The Department of Commerce has completed the initial phase of the prevailing wage survey in the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
According to Alfonsis Sound, director of the department\u2019s Central Statistic Division, the survey garnered a 97-percent response rate from business respondents on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis response rate is enough for us to complete the data collection,\u201d Sound said.<\/p>\n
The next phase of the survey, which is data analysis, will now continue throughout April. \u201cBy May, we can come up with the figures,\u201d he said, referring to the actual prevailing wage rate.<\/p>\n
The survey, which was funded by the U.S. Interior Department\u2019s Office of Insular Affairs, follows a time frame from July 2014 to Sept. 30, 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe deadline is still manageable,\u201d Sound earlier said.<\/p>\n
In March, the department reported a completion rate of 88 percent, as field survey teams continue using traditional survey forms as well as online questionnaires.<\/p>\n
The wage survey was started on Jan. 12.<\/p>\n
The prevailing wage survey is needed to enable local businesses to successfully petition H-1 visas for their employees.<\/p>\n
Among the questions that were asked in the survey relate to job descriptions, the going rate for that job, and the type of benefits received by the employee of that certain job.<\/p>\n
Business impact<\/strong><\/p>\n Saipan Chamber of Commerce president Alex Sablan said that, unlike in 2013 when both the Chamber and Commerce conducted two separate surveys, the island\u2019s biggest business organization this time would be depending on the government to do the prevailing wage and workforce assessment study by itself.<\/p>\n He said the CNMI developing its own prevailing wage study is important because using the prevailing wage in Guam \u201cis unfair and detrimental to the local economy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe wages for an H-1 employee in the CNMI is segued to Guam\u2019s prevailing wage, which is much, much higher. Our economy is different than Guam and the wage scale is different regardless of the situation. We have a different economy and we need to determine what scale we have so companies won\u2019t inadvertently be impacted here with a scale that has no relevance,\u201d the executive said.<\/p>\n Sablan said the only way the CNMI can have access to more H-1 workers is for the prevailing wage and workforce assessment study to be conducted every two years as required by the federal government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Department of Commerce has completed the initial phase of the prevailing wage survey in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[56,26,51,44],"class_list":["post-199226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-business-3","tag-cnmi","tag-guam","tag-study"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199226","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\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}