Short answer. Yes. Article 89 lists this as one of five recognized grounds for requiring overtime: when the work is necessary to prevent loss or damage to perishable goods. As with the other grounds, an employee required to work this overtime must still be paid the additional compensation the Labor Code provides.
What the law says
When the work is necessary to prevent loss or damage to perishable goods
Labor Code, Article 89 — Emergency Overtime Work. Read the full provision →
What the law says
Any employee required to render overtime work under this Article shall be paid the additional compensation required in this Chapter.
Labor Code, Article 89 — Emergency Overtime Work. Read the full provision →
The perishable-goods ground
Article 89 lists five separate grounds on which an employer may require overtime work, and the fourth addresses your situation directly: when the work is necessary to prevent loss or damage to perishable goods. If overtime is genuinely needed to stop perishable goods from spoiling — meaning the loss or damage would happen without the extra work — this ground gives the employer a recognized legal basis to require it under the article.
Why perishable goods get their own ground
The article singles out perishable goods because the underlying problem, spoilage, cannot simply wait until the next working day the way many other tasks can. Once goods begin to spoil, the loss is often immediate and cannot be recovered afterward, which is presumably why the article treats this as its own distinct ground rather than folding it into the general language about preventing loss or damage to property covered elsewhere in the article.
How this ground compares to the others
This perishable-goods ground sits alongside four others: a declared war or national or local emergency; preventing loss of life or property, or addressing imminent danger to public safety from disasters like fire, flood, or earthquake; urgent work on machines, installations, or equipment to avoid serious loss or damage; and completing work already started before the eighth hour where stopping would seriously obstruct the employer's business. Each ground is independent, so overtime required to save perishable goods does not need to also fit one of the other four categories.
Overtime pay is not affected
Being required to work overtime under this ground still comes with the same compensation guarantee the article applies across all five. It states that any employee required to render overtime work under this Article shall be paid the additional compensation required in this Chapter. So overtime worked specifically to prevent perishable goods from spoiling has to be paid at the additional rate the Labor Code sets for overtime generally, the same as any other ground under this article.