Teno vetoes amendment on garment workers

Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio yesterday disapproved a proposed amendment to a law that sets the cap on the number of guest workers in the garment industry in fear that it could open up a loophole to increase, instead of reduce, the sector’s foreign labor pool.

The veto came on the day of his departure for Washington D.C. to attend next week’s congressional hearings tackling local labor and immigration reforms.

“I am concerned it would undermine the intentions of Public Law 11-76 and potentially create an environment in which the total number of alien workers in the garment industry will never be reduced,” the governor said in his veto message.

The amendment proposed under the legislation offered by Rep. Oscar M. Babauta was aimed at clarifying a key provision in PL 11-76 which provides an attrition scheme.

According to lawmakers, such provision only applies to garment firms found to be violating local and federal laws or those that have shut down, but does not include companies merging or restructuring their operations.

But Tenorio said this amendment contradicts the intent of both PL 11-76 and PL 11-6 that imposes selective ban on the hiring of manpower from abroad.

“Instead of reducing the number of alien workers in the CNMI, this amendment would create a loophole to allow the garment manufacturing industry the ability to evade reductions to the number of alien workers,” said the governor.

He asked the Legislature to give time to the regulations set out on these two laws which are part of the reform measures implemented by his administration to curb the population of nonresident workers in the Northern Marianas.

These were “enacted in order to create a meaningful cap, and to reduce the number of nonresident workers,” Tenorio explained. “We need to give these two laws reasonable time to continue before imposing amendments which depart from their original intent.”

Introduced last April, the amendment was prompted by reports that the Department of Labor and Immigration had been denying applications for work permit by some garment factories who decided to merge operations with another firm.

Senate Floor Leader Pete P. Reyes, during the Senate deliberation in June, criticized government lawyers for misinterpreting provisions of the law that this business merger only means that it loses the quota of manpower as stipulated.

The island government has implemented these reforms in efforts to thwart attempts by Washington to strip CNMI authority over its labor and immigration functions.