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\u2014separate from the one that the Saipan Chamber of Commerce is conducting for an estimated cost of $20,000.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe the one that\u2019s commissioned by the government should be the official survey,\u201d Demapan told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
As of yesterday, U.S. Labor has yet to approve the CNMI government\u2019s grant application.<\/p>\n
A prevailing wage survey, among other things, is needed by CNMI employers to support their applications for their foreign employees\u2019 U.S. work visas.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Richard Pierce, Chamber executive director, said yesterday that \u201cthe Chamber is committed to getting a comprehensive survey completed as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
He reiterated that the \u201cmore surveys done, the better,\u201d and \u201cthe sooner, the better.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the Chamber\u2019s goal is to survey and determine prevailing wage rates for as many standard occupational classifications as possible, the CNMI\u2019s grant application covers four O-NET job classifications \u201cthat are of high priority for the tourist sector\u201d of the CNMI economy.<\/p>\n
Demapan said the CNMI Department of Labor is the lead agency for the survey, and will team up with the CNMI Department of Commerce\u2019s Central Statistics Division.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will put together a survey team, and may contract the actual survey. We need this as fast as we can,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Demapan said the administration informed the Chamber about its prevailing wage survey last month.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Foreign Labor Certification Office, the Chamber said.<\/p>\n
Demapan, meanwhile, said they intend to complete the survey by November 2011. <\/p>\n
The CNMI government\u2019s grant application with the U.S. Labor was submitted by the CNMI Department of Labor and Gov. Benigno R. Fitial\u2019s office. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The application says the capability to do prevailing wage surveys in the CNMI is an \u201cinterim 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce the Commonwealth\u2019s minimum wage is the same as the minimum wage applicable elsewhere, the normal U.S. Labor Department processes would apply,\u201d the application partly reads.<\/p>\n
The prevailing wage is different from\u2014and is generally higher than\u2014the minimum wage, which is currently $5.05 an hour in the CNMI.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2014separate from the one that the Saipan Chamber of Commerce is conducting for an estimated cost of $20,000.<\/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-153083","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\/153083","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=153083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}