Contractor settles employees’ wages
The Imperial Pacific Resort construction site is seen in this file photo. One of the contractors of the casino hotel said the late transfer of funds from a bank caused the delay in workers’ salaries. (Jon Perez)
Sino Great Wall International Engineering Co., Ltd. project manager and senior engineer Hou Jianlong said the late transmittal of their funds from a bank caused the delay in the salaries of close to 200 construction workers last month. Sino Great Wall is among the sub contractors tapped by Imperial Pacific International, Ltd. to build their multi-billion dollar casino hotel in Garapan.
More than 50 workers held a protest rally last month after Sino Great Wall allegedly failed to pay them their wages for close to two months. CNMI Department of Labor officials met with both parties two weeks ago to settle the issue.
“We met with the employees at Labor with the secretary and other officials twice. We had no problem being investigated because it was just a small problem. Now everything is settled and we already paid the salaries of all employee. The bank transfer was delayed for two days,” said Huo.
“All 185 workers already went home last December after their contract expired. But all of them received their salaries before they went back home,” said Huo, who added that their contracts only lasted five months as they are only tasked to work on all concrete projects of the Imperial Pacific Resort.
IPI hired other contractors to build the other structures of the hotel with other companies involved in putting up the steel frames and external façade.
Huo said that their company, Sino Great Wall, would continue their work once the other contractors are done with their respective jobs. “We’re going to continue with our work in the coming months as soon as they are finished with their projects.”
“We’re going to do the finishing touches like plastering of the walls, putting up the flooring, and other things that need to be done in each room. We’re going to also do the interior decorating like putting the furniture in the rooms.”
Wages, allowances
Documents provided by Sino Great Wall to Saipan Tribune showed that they had paid their 185 workers a total of $1,338,032.03 in salaries and other allowances since July 2016. They paid $1,240,314.03 in wages and $86,700 in cash vouchers. All of their workers stayed at Heaven II apartment provided by IPI while Sino Great Wall took care of their meals.
They paid three groups of their workers a total sum of $66,646 in July, while $72,761 in August. In September, they disbursed $118,795.55 and $210,800.48 to three batches of their laborers in October.
Three more groups received their wages from October to November that totaled $596,208, while another two clusters earned $189,554 for November alone.
How can this be a “small delay” such as two days in the transfer of funds from the bank when it seems that many pay periods had been missed?
BTW for the 6 months for the 185 workers that $1338,032 come out to about $7.53 per hour at a 40 hr week which they are working more than that.
It would have been interesting to actually have a Chinese speaking person catch these guys on the side and find out how much they are making per hour and how many hours they actually work along with how much charges the company is taking out from them for food, housing and power etc. as was done at Dynasty to all of their employees that lived in their housing facilities.