Airport and seaport employees will be getting a 5-percent salary increase starting this October\u2014the first increment for Commonwealth Ports Authority employees in over four years.<\/p>\n
The CPA board of directors approved the salary increase during a meeting yesterday, in view of the authority\u2019s \u201cimproving\u201d financial status.<\/p>\n
CPA executive director Carlos Salas said the salary increase was a show of appreciation for sacrifices made by the employees over the past several years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe freeze on salary hikes produced a lot of savings for CPA over the years. The employees sacrificed a lot in the spirit of teamwork, and they should be rewarded for that,\u201d Salas said.<\/p>\n
Over the last four years, CPA employees have accepted cross-utilitization in duties, more responsibilities and an 8-hour reduction in working hours per bi-weekly period\u2014without pay increases.<\/p>\n
Salas said the increase will apply to all civil service CPA employees that have a performance rating of \u201csatisfactory\u201d or better.<\/p>\n
According to Salas, most of CPA\u2019s over 200 workers stand to receive a raise. \u201cThere are very few, if any, who have unsatisfactory performance ratings,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Salas and other CPA management officials, who are contract employees, are not covered by the salary increment.<\/p>\n
The across-the-board salary hike is reflected in CPA\u2019s budget for fiscal year 2005 budget, which appropriates $7.7 million for personnel expenses. This amount is 7 percent greater than the $7.2 million that CPA set aside for personnel costs in FY 2004.<\/p>\n
In the FY 2005 budget, CPA also bared plans to restore the original contribution rate of 50 percent\u2014instead of the reduced CPA rate of 25 percent only\u2014toward employees\u2019 health insurance premium, \u201cshould revenue comfortably exceed forecast and achieve the required debt service coverage ratio.\u201d<\/p>\n
CPA noted that before the 9\/11 tragedy, the authority paid 50 percent of the employees\u2019 premium but later greatly reduced it to 25 percent to generate significant savings to CPA.<\/p>\n
\u201cCPA management aims to review the entire revenue and expense situation at a six-month period interval for the possibility of restoring the original rate,\u201d CPA said. \u201cOther measures to be considered at a later time are: night differential, overtime pay, and contract employee salaries.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ports authority forecasts a growth rate of not more than 2 percent for the airport division and zero for the seaport division.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we anticipate recovery in the travel market, our budget forecast is at minimal [level] in order for us to easily meet our financial target,\u201d CPA said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Airport and seaport employees will be getting a 5-percent salary increase starting this October\u2014the first increment for Commonwealth Ports Authority employees in over four years.<\/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-83451","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\/83451","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=83451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}