showing that he or she intends to sever his or her employment,” the decision said.

While the justices acknowledged that the worker’s absences were “clearly unauthorized,” they found no evidence that he intended to abandon his job, noting instead that he had attempted to return to work and promptly challenged his dismissal before the labor tribunal. The Court ruled that his conduct did not amount to a “deliberate and unjustified refusal” to resume employment and that his absences did not merit the “severe penalty of dismissal.” It ordered his reinstatement to his former position without loss of seniority and privileges, though without back wages, and held Green Era Biotech and Great Value jointly liable to pay separation pay if reinstatement is no longer feasible, along with nominal damages of 30,000 pesos.

Hong Kong home prices notched their strongest half-year performance in eight years, with a widely watched index breaking above the 160 mark and approaching a near three-year high. The latest reading of the Centa-City Leading Index (CCL), which tracks secondary residential prices, climbed 0.52% week-on-week to 160.77, marking a fifth consecutive weekly gain and a cumulative rise of 2.11% over that period. The level is the highest since early September 2023, or 147 weeks.

Measured over the first six months of the year, the CCL advanced 11.56%, the biggest half-year increase since a 13.2% jump in the first half of 2018. The gain sharply outstripped the 4.7% rise recorded for the whole of 2025, exceeding that full-year performance by 6.86 percentage points. Centaline Property’s research department attributes the turnaround to a decline in HIBOR from May 2025 and two rounds of local bank rate cuts last year, which together helped prices bottom out and reverse course. From the low of 135.16 points when H‑rate mortgages again fell below their cap in May last year, the CCL has now risen 18.95%; compared with the 134.89 level before the March 2025 budget, it is up 19.19%. The index is now 18.34% above its level before the first rate cut in September 2024, and its gap from the historic peak of 191.34 in August 2021 has narrowed to 15.98%.

The latest advance has been broad-based across market segments. The CCL Mass, covering large housing estates, rose 0.43% week-on-week to 162.19, extending its climb for a third week and accumulating a 1.60% gain to the highest level since late August 2023. The sub-index for small and medium-sized units rose 0.50% to 160.78, also up for three straight weeks and 1.62% higher over that stretch, while the large-unit index gained 0.61% to 160.71, its fourth weekly rise in a row and a 3.64% gain over that period. On a half-year basis, all eight major price indices increased, with six of them advancing more than 10%. The overall CCL was up 11.56%, CCL Mass 11.72%, small and medium units 11.56% and large units 11.53%.

By district, Hong Kong Island outperformed the rest of the city by a wide margin, underscoring a pronounced “luxury effect” in the current upcycle. The Island’s mass-housing index climbed 1.41% in the latest week to 164.11, its third straight weekly gain and a 3.78% advance over that period, reaching a 149-week high dating back to mid-August 2023. Over the first half, Island prices surged 17.09%, compared with gains of 11.33% in Kowloon, 8.71% in New Territories East and 9.17% in New Territories West. In the latest week, New Territories West rose 0.39% to 144.9, a high not seen since early October 2023, while New Territories East edged up 0.15% to 172.43, near its early-September 2023 peak. Kowloon slipped 0.1% to 161.13 but remained at its second-highest level since early July 2023.

Despite the sharp rebound in prices, Centaline’s research team expects the pace of appreciation to moderate in the coming months. They cite a pullback in Hong Kong equities, a slower launch pipeline for new developments, more hardline pricing stances among second-hand sellers and a visible drop in transaction volumes, alongside the possibility of US rate hikes, as factors likely to cap further gains. The firm is targeting 165 points for the CCL in the third quarter, implying a further rise of 4.23 points, or about 2.63%, from current levels.