‘Transition more into workforce’

The special commission on economic opportunity held its inaugural meeting Thursday, with officials focusing on ideas to increase the number of local residents moving into the labor force and strengthening an understanding of the CNMI’s economic plight, according to interviews with officials after the meeting. The commission still must define and narrow its objectives but the meeting was a productive first step, officials told Saipan Tribune.

The meeting on Capital Hill was the first for a commission formed by Gov. Eloy S. Inos to define “poverty” and combat it in the CNMI. For one, administration officials have described available unemployment rates as “soft numbers.” Labor statistics have relied on comparing the total number of U.S. citizens age 16 and over and the number of unemployed U.S workers in the CNMI to come up with a 24-percent unemployment rate. However, the data does not include the unemployment rate for lawful permanent residents.

The CNMI also lacks unemployment insurance, which is the national metric to count those seeking jobs but who remain unemployed, Saipan Tribune learned. Stumbling blocks to vocation skills training also exist. Low-income locals from here and from Micronesia lack transportation to and from school and job placement areas, according to Northern Marinas Technical Institute education director Vic Cepeda.

In an interview, Nutrition Assistance Program administrator Walter Macaranas said he shared some data meant toward helping out low-income families in the CNMI. He also told Saipan Tribune of an initiative to progressively disqualify applicants from assistance if they don’t comply with worker registration requirements set in tandem with the Department of Labor.

“It’s basically looking at how to transition from poverty to self-sufficiency,” he told Saipan Tribune.

“This is an inaugural meeting. So we are going to have to identify what is actually poverty as it relates to the CNMI community and find some measures to improve and help families or adults in the household find jobs and become productive citizens. …The administration believes the [Food and Nutrition Program] can play a huge role in the commissions’ efforts, even more so than other local housing assistance programs,” Macaranas said.

Right now, there is no confirmed objective yet “until everybody gets together and comes to a decision with how to move forward, but what I’ve actually shared [is how]…we want our adults to be responsible in terms of making sure they comply with program requirements.

“We do have individuals in the program that we consider as able-bodied individuals,” Macaranas said. These are those between the ages of 18 to 45 who are physically and mentally fit to work who are identified in NAP application and referred to the Department of Labor as part of a “work registration program.”

Macaranas disclosed they are working on a “disqualification initiative” to spur a responsible move into the workforce. He said a memorandum of understanding will be signed near the end of the month between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the CNMI government, with implementation in the coming months.

Right now, participants who do not comply with these requirements will be disqualified from NAP participation for a whole month.

Macaranas said he wants applicants to know it is a “ responsibility on their part that this program is not a program that we would rely on permanently. …That it is a temporary program,” he said. “So we have increased the disqualifications. We have a progressive disqualification initiative. That means if a participant has a first violation of work registration, the first offense will be three months disqualification and then the second offense will be six months disqualification, and then third offense would be permanent disqualification.”

Filter out contract workers

Saipan Chamber of Commerce president Alex Salblan said the filtering out contract workers who are qualified for H-visas will open up an incentive employment for local workers.

“This is what the CW program is about. It’s allowing the transition of workforce from the level we had previously to getting those individuals that would qualify under the H-visa system out of the CW system,” he said.

Sablan said there are many contractors and professionals in the CW program who would qualify for the H-2 category visa.

“…We feel that if you filtered all these individuals out—first of all, the foreign national workers is compensated exponentially for his skill set and expertise.

And so you are pulling a lot of those individuals out of poverty immediately, but secondly you are providing an opportunity for a U.S. citizen local to look at that job now and say, ‘Oh wow, a journeyman electrician is getting compensated at prevailing wages.’”

“And there is a difference. There is a minimum wage of the Commonwealth and there’s prevailing wage under the federal system under an H-visa system. And so what I think you do is you give locals something to shoot for,” he said.

Sablan added, “They see a job that is $15 an hour… So they go and get that expertise and then they come back and get that job that’s being compensated and paid at the level that is required. What I am suggesting here is nothing new. It is the law today. CW visa holders that can avail for a H-visa must move to the H-visa system, according to the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008.

“So we feel that the quick wins of pushing people from poverty above the poverty level could be done by just following the CRNA law and implementing visas as required by the law.

“…Now, does an employer want to get an H-1 visa? Maybe not. Maybe they want to look at hiring a U.S. citizen worker. Or we get out of the idea that people have to have individual accountants at their facilities and now you start farming out the jobs to professional organizations who will hire more U.S citizen workers, say, at an accounting firm.

“It snowballs. You now give U.S. citizen jobs greater opportunity, because now they have to be compensated at the prevailing wage and not at the CW level, which in large part is a minimum wage level position,” Sablan said.

Right questions

Commerce Secretary Mark Rabauliman echoed a data-driven approach.

In an interview, Rabauliman described as “segmented” the different services provided by the government and private businesses.

He said they need to “collect the right data” and “ask the right questions” to standardize and work off the same “poverty line, whatever it is defined as and collaborate to bring necessary solutions to fight poverty.”

“Like the prevailing wage [survey] that was done,” he said. “It was just asking households, how many in the household work or doesn’t work, without specific questions as to what may be the reasons they are not working. Is it because they are underage? Overage? Still in high school? It wasn’t specific. Not necessarily the right questions were asked to clearly define unemployment.”

Sablan also pushed for an economic strategic team for the local government.

“We’ve been advocating as a Chamber that the CNMI should have an economist and a team behind him or her that is studying any and all of these policy decisions that are being made, analyzing them, bringing statistics, indices, metrics, and data to the table and so that they can articulate how this policy gets implemented, so that there is a strategy behind it.

“It’s scientific. It’s particular. It’s a measured process,” he said. “We feel that having a good economist on board and a team behind him or her would help the administration, help government in general, and really the public sector understand where we are economically. Maybe manage the data stream that we have a little more efficiently.

“And so that when somebody is looking to invest the Commonwealth, they can analyze the impact of their decision based on metrics that are established because we have a professional economist making sure that it’s there for us.”