Ex-Sako workers: Where’s the $1M?

Despite the $1 million in damages awarded to former workers of Sako Corp. by a federal court, some of these workers have yet to receive a penny of that amount, even as they expressed fears of being forced to return to their home countries if they fail to look for a new employer within 45 days.

One of those workers, Jane Gamboa, said she and the other complaining workers have been informed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the agency found no assets of Sako that could be seized to satisfy the court’s over $1 million judgment.

Gamboa claimed that the CNMI Department of Labor has given her a new 45-day transfer relief beginning Nov. 7, 2005, during which she should have a new employer file a work permit application on her behalf. Otherwise, she will have to leave the CNMI or face the risk of being deported.

“We have not received any money, not a single penny,” said another worker, Imelda Sagun. Like Gamboa, Sagun claims to have been given a 45-day transfer relief by the CNMI Labor Department.

“We will go home with nothing. We didn’t receive any amount. We were told that the EEOC seized no assets of Sako,” Sagun said.

Earlier this year, the U.S. District Court ordered Sako to assign to the EEOC all of its deposits and account receivables to satisfy the court’s over $1 million judgment. The EEOC had filed the case against Sako on Sept. 16, 2004 after some 65 non-Chinese workers complained that their employment contracts were not renewed on the basis of their national origin.

Sako ceased its local business operations on March 10, 2005. Several parties have been running after Sako over unpaid debts and obligations. The company had sold some of its equipment abroad after closing down on Saipan.

Sako’s creditors include the Finance Department, which has been running after it due to over $1.6 million in unpaid taxes; Vicente SN. Babauta, the company’s former landlord; and the law firm of O’Connor, Berman, Dotts and Banes.

Sagun, a former Sako employee, said she has been jobless since 2002 after she lost her job at Sako.

Apparently, both Gamboa and Sagun have failed to transfer to a new employer despite the Labor Department’s disclosure sometime last October that it had reached an agreement with another garment company on the latter’s hiring of all former Sako sewers who had remained on-island.

The Labor Department disclosed that the undisclosed garment firm had initially wanted to hire over 100 workers from abroad.

In an Oct. 11 order, Labor hearing officer Maya B. Kara extended the transfer period for Sako’s nonresident workers by 45 days from Sept. 23 to Nov. 7.