Clarify vague provisions of Fair Wage Act – Chamber

When the cash equivalent or benefit compensation is paid to a resident worker, such additional benefit should not considered a part of the “regular rate” and be used as basis in calculating overtime pay.

This was the recommendation presented by the Saipan Chamber of Commerce to House Speaker Diego T. Benavente ahead of plans by the Legislature to take up the new Resident Workers Fair Compensation Act.

In the first place, it was not the intention of the proposed law to include the equivalent cash or benefit compensation in the “regular rate” in determining the overtime pay, wrote David A. Wiseman, chairman of the Government Relations Committee, to Benavente.

The business community has expressed its appreciation to the Legislature for accommodating its recommendations to amend the controversial Fair Wage Act.

What was to become an unworkable and problematic set of regulations that would attempt to implement the Resident Workers Fair Compensation Act has been discarded and transformed into a proposed legislation that still carries the Legislature’s desires and policies in providing equal compensation to resident workers, said Wiseman.

The Legislature is set to pass a new measure that will eventually repeal The Resident Workers Fair Compensation Act, otherwise known as Public Law 11-74, after the Chamber and the Hotel Association of Northern Mariana Islands complained of its ambiguous provisions.

HANMI and the Chamber emphasized that they are in favor providing resident workers the same benefits extended to foreign workers on top of their salaries. However, they do not believe that the measure can accomplish that goal without resulting to inequities and negative impact on employment in the CNMI.

Public Law 11-74 states that locals, whose wages are still below the prevailing minimum level in the United States, are entitled to receive in-kind or the cash equivalent of the full benefits granted to guest workers, such as subsidized food, housing, local transportation, health insurance and medical care.

The law, which was signed by Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio in March, provided that local residents earning less than an hourly wage of $5.15 to receive all benefits extended to foreign workers as mandated by existing laws.