Benedetto: Pursuing small claims a waste of time

Federal Ombudsman Jim Benedetto said yesterday that alien workers may just be wasting their time in filing small claims against employers who abandoned their workers and left the CNMI without leaving any assets.

Benedetto told Saipan Tribune that if the employers fled from CNMI without leaving any assets and a labor bond for each worker, and didn’t have a bond on file with the government, then pursuing small claims action “will likely be a waste of time.”

He said the workers would simply get another piece of paper saying they are owed money, without any hope of collecting it.

“Unfortunately, as we all know, sometimes people get cheated, and there simply is no effective legal remedy for them to be made whole,” said Benedetto in an e-mail.

Labor personnel were recently at the Sugar King Park Roundhouse in Garapan where they assisted hundreds of alien workers and gave them small claim packets on how they can proceed to court and collect their administrative orders.

Labor also provided the workers the names of bonding companies.

Some alien workers who heeded Labor’s advice to file small claims to collect their administrative awards backed out upon learning it would be their responsibility to serve their complaints to their previous employers. They said it is useless to pay a $20 filing fee because their previous employers are no longer in the Commonwealth.

The Superior Court is charging $20 for small claims of $500 or less; $30 for $501 to $2,000; and $40 to $2,000 to $3,000.

Benedetto said that if the employer has no assets to go after, then it should be determined whether there was a labor bond on file for that worker during the time when the wages were not paid.

He said it should be determined whether the Department of Labor issued a “notice of potential claim” to the bonding company to alert them that they might be on the hook for an employer’s failure to pay the wages.

“If no notice of appeal claim was issued, the terms of the labor bond may prevent a successful action against the bonding company,” he said.

If the bonding company did receive notice of potential claim, Benedetto said, it may be possible to collect the back wages from them.

Benedetto stressed that businesses owned by foreign investors are supposed to have had a sizeable bond on deposit with the Commonwealth government to ensure against them leaving unsatisfied debts behind.

“We should also check to see if the worker can recover against that bond,” he pointed out.

The ombudsman said whether a worker will benefit from filing a small claims action is a question that needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

“In my view, we first need to identify which employers who owe money are still on island, in possession of assets that could satisfy some or all of the judgments against them,” he noted.

If the employers are here and have assets, Benedetto said, then small claims may be a good option for those who are owed less than the jurisdictional limit in small claims court.

He said if the worker is owed more than the limit they can collect in small claims court, they might consider going to one of the private attorneys who do collection actions such as Michael White or Joshua Berger, who can file an action in court for the full amount.

“Labor has been working administratively to bar employers who haven’t satisfied the judgments against them, and this is one of the most effective actions they could take at this time,” he said.

Benedetto said if an employer is still in the CNMI and still operating a business, Labor will notify that employer that the administrative order has not been satisfied, and give him or her 10 days to satisfy the judgment.

If the employer fails to do so, he added, Labor will cancel all the employer’s pending applications for foreign workers, revoke all his or her current work permits and bar him or her from hiring any foreign workers in the future.