Short answer. The old law governs. Article 293 of the Labor Code states plainly that all actions or claims accruing prior to the effectivity of this Code shall be determined in accordance with the laws in force at the time of their accrual. The Code does not reach backward to rewrite claims that had already arisen.
What the law says
All actions or claims accruing prior to the effectivity of this Code shall be determined in accordance with the laws in force at the time of their accrual.
Labor Code, Article 293 — Claims Accruing Before The Code. Read the full provision →
The rule against retroactive application
When a new law takes effect, a fundamental question arises: does it apply only to events that happen after it takes effect, or does it also reach backward to events that happened before? Article 293 answers that question directly for labor claims. All actions or claims accruing prior to the effectivity of this Code shall be determined in accordance with the laws in force at the time of their accrual. This is the non-retroactivity principle in its clearest form: the law that governs your claim is the law that was in force when your claim came into existence, not the law that happens to be in force when you eventually file.
When a claim is considered to have accrued
A labor claim accrues at the point when the legally cognizable injury or entitlement arose — generally, when the violation occurred or when the right to payment came into existence. For a dismissed employee, the claim accrues at the time of dismissal. For unpaid wages, it accrues when the wages were due and not paid. The Labor Code took effect on November 1, 1974. Claims arising from events before that date — dismissals, wage violations, illegal deductions, non-payment of benefits — are governed by the labor statutes and regulations that were in force at the relevant time, not by the Labor Code itself. Article 293 ensures that the applicable law is determined by when the claim arose, not by when it is pursued.
Why this provision still matters
The Labor Code took effect in 1974, so one might ask why this provision is still relevant. The answer is that transition rules create lasting obligations. Benefits that vested, violations that were committed, and dismissals that occurred before November 1974 may still be the subject of claims if they were not resolved at the time. More practically, the principle Article 293 embodies — that accrued rights under an old law are not swept away by new legislation — is a general rule that courts apply broadly. Understanding that the Labor Code contains an explicit transitional provision helps explain why older claims are evaluated by different standards and why a practitioner will always ask not just what the Labor Code says, but what the law said on the date the claim arose.
Note on article numbering
The articles of the Labor Code have been administratively renumbered over time, so the same provision is sometimes cited under a different number in older documents and court decisions. The same provision is published here under its original numbering. If you are reading a document that cites a different article number for what appears to be the same rule, it may be referring to Article 293 under a later renumbering. The text of the rule itself — that pre-Code claims follow the law in force at accrual — has not changed.