Pacific Rim faces lawsuit for allegedly laying off over 180 employees

A group of former Pacific Rim Land Development LLC employees have filed a lawsuit against their employer alleging violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act for allegedly laying off over 180 employees without adequate notice.

Plaintiffs Martin Dela Cruz Jr., Martin Dela Cruz, and Christopher LeeDelrio, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated, have filed a complaint against Pacific Rim alleging violation of the WARN Act a law that protects workers from mass layoffs without adequate notice.

The workers are filing their complaint with the U.S, District Court for the NMI alleging Pacific Rim of implementing a mass layoff that affected them and over 100 others similarly situated employees without giving adequate notice.

The plaintiffs are demanding a jury trial on this matter.

As relief, the plaintiffs are asking the court to grant them a judgment against Pacific Rim equal to the sum of their unpaid wages, salary, and benefits for 60 days.

In addition, the plaintiffs want the court to certify the action as class action, designate plaintiffs as class representatives, appoint an attorney as a class counsel, and payments for attorneys’ fees and the costs and disbursements that the plaintiffs incurred in prosecuting this action.

According to the complaint, in 2014, Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC entered into a Casino License Agreement with the CNMI Casino Commission for the issuance of an exclusive casino license.

The Casino License Agreement required IPI to meet certain development requirements.

As part of the development requirements, IPI planned to construct a casino-hotel including a resort hotel, multiple hotel tower levels, a forecourt area, a casino podium, a beach club, and landscaped areas at a site in Garapan,

Around the beginning of 2018, Pacific Rim entered a construction contract with IPI to perform construction work for IPI for the casino-hotel at the IPI site.

The construction contract provided that Pacific Rim would develop a construction plan with the goal of completing construction by May 31, 2019.

Upon information and belief, Pacific Rim did develop a construction plan with a target completion date in May 2019.

To carry out the construction contract, Pacific Rim recruited people from Saipan, Guam, and other places to fill positions such as general laborers, carpenters, riggers, equipment operators, welders, electricians, painters, pipelayers, and engineers for the IPI project.

At all times relevant, there were 100 or more of those employees and they all worked every week in excess of 40 hours.

Upon information and belief, IPI was allegedly delinquent in paying Pacific Rim under the construction contract.

The complaint said to force IPI to pay, Pacific Rim’s management threatened to suspend work at the IPI site unless IPI cured the nonpayment.

Upon information and belief, IPI promised to pay Pacific Rim but did not meet its payment obligations to Pacific Rim for June 2018 or subsequent months.

On or about July 25, 2018, Pacific Rim’s management informed all of its construction-related employees working at the IPI site that they should stop working until further notice from Pacific Rim’s management.

“There were over 180 full-time construction-related employees of Pacific Rim, including Plaintiffs, who were so informed on or about that date. As a result, those 180 or more employees stopped going to work at the IPI site starting on or about July 26, 2018,” said the complaint.

At the same time, the plaintiffs allege that Pacific Rim’s management was negotiating with IPI to resolve payment issues.

“Plaintiffs, and all the other construction-related employees of Pacific Rim had a reasonable expectation to be recalled to the IPI site. [But] on or about Sept. 25, 2018, Pacific Rim gave notice to the 180 or more employees that their status with Pacific Rim would be changed to layoff effective Oct. 25, 2018, unless they were otherwise informed prior to October 25, 2018,” said the complaint.

Pacific Rim informed its employees that it and IPI signed a Notice of Mutual Termination of the construction contract in September 2018.

“Pacific Rim never called Plaintiffs, or any other similarly situated employees back to work on the IPl site or any other work site after October 25, 2018. Therefore, the last day of employment of Plaintiffs, as well as each of the other similarly situated employees, was October 25, 2018,” said the complaint.

“More than 180 construction-related employees of Pacific Rim suffered an ‘employment loss’ as defined by 29 U.S.C. § 2101(a)(6) because they were never called back to work for Pacific Rim,” the complaint further states.