Short answer. No. Article 280 provides that any employee who has rendered at least one year of service, whether continuous or broken, is considered a regular employee with respect to the activity they are engaged in, and that employment continues for as long as that activity exists — regardless of what label the employer keeps using.
What the law says
Regular and casual employment. The provisions of written agreement to the contrary notwithstanding and regardless of the oral agreement of the parties, an employment shall be deemed to be regular where the employee has been engaged to perform activities which are usually necessary or desirable in the usual business or trade of the employer, except where the employment has been fixed for a specific project or undertaking the completion or termination of which has been determined at the time of the engagement of the employee or where the work or service to be performed is seasonal in nature and the employment is for the duration of the season. An employment shall be deemed to be casual if it is not covered by the preceding paragraph: Provided, That any employee who has rendered at least one year of service, whether such service is continuous or broken, shall be considered a regular employee with respect to the activity in which he is employed and his employment shall continue while such activity exists.
Labor Code, Article 280 — Regular And Casual Employment. Read the full provision →
The one-year threshold overrides the label
Article 280 is explicit that a casual employee who has rendered at least one year of service, whether that service was continuous or broken up over separate engagements, becomes a regular employee with respect to the activity they were hired to perform. The article applies this rule notwithstanding any written agreement to the contrary and regardless of any oral agreement between the parties. An employer cannot preserve 'casual' status past that one-year mark simply by calling the arrangement casual or by having the worker sign paperwork that says so.
What actually determines regular status in the first place
Before the one-year rule even comes into play, Article 280 deems employment regular where the employee performs activities usually necessary or desirable in the employer's usual business or trade, unless the work was fixed for a specific project or undertaking with a determined completion date, or is seasonal and lasts only for the season. Employment is casual only if it does not fall under that regular-employment description. So an employer cannot use the casual label for work that is, by its nature, part of the ordinary business, no matter how the contract is worded.
Repeated renewal does not reset the clock
Because the one-year count runs on service that may be continuous or broken, an employer renewing short-term or casual engagements one after another does not avoid the rule by keeping each individual contract under a year. Article 280 looks at the cumulative period the employee has actually rendered service in that activity, not at how the engagements were sliced up on paper.
What regular status under this article covers
Once the one-year threshold is met, regular status attaches specifically to the activity the employee is engaged in, and the employment continues while that activity exists. The article does not itself detail severance procedures, benefits, or what happens once the underlying activity ends; it establishes the status, and the consequences that flow from being a regular employee are governed by the rest of the Labor Code's provisions on regular employment.