New regs to create ‘garment labor pool’

The Attorney General’s Office has adopted a new mechanism for the reallocation of alien workers in the garment industry in the wake of the nearing elimination of the quota system that limits the amount of clothing that could be imported by the U.S. and Europe from any country.

The new procedure repeals the two other sets of regulations introduced in the past eight months and creates a “garment labor pool” to be administered by the Department of Labor.

Attorney General Pamela S. Brown said the garment labor pool would bring greater flexibility for employers and allow for manufacturers to consensually transfer employees and/or job positions among themselves to maximize efficiency in the labor market.

The new regulations were adopted on an emergency basis, or less than the normal 30 days notice, and will be effective for four months. After four months, the regulations need to be republished in the Commonwealth Register.

Brown said the emergency adoption was necessary to give garment manufacturers ample time to prepare for the quota elimination on Jan. 1, 2005.

“[Garment] manufacturers need to start poising themselves to remain viable and competitive with the anticipated elimination of quotas by operation of the [World Trade Organization] Agreement on Textiles and Clothing 1995-2004,’ Brown said. “Because manufacturers must begin the process of establishing a stable workforce and securing orders in advance of the Jan. 1, 2005 quota elimination, the [AGO] and the Department of Labor find it in the interest of the public and the industry that these regulations be approved and adopted immediately.”

Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association executive director Richard Pierce, who is in Washington, D.C., said he had yet to see the new regulations and could not give a comprehensive comment on them.

But Pierce added that the promulgation of an allocation mechanism for the garment industry has been an ongoing process in which the SGMA has been working with the AGO and Labor for several months now.

“I haven’t seen the final regulations, so I can’t give any comments outside the concerns we’ve had from the beginning. We just hope that they would protect the investment made by the companies and allow the manufacturers to utilize workers that they need,” Pierce said.

He also called on the government to give the garment companies ample time to prepare for the pool to be set up.

He noted that there is at least on company that will be shifting from one type of operation to another. SGMA, he added, hopes that company would still have enough slots available when it undertakes the change.

Under the new regulations, the garment labor pool will “consist of all unused or unfilled non-immigrant alien garment worker positions within the quota of the various manufacturers.”

Such positions include 60-day-old positions created by workers who have left the CNMI, and positions among the manufacturers that have been unfilled from April 1, 2004 through Sept. 1, 2004

The pool will also consist of all employee positions affected by the filing of a petition for bankruptcy by an employer and a reduction in force by another employer.

Further, the pool will include positions of an employer who has been adjudicated as not making payment of salaries and/or wages for at least 90 days; an employer whose garment manufacturing license has been revoked; and an employer who has been temporarily or permanently barred from employing alien workers.