Short answer. Yes. Article 116 of the Labor Code makes it unlawful for anyone, directly or indirectly, to withhold any amount from a worker's wages, or to induce a worker to give up part of them by force, stealth, intimidation, threat or any other means, without that worker's consent.
What the law says
It shall be unlawful for any person, directly or indirectly, to withhold any amount from the wages of a worker or induce him to give up any part of his wages by force, stealth, intimidation, threat or by any other means whatsoever without the worker’s consent.
Labor Code, Article 116 — Withholding And Kickbacks Prohibited. Read the full provision →
Consent is the hinge
The provision turns on a single fact: whether you agreed. It forbids withholding any amount from the wages of a worker, and equally forbids inducing him to give up any part of his wages. An employer who keeps back a slice of your pay because you resigned without serving notice, because stock went missing, or because a client has not yet settled its bill is withholding wages — none of those is your consent. Nor does agreement extracted by force, stealth, intimidation, threat count, since consent obtained that way is precisely what the article was written to defeat.
Why 'directly or indirectly' matters
That phrase catches arrangements where the money never reaches you at all — pay routed through a supervisor who takes a share, a cash bond netted off at source, a collection taken at the door on payday. It also catches the employer who never touches your wages himself but arranges for someone else to. And the prohibition binds any person, not just the company on your contract: a manager, a team leader or a middleman who takes a cut falls within the same words, and cannot shelter behind the fact that he does not sign the payroll.
Not every reduction in take-home pay is this
The article bars withholding without the worker's consent; it does not make every shortfall unlawful. Statutory contributions, tax withheld at source and the deductions the Labor Code separately authorises are not what this provision is aimed at. What matters is whether the amount was taken for the employer's own benefit or convenience, and whether you genuinely agreed. A written authorisation you signed knowingly, for a purpose that benefits you, sits very differently from a blanket clause in a hiring form letting management deduct whatever it later decides you owe.
What settles it in practice
The case is usually made on paper. Set your payslips against the rate stated in your contract and the hours you actually worked; the gap, repeated over several pay periods, is the claim. Keep the payroll register or bank credit advice showing what was actually released, any memo announcing the deduction, and anything you were asked to sign in exchange. Where the deduction was demanded face to face and never written down, record the date, the amount and who asked — an unrecorded deduction is no less unlawful, but it still has to be proved by something.