Senate President Joseph M. Mendiola reminded the Department of Labor yesterday not to neglect resident workers amid efforts to assist the contract employees displaced by recent business closures.<\/p>\n
Mendiola said that residents deserve the same benefits and assistance as their foreign counterparts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith so much attention being devoted to the concerns of contract workers, how are resident workers\u2019 concerns being addressed and what remedies are in place for our local residents who have lost their jobs due to the closures?\u201d he asked in a letter to Labor Secretary Gil San Nicolas.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur priority should be with these resident workers and ensuring that they are reemployed or transferred internally within companies whose garment divisions have shut down,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Mendiola\u2019s letter came on the heels of the closure of Concorde Garment Manufacturing, the largest garment company in the Commonwealth with 1,400 workers including 1,046 from China.<\/p>\n
The Senate president also raised concern about the repatriation of the contract workers affected by the closure.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy biggest concern lies with the possibility that many of these recently displaced garment workers will be issued temporary work authorizations only to remain in the CNMI indefinitely, as has often been the case with many contract workers in the past. This practice must stop if we are to wean ourselves from foreign labor and properly employ the local workforce,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mendiola asked San Nicolas for information on the Labor Department\u2019s plan of action for the repatriation of the workers. He also requested information on the department\u2019s bonding policy in relation to nonresident workers, particularly information on their qualifications and financial health. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senate President Joseph M. Mendiola reminded the Department of Labor yesterday not to neglect resident workers amid efforts to assist the contract employees displaced by recent business closures.<\/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-107044","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\/107044","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=107044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}