Short answer. No. Article 296 of the Labor Code itself terminated the old workmen's compensation program, letting the Bureau of Workmen's Compensation, the Workmen's Compensation Commission, and the regional Workmen's Compensation Units keep jurisdiction only until March 31, 1976, after which those offices were abolished and their staff absorbed by the Department of Labor.
What the law says
The Bureau of Workmen’s Compensation, Workmen’s Compensation Commission, and Workmen’s Compensation Units in the regional offices of the Department of Labor shall continue to exercise the functions and the respective jurisdictions over workmen’s compensation cases vested upon them by Act No. 3428, as amended, otherwise known as the Workmen’s Compensation Act until March 31, 1976.
Labor Code, Article 296 — Ending The Compensation Program. Read the full provision →
What the law says
Thereafter, said offices shall be considered abolished and all officials and personnel thereof shall be transferred to and mandatorily absorbed by the Department of Labor, subject to Presidential Decree No. 6, Letters of Instructions Nos. 14 and 14-A and the Civil Service Law and rules.
Labor Code, Article 296 — Ending The Compensation Program. Read the full provision →
What Article 296 actually did
Article 296 sits in Book VII of the Labor Code, the Transitory and Final Provisions — a part of the Code written to wind down the system that existed before the Labor Code itself took effect. Before 1974, work-injury claims were handled under Act No. 3428, the old Workmen's Compensation Act, through the Bureau of Workmen's Compensation, the Workmen's Compensation Commission, and its regional units. Rather than closing those bodies overnight, Article 296 gave them a fixed window to keep functioning and finish the cases already before them, while the newer Labor Code framework took hold.
The cutoff date that mattered
That window ended on March 31, 1976. Until then, the Bureau, the Commission and the regional units kept the same jurisdiction over workmen's compensation cases that Act No. 3428 had given them. The incumbent commissioners, including the Chairman, were deemed retired as of December 31, 1975, but the article let existing staff continue working through the transition period rather than being let go immediately, which points to how deliberately staged this wind-down was meant to be.
What happened after the cutoff
Once March 31, 1976 passed, the article says those offices shall be considered abolished, and every official and employee still there was mandatorily absorbed by the Department of Labor, subject to the Civil Service Law and a couple of named issuances governing that absorption. So the specific bodies named in Article 296 — the old Bureau, Commission, and regional units — no longer exist as separate agencies; their people and functions moved inside the Department of Labor itself decades ago.
Why this article shows up in research today
Article 296 is a historical marker rather than a live claims procedure — its operative dates are all in the 1970s, so nobody today is filing a claim with the "Workmen's Compensation Commission" as such. It matters mainly to explain why an old case citation or a family document referencing that Commission is not describing a body you can still write to. Even the wind-down's operating costs, drawn from the Department's unprogrammed funds, were a one-time appropriation tied to that 1976 cutoff, not a continuing budget line.
Related provisions
- Labor Code, Article 295 — Funding Of Two Boards
- Labor Code, Article 297 — Existing Policies And Bonds