$1.6M for garment workers

The Garment Oversight Board has issued 11,353 new checks and will be sending out 1,031 more to some current and former garment workers in connection with the class action against the garment industry.

In total, the 12,384 checks are worth $1,599,495. All the checks have the same amount of $145, according to GOB chair Timothy Bellas.

Saipan Tribune learned that some former and current garment workers who are still in the CNMI started receiving the checks last week. The checks are the second they received under the settlement.

Bellas said they started sending the 11,353 checks in mid-June and the second batch will be sent by July 26 or 28.

“It’s for the total number of people that are entitled to checks based on the settlement agreement. It’s [for] the people who cashed the first checks,” the former judge said.

Bellas said the checks were sent or will be sent not only to the eligible workers who are still in the CNMI but also to those in other countries.

“If they’re here on Saipan and they don’t come in and tell us, if [we have their address] in their home country, that’s where the checks will go. That’s been a subject of confusion; they are all coming in now saying ‘I’m here.’ If you don’t come in and tell us that, we have no way of knowing that that you’re [still] here,” he said.

Bellas said they have been issuing the checks in batches and that he has only three staff, including a part-time employee, who have been working on the checks to explain why it has taken some time to issue the checks.

“They [GOB staff] have to put the address on [the envelopes]. They have to put the checks in. And they have to take it to the post office and they have to put postage [on each envelope],” he said.

GOB has been distributing the checks to get rid of the leftover money from the settlement funds.

“The idea is to pass on whatever is leftover because this is not based on their how long the [garment workers] worked or anything. This is just to finish up the money,” Bellas said.

After the money goes out, there won’t be any further distributions, he said. Any money that is left over will be placed in a Garment Workers Trust Fund to fund things as the GOB deems appropriate.

“We have to see first how much money is left but, for instance, if there is some sort of a problem with garment workers that we need to help,” GOB could use the leftover funds, he said.

Bellas said the Garment Workers Trust Fund will be funded based on the checks that come back or don’t get cashed.

After the first distribution of checks, GOB re-issued some of the checks because some workers said they did not receive the checks for some reasons. GOB also issued some new checks for eligible workers who are in the CNMI but never got on the list.

GOB was set up pursuant to the $20-million settlement agreement to oversee the monitoring program of the garment industry.

Before the remaining money was transferred to GOB last year, a company that was tasked to distribute the funds to the workers informed the U.S. District Court for the NMI that it successfully mailed out almost 29,800 checks to individuals located in 17 countries.

The claims administrator reported that, of the 29,771 checks originally issued to the workers, 13,725 checks were cashed.

The total cash distribution, the administrator said, represented by these checks amounted to $2,282,835.89, out of an initial net fund of $3,977,674.68.