Short answer. No. Article 95 of the Labor Code excludes establishments regularly employing fewer than ten employees from the duty to give five days of yearly service incentive leave. With eight employees, the business falls below that threshold and is not required to grant this particular benefit under this article.
What the law says
Every employee who has rendered at least one year of service shall be entitled to a yearly service incentive leave of five days with pay. This provision shall not apply to those who are already enjoying the benefit herein provided, those enjoying vacation leave with pay of at least five days and those employed in establishments regularly employing less than ten employees or in establishments exempted from granting this benefit by the Secretary of Labor and Employment after considering the viability or financial condition of such establishment.
Labor Code, Article 95 — Service Incentive Leave. Read the full provision →
The general entitlement
Article 95 opens with the baseline rule: every employee who has rendered at least one year of service shall be entitled to a yearly service incentive leave of five days with pay. This is the default most employees can expect once they hit the one-year mark. But the article immediately qualifies who this applies to, and one of those qualifications is built directly around the size of the employer.
The small-establishment exclusion
The article states that its entitlement shall not apply to ... those employed in establishments regularly employing less than ten employees. An employer with eight employees, regularly, falls under that threshold — the entitlement to service incentive leave under this article simply does not extend to that establishment's employees. The exclusion is tied to the size of the workforce the establishment regularly employs, not to the industry, the nature of the work, or how long the business has existed.
The other exclusions in the same sentence
The under-ten-employee exclusion is one of three the article lists together. It also excludes employees already enjoying the benefit herein provided, meaning those who already receive an equivalent leave benefit, and those enjoying vacation leave with pay of at least five days. A third path exists as well — establishments exempted from granting this benefit by the Secretary of Labor and Employment after considering the viability or financial condition of such establishment. Each of these operates independently of the employee-count exclusion.
What "regularly employing" means for your count
Because the exclusion turns on the number the establishment regularly employs, a business that occasionally dips to eight but usually runs above ten would not automatically qualify for the exclusion, and one that occasionally rises above ten but usually runs at eight would likely still fall under it. The article itself does not define exactly how that regular headcount is measured, so where the number genuinely fluctuates around the threshold, that is a factual question about the establishment's actual staffing pattern rather than something this article's text resolves on its own.