House wants transfers, 45-day period eliminated

House members unanimously passed yesterday a bill that aims to stop the transfer of nonresident workers, eliminate the 45-day grace period, and require garment employers to repatriate any displaced workers in case of downsizing or closure of factories.

House Bill 14-142, which offers major amendments to the Nonresident Workers Act, also reaffirms the 15,727-worker cap on the garment industry and “allows a reallocation of workers should any company closes down.”

“If you reduce your workers from 500 to 300, your allocation remains there. In the event that you want to increase it again, you’d be given the same number. The allocation remains with the employer. It won’t be given away to other employers,” said House majority leader Rep. Oscar M. Babauta.

He said this is a different approach than what the Department of Labor is doing now, which asks garment factories wanting to hire workers to use displaced workers.

“What the administration is doing now is imposing a mandatory hiring or rather reallocation of those displaced workers into factories that may have exceeded way above and beyond their [allowed] number,” said Babuata.

Rep. Heinz S. Hofschneider said the government’s approach gives the employers no choice but to hire from the present pool of displaced workers.

“Employers have no right to refuse. It’s like, ‘Are you hungry? Here’s a chicken leg. Eat it,’” said Hofschneider.

Babauta said HB 14-142 also clarifies that the employers are responsible for repatriating displaced workers pursuant to employment contracts and the present law.

“We can’t just wait around and have the government contemplate where to bring these employees. The employers should repatriate them. We don’t want employees here to be in limbo,” said Babauta.

Labor and immigration officials earlier said that repatriating displaced workers is not easy since the law allows them to transfer to other employers and they have 45 days to do so.

“Those are eliminated in HB-14-142,” said Babauta.

The bill, authored by Rep. Ray Yumul, originally called for the lifting of the hiring moratorium within the garment industry, but this provision had been scrapped during amendments.

Among others, HB-14-142 aims to expedite labor processing by reducing the number of documents employers are required to submit to the Department of Labor. It also aims to streamline the hearing process and frees the department from having to investigate all complaints. The changes allow complaints to proceed from mediation directly to hearings.

The bill also removes the waiver on the mandatory hiring of a minimum percentage of local workers.

“Taking away the discretion to waive the minimum percentage of resident workers will force the employer to hire resident workers,” said House Committee on Commerce chair Rep. Martin Ada in a report on HB14-142.

Further, the committee also said that allowing nonresident workers to have second job is “inconsistent with the original intent of the Nonresident Act.”

Further, the committee said that transfers, consensual, or otherwise, of employees must be stopped as it “spawned an illegal market for dishonest employers and agents in which slots are sold to employers who do not have expiration or replacement slots.”

It also said there is a trend in the garment industry in which employees file frivolous complaints to obtain temporary work authorizations and transfer to other company that pays more overtime hours.

The committee said that, as embodied in the bill, employees should be required to pay a percentage of their medical expenses.

“The employers of resident workers in the private sector are not required to pay for the resident workers’ medical expenses,” said the committee.

H.B. 14-142 now goes to the Senate for action.