‘Longer hiring extension for alien workers’

The Office of Personnel Management opposes the passage of a pending bill that would give only two years extension to certain government agencies to hire nonresident professionals.

OPM director Juan I. Tenorio said that the legislative proposal, which also keeps the one-year limit on contracts, “serves no purpose.”

“I cannot support this bill [House Bill 14-344] as written. …The limit of the hiring privilege to only two years serves no purpose. The Commonwealth will not have sufficient resident engineers, architects, engineering technicians within two years to preclude the need to revisit this bill at that time. …The expectation that this need will end in a two-year period is unrealistic and simply places an unnecessary administrative burden on both the Legislature and the concerned activities,” said Tenorio in a position paper addressed to the Senate.

As endorsed by a conference committee, H.B. 14-344 aims to extend for another two years the hiring of nonresident workers at the Department of Public Works, Commonwealth Utilities Corp., and Department of Commerce, and five years for nonresident workers at the Department of Public Health.

“There is no reason to waste the Legislature’s time or the time of the involved activities and employees in such a meaningless exercise. I urge you to provide these activities with the same five-year extension provided the DPH,” said the official.

Further, Tenorio said the one-year limit on the contracts for nurses and other healthcare professionals and one-year contract renewal for physicians place unnecessary administrative burden as well as increased costs in recruitment and repatriation.

For instance, Tenorio said that the expatriation and repatriation costs for a family of four could be in excess of $10,000 each time, and an additional cost of more than $20,000 is possible by limiting the contracts to a one-year period. He said the recruiting cost for each physician can range from $18,000 to $26,000.

The OPM director believes that two-year contracts and two-year renewals “are economically beneficial to the Commonwealth and have no negative aspects.”

Tenorio also said that the provision on housing allowance should be removed as benefits and administrative issues are better addressed by regulation, not law.

He further said that limiting the housing allowance to one year as proposed would result in the Commonwealth losing most of its currently contracted professional employees and failing to recruit replacements with the loss of benefit.

Tenorio agreed that the legislation is very important as it ensures continuous provision of healthcare and other basic services in the Commonwealth. He noted that all nonresident workers’ permits expire in two weeks, in accordance with the sunset provision of hiring guest workers. He has problems, though, with its provisions.