The official paper
Study path on LaborCode.ph
Use the official paper, then work through the questions. Start with the Supreme Court questionnaire. Find each question’s topic and governing provision, open the linked LaborCode guide to check the rule and exceptions, then draft your own answer before comparing it with the source. This page classifies questions; it does not provide model answers.
Browse the Labor Law reviewer for the wider subject map, or see how 2026’s paper compared on the 2026 Labor Law questions page.
What the paper covered
LaborCode’s classification, mapped against the eight parts of the Supreme Court’s syllabus: the twenty questions fell like this. View the official syllabus and coverage.
In LaborCode’s classification, a quarter of the paper concerned suspension and termination — constructive dismissal, the backwages that follow a finding either way, a dismissal for neglect of duty, and a contested reassignment. Basic principles and recruitment and placement again drew no standalone question, continuing the pattern seen in 2026.
Question by question
For the 2026 paper, this site could classify questions against the Court’s own numbering because the released questionnaire was directly on hand. For 2025, the Court’s file could not be opened in this research pass (see Method), so the table below is built from the fact pattern of each question rather than from a confirmed official number. Where more than one independent account of the paper agrees on a question’s position, that position is given as “reported as Q#”; treat it as a reader convenience, not a confirmed citation to the Court’s sequence.
Part III — Employment relationship
| Reported as | What it tests | Governing provision | Read more |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q3 | Probationary employment — whether a probation period already running may be validly extended beyond six months by written agreement, and dismissal for failing the standards during the extension.[1] | Art. 296 [281], Labor Code | The six-month probationary period |
| Q7 | Independent-contractor labelling against the reality of control — gym instructors reclassified as “freelancers” while the gym kept directing their schedules, rates and methods. | Art. 295 [280]; four-fold and economic-reality tests | The four-fold test |
| Q12 | Legitimate contracting under D.O. 174 — whether a principal (a real-estate developer) answers for a registered contractor’s underpayment of its own workers’ wages. | Arts. 106–109, Labor Code; D.O. 174-17 | Labor-only and legitimate contracting |
Part IV — Labor standards
| Reported as | What it tests | Governing provision | Read more |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q4 (disputed) | Hours of work — a demand for twenty continuous hours of work on a concrete-pouring schedule, and whether this can be compelled as ordinary overtime rather than the narrow emergency grounds the Code allows. | Arts. 87–89, 92, Labor Code | Not yet covered on this site |
| Q8 | Equal pay for equal work — a school paying one class of teachers more than another doing the same work, where the only stated difference is where each was hired or trained from.[2] | Art. 135, Labor Code; equal-pay doctrine | Salary differential |
| Q14 | Wage distortion — a regional wage order raising the floor at one branch, and whether the employer must extend the same peso increase to the other branches to preserve the pay structure.[3] | Art. 124, Labor Code | Not yet covered on this site |
Part V — Labor relations
| Reported as | What it tests | Governing provision | Read more |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q2 | Unfair labor practice — an employer granting benefits only to employees who graduated from one particular school, and whether that arbitrary line amounts to unlawful discrimination rather than a legitimate classification.[2] | Book V, Title VI-A, Labor Code (unfair labor practice of employers) | Unfair labor practice |
| Q5 | Union security clause — whether a closed-shop or maintenance-of-membership clause may validly be enforced against employees hired before the clause took effect. | Art. 259 [248](e), Labor Code (by report; see note below) | Not yet covered on this site |
| Q13 | Concerted activity by government personnel — a mass leave of absence demanding a salary increase, and whether it is a strike the civil service may validly discipline despite the constitutional right to self-organization. | E.O. 180 (1987); 1987 Constitution, Art. IX-B, Sec. 2(5) | Not yet covered on this site |
| Q18 | Certification election — a rival union challenging the incumbent bargaining agent while a collective bargaining agreement is still in force, and the contract-bar rule that limits when this is allowed. | Art. 268 [256]–269 [257], Labor Code | Not yet covered on this site |
Part VI — Suspension and termination
| Reported as | What it tests | Governing provision | Read more |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | Constructive dismissal — an employee who resigned after repeated public humiliation by a company officer following a minor workplace accident, and whether that resignation was truly voluntary.[4] | Art. 294 [279], Labor Code; constructive-dismissal doctrine | Not yet covered on this site |
| Q9 | Backwages — a labor arbiter’s finding that there was neither a dismissal nor an abandonment, and whether backwages may still be awarded in the absence of either. | Art. 294 [279], Labor Code | Backwages calculation |
| Q15 | Backwages — the reckoning period for a valid award, from the date compensation was withheld to the finality of the decision, where dismissal is found illegal.[5] | Art. 294 [279], Labor Code | Backwages calculation |
| Q16 | Just cause — gross and habitual neglect of duty, where a single serious lapse (loss of high-value goods entrusted to the employee) is argued to satisfy “habitual” neglect on its own. | Art. 297 [282](b), Labor Code | Not yet covered on this site |
| Q19 | Transfer and insubordination — security guards reassigned to a new post who refused the transfer, and whether the refusal was valid insubordination or a response to a transfer made in bad faith.[6] | Management prerogative; Art. 297 [282](a), Labor Code | Not yet covered on this site |
Part VII — Social legislation
| Reported as | What it tests | Governing provision | Read more |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q11 | Maternity leave — an employer refusing a sixth maternity leave on the theory that the law caps paid maternity leave at a fixed number of pregnancies.[7] | RA 11210, Sec. 3 | Salary differential (maternity pay) |
| Q17 | Kasambahay coverage — whether a domestic worker is entitled to service incentive leave or its cash equivalent, and how that differs from the leave rules for ordinary private-sector employees. | RA 10361, Secs. 29–30 | Kasambahay rights and benefits |
Part VIII — Labor adjudication
| Reported as | What it tests | Governing provision | Read more |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q4 (disputed) | Jurisdiction — a government-owned or controlled corporation without an original charter dismisses an employee, who files with the NLRC while the employer argues the Civil Service Commission has sole authority.[8] | 1987 Constitution, Art. IX-B, Sec. 2(1) | Not yet covered on this site |
Three things the 2025 paper tells you
Equal treatment in pay and benefits was tested twice
Two separate questions — the alma-mater benefit differential and the teacher pay gap — turn on the same doctrine: a line drawn between employees doing the same work, on a ground that has nothing to do with the work itself, does not survive scrutiny merely because it is written into a policy.[2] That makes equal-pay-for-equal-work a theme worth over-preparing relative to its single-topic weight.
Jurisdiction keeps showing up as its own issue
At least one question turns on which forum hears the case rather than on the underlying right — here, whether a GOCC employee’s dismissal belongs to the NLRC or the Civil Service Commission. The 2026 paper showed the same pattern across three separate questions. Treat the jurisdictional boundary between the Civil Service and the Labor Code — original charter or none — as a recurring, practical revision point rather than a one-off.
Old doctrines, current fact patterns
As in 2026, the 2025 paper is reported to apply settled rules to how people actually work now: gym instructors labelled as freelancers, a maternity-leave denial premised on a rule the law no longer contains, and a wage question built around a single branch’s pay scale rather than a government wage order. None of this is new law. It is the four-fold test, Article 124, and RA 11210 applied to contemporary disputes.
What this site does not yet explain
Of the questions this run could classify, a full guide already exists for five, and a partial one for two more. The rest have nothing yet. Rather than paper over that, here is the list, and each is being written.
- Wage distortion under Article 124, and whether an employer’s own pay-scale revision (rather than a wage order) can trigger the duty to restore differentials
- Union security clauses and whether they bind employees hired before the clause took effect
- Concerted activity by government personnel, and the line between a protected grievance and a strike the civil service may discipline
- Certification elections and the contract-bar rule
- Gross and habitual neglect of duty, and whether one serious incident can satisfy a standard that uses the word “habitual”
- Transfer orders, management prerogative, and when a refusal to transfer is valid insubordination rather than a reasonable response to bad faith
- Compulsory overtime limits on continuous work
- The jurisdictional line between the Civil Service Commission and the NLRC for GOCC employees
Frequently asked questions
Where can I download the 2025 Labor Law Bar Exam questions?
View the official Supreme Court questionnaire. LaborCode could not mirror a local copy in this update; the link above goes directly to the Court’s own server.
When was the 2025 Labor Law Bar Exam held?
On the afternoon of Wednesday, 10 September 2025, as the second paper of that day after Civil Law. See the official Bar Bulletin.
How many questions were in the 2025 Labor Law paper?
Twenty essay questions, each worth 5% of the Labor Law paper, which is itself 10% of the overall Bar.
Does this page classify all twenty questions with equal confidence?
No, and it says so above rather than hiding it. Eighteen questions are classified by topic and governing provision. One question’s content could not be corroborated this run and is left unclassified; a further item attributed to this paper by one source reads as unrelated to Labor Law and has been excluded rather than guessed at. See Method.
Does this page include suggested answers?
No. It is a question-and-doctrine index, not an answer key. Use each linked guide to study the governing rule, evidence and exceptions, and the official questionnaire for the exact call of each question.
Which Labor Law topics appeared most often in 2025?
Under LaborCode’s classification, suspension and termination was the largest group with five questions, and labor relations followed with four. The official questionnaire is the source for the questions; the classification is LaborCode’s editorial analysis.
Is the maternity-leave question in this paper really about a cap on the number of pregnancies?
As reported, yes — and if so, the employer’s position described is contrary to current law. RA 11210 grants 105-day maternity leave “to female workers in every instance of pregnancy… regardless of frequency,” language that replaced the old four-pregnancy ceiling under the prior SSS maternity-benefit rules.[7]
Conclusion
The 2025 Labor Law and Social Legislation paper, on the pattern reported by the sources available this run, leaned heavily on suspension and termination and on labor relations, while giving employment relationship and labor standards a smaller but still solid share. Basic principles and recruitment and placement drew nothing standalone, for the second year running. The most useful habit for a reader working through this page is the same one the page itself tries to model: check every classification against the official questionnaire rather than taking any secondary account, including this one, at face value.
Method
The classification is ours, not the Supreme Court’s, and for this particular year it rests on weaker footing than usual. For the 2026 paper, this site classified questions directly from the Court’s released file. For 2025, the Court’s own server could not be reached in this research pass — it refused the secure connection needed to retrieve and mirror the file, the same way its web pages did not load for direct review — so this page instead cross-checks the fact pattern of each question against more than one independently authored account of the paper that candidates and reviewers have since shared. Where two or more independent accounts agreed on both the content and the position of a question, that position is given as “reported as Q#.” Where accounts conflicted (Question 4) or where a account could not be corroborated at all (two further items), this page says so rather than picking one version to present as settled. One account’s description of a “Question 20” discusses a court-administered judicial wellness programme with no apparent Labor Law content; the most likely explanation is a page-extraction error pulling in unrelated material from the source document, so it has not been treated as part of this paper. Every governing-provision citation above names the provision it rests on, and the official questionnaire is linked throughout so a reader can check the actual call of each question once the Court’s file is reachable to them. This page will be updated to classify directly from the official file once it can be retrieved.
Sources and legal citations
This page is a study aid, not legal advice, and it is not affiliated with the Supreme Court or with any review centre. Sources rechecked as of: 5 October 2026.
LaborCode.ph Editorial Team