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Labor faces shortage of investigators
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Posted on Feb 12 2006
The Department of Labor has a shortage of labor enforcement investigators, according to acting Labor secretary Gil M. San Nicolas.
San Nicolas disclosed that right now the department has only five labor enforcement investigators on Saipan.
Labor needs at least three or four more investigators, San Nicolas told the Saipan Tribune in an interview.
“We have a problem with the enforcement section because of the volume of the complaints coming in,” he said.
The acting secretary said they need to investigate the complaints and come up with a determination.
“That‘s my responsibility to fill those positions,” said Nicolas, adding that he has to talk with the supervisors and managers in the department to help him in getting the right persons in order to effectively assist their customers.
“We need to fill those vacancies,” he stressed.
San Nicolas explained that the department is consists of the Division of Employment Services, the Division of Labor, and the Division of Administrative Hearing Office.
“You go from the first step. If employers need to hire a worker, they go to the Division of Employment Services. They go through a job vacancy announcement, they go through that process of advertising. If they find one [local] then that’s good,” he said.
If the employers can’t find a local to fill up the position, the secretary said the next step is requesting or submitting an application to the Division of Labor Processing Section to hire a nonresident worker.
“When the requirements are all satisfied, you get the green light. You sign on the contract and get it forwarded to the immigration and eventually lead to the permit to be issued. That’s the processing side of allowing a worker to come in to the Commonwealth to be employed when that employee is already on island either consensual transfer or expiration transfer,” he said.
When the workers complain or have grievance against their employer, then there is the enforcement section, he said.
“And that’s when we investigate,” San Nicolas said.
San Nicolas added that they are working hard right now to tackle the backlog problem with the work permit applications at the Processing Section.
