Its Chinese workers paid recruitment fees to work at Concorde Garment Manufacturing Inc. but not a penny of that fee went to Concorde, according to the company\u2019s legal counsel.<\/p>\n
Steve Pixley clarified yesterday that paying the recruitment fee is part of the overseas hiring process in China and is sanctioned by the Chinese government, which requires workers to go through its licensed recruiters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat money was not paid to Concorde. It\u2019s paid directly to the recruiting agencies. Again, these are all licensed by the Chinese government. At Concorde, we didn\u2019t receive any compensation from the recruiters,\u201d said Pixley.<\/p>\n
He said Concorde has decided to use its own money to \u201creimburse\u201d the workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen this issue of retirement fees came up, the company decided to basically reimburse the workers out of its pocket for recruitment fees, which was done on pro-rated basis,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Pixley said the company hopes to get reimbursed by the recruiting agencies.<\/p>\n
Each Chinese worker reportedly paid some $3,000 each to recruiters before coming to Saipan.<\/p>\n
Three representatives of these agencies flew to Saipan this week and held talks with concerned groups, including Concorde.<\/p>\n
It was during their discussion with Concorde in Lower Base that garment workers held them in a room overnight against their will.<\/p>\n
Before this, the workers held a daylong protest rally Friday to demand for the release of their money\u2014recruitment fee refunds, tab rebates.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the workers got their recruiters fee refunds.(Liberty DOnes)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Its Chinese workers paid recruitment fees to work at Concorde Garment Manufacturing Inc. but not a penny of that fee went to Concorde, according to the company\u2019s legal counsel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}