Lawmakers question ‘policy shift’ at Labor

House lawmakers are probing the CNMI Department of Labor on scores of key issues linked to the regulation of the local alien workforce, raising serious questions in a letter delivered Friday on the department’s enforcement of labor rules and its treatment of foreign workers who are the parents of disabled children.

The letter’s release came on the same day as a statement by Deputy Labor Secretary Cinta Kaipat pointing to recent media coverage applauding labor policies protecting foreign workers in a U.S. mainland county that mirror those of the CNMI.

Reps. Tina Sablan (I-Saipan) and Edward Salas (R-Saipan), in a letter to Labor Secretary Gil San Nicolas, point to a recent policy change at Labor, among other issues, that directs workers with unpaid administrative orders—rulings that they can collect back wages or other payments from their prior employers—to pursue their case in small claims court rather than through the department.

This policy “appears to shift the burden” of enforcing regulations out of Labor’s hands and into those of foreign workers, a change that “unduly burdens victims of labor abuse,” the lawmakers say in the letter.

In a previous statement published in the Saipan Tribune, Kaipat said this new policy stems from a shortage of staff at the department.

Yet Sablan and Salas nonetheless say this is problematic for workers, and indicates the department is incapable of doing its job. The lawmakers ask Labor to clarify its stance on the issue and for an update on the number of unpaid administrative orders.

“Victims must now not only pay the small claims fee and fill out the necessary small claims forms, they must also serve their claims on the employer who has failed to pay them wages earned and/or failed to follow the orders issued by the Department of Labor,” the letter adds. “Moreover, this new policy of referring workers with unpaid awards to small claims court suggests that the department is unable or unwilling to effectively enforce its own orders.”

Foreign workers are now preparing a possible class suit against Labor, contending it has failed to fulfill its enforcement duties by foregoing action on administrative orders linked to unpaid claims insurance claims.

Foreign workers with U.S. citizen children, including those who are the parents of children with disabilities, are a further issue in the letter. Labor has said it is crafting so-called “hardship provisions” that could address the needs of foreign workers facing unusual or undue burdens such as those of the parents and the letter urges the department to clarify whether it is granting extended time for those foreign workers to find jobs.

“[F]oreign national workers with U.S. citizen children, including U.S. citizen children having documented physical and mental disabilities, are now being ordered to depart the CNMI, rather than being granted additional time to secure job transfers,” the letter says.

“We are concerned that repatriation orders despite circumstances of extreme or unusual hardship, may lead to a greater public burden (i.e., children with disabilities becoming wards of the state) than if foreign national workers petitioning for hardship consideration were simply granted additional time to find new jobs.”

Due process concerns are also a prevalent theme in the letter. For example, the lawmakers question why the officers who hear workers’ appeals of the department’s decisions are often the same ones who denied the original case, a point they asked the department to verify and explain.

The lawmakers also inquired in the letter about some of Kaipat’s recent public comments, which they say suggest she harbors a bias against foreign workers.

The letter urges Labor to respond within 10 days.

In contrast to the concerns, Kaipat in an Aug. 8 statement pointed to a report last month in The Washington Post on the efforts for domestic workers in Montgomery County, Maryland, to gain better working conditions through a law approved by the county’s council mandating their employers give them written contracts, a system the CNMI has long had in place.

“Written contracts for foreign workers have been a staple of Commonwealth law from the beginning,” Kaipat said. “We have had written contracts for houseworkers since 1983. We in the Commonwealth are often criticized unjustly because people do not know about the extensive protections our laws provide. Compared to most states, we have far better labor laws protecting foreign workers.”

In Maryland, for example, domestic workers are excluded from most federal labor protections such as those that require a safe workplace, a source in the Post’s article notes. Yet Kaipat said the CNMI has strong workplace safety rules.

“Commonwealth law mandates safe work places for all foreign workers, and this protection is backed up by inspectors from the Labor Department who inspect the workplaces of all new employers of foreign workers,” Kaipat said. “We also do periodic health and safety inspections of workplaces to make sure they meet our standards.”