$40.7K grant sought for prevailing wage survey

The Fitial administration has applied for a $40,701.99 grant application with the U.S. Department of Labor to commission a prevailing wage survey—separate from the one that the Saipan Chamber of Commerce is conducting for an estimated cost of $20,000.

Whether U.S. Labor approves or denies the grant application, the CNMI government will still pursue its own prevailing wage survey, said press secretary Angel Demapan yesterday.

“We believe the one that’s commissioned by the government should be the official survey,” Demapan told Saipan Tribune.

As of yesterday, U.S. Labor has yet to approve the CNMI government’s grant application.

A prevailing wage survey, among other things, is needed by CNMI employers to support their applications for their foreign employees’ U.S. work visas.

Demapan said that having the government commission the survey eliminates any form of impropriety. But he said nothing prevents the Chamber from conducting its own prevailing wage survey.

Richard Pierce, Chamber executive director, said yesterday that “the Chamber is committed to getting a comprehensive survey completed as soon as possible.”

He reiterated that the “more surveys done, the better,” and “the sooner, the better.”

While the Chamber’s goal is to survey and determine prevailing wage rates for as many standard occupational classifications as possible, the CNMI’s grant application covers four O-NET job classifications “that are of high priority for the tourist sector” of the CNMI economy.

Demapan said the CNMI Department of Labor is the lead agency for the survey, and will team up with the CNMI Department of Commerce’s Central Statistics Division.

“They will put together a survey team, and may contract the actual survey. We need this as fast as we can,” he said.

Demapan said the administration informed the Chamber about its prevailing wage survey last month.

The Chamber, the largest business organization in the CNMI with some 150 members, has already started work on a prevailing wage survey, in partnership with other business groups and organizations.

It will contract with the Guam Employers Council, which specializes in extensive services in wage and salary management and prevailing wage surveys. That contract alone could cost anywhere between $10,000 and $15,000, but total cost of the project is estimated at $20,000, said Pierce.

The survey will provide valuable data for the process of determining prevailing wage rates for individual job classifications, while petitioning for foreign labor work visas under the new requirements of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Foreign Labor Certification Office, the Chamber said.

Demapan, meanwhile, said they intend to complete the survey by November 2011.

The CNMI government’s grant application with the U.S. Labor was submitted by the CNMI Department of Labor and Gov. Benigno R. Fitial’s office.

The authorized point of contact in the CNMI is CNMI labor administration director Barbara T. Sablan, while the authorized point of contact in Washington, D.C. is Lynn Knight.

The grant application is for a two-month start up project that will support personnel costs, data retrieval and processing costs, and associated administrative expenses for the development of the necessary capability to do prevailing wage surveys for businesses in the CNMI.

It will also fund the proving out of the new prevailing wage capability by the actual preparation of prevailing wage surveys for four O-Net job classifications.

The application says the capability to do prevailing wage surveys in the CNMI is an “interim measure needed over the next few years, while the federal minimum wage applicable to the Commonwealth gradually comes up to the level of the federal minimum wage applicable elsewhere in the United States.”

“Once the Commonwealth’s minimum wage is the same as the minimum wage applicable elsewhere, the normal U.S. Labor Department processes would apply,” the application partly reads.

The prevailing wage is different from—and is generally higher than—the minimum wage, which is currently $5.05 an hour in the CNMI.

Without a CNMI prevailing wage survey, CNMI employers will be forced to pay the rates similar to those of other U.S. states and territories that are much higher and not reflective of the conditions in the local economy.