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‘Ignorance of the law is not a defense’
The Department of Labor is reminding business owners that it is their responsibility to understand and follow the law and that it is not a valid defense for an employer to remain ignorant about the law and blame its agent for inaction.
The department came up with this position after filing a case against Xing Wang Development Corp. for failing to post job vacancy announcements on the department’s website.
Company manager Hong Fei Wang-Rios said she relied on the services and advice of her local agent, Lu Guo Hua, and that she had no knowledge of the correct format and information that Labor required employers to present.
Wang-Rios has been managing the company for the past 10 years. Her husband, who is a local citizen, served as the employer’s president and secretary for some time, but those duties later passed to Hua.
Labor sanctioned Xing Wang Development with a maximum of $2,000 for each violation, resulting in a total fine of $8,000. The company operates three businesses in Garapan—Family Store, Xing Long Fashion, and a bar and coffee shop named DZ Coffee Shop.
Five positions for bartender, store manager, salesperson, and two supervisors were filled by CW-1 workers in 2015. The vacancies were not posted on the DOL website. In 2016, positions for bartender and salesperson were not posted and Wang-Rios admitted that in the course of hiring CW-1 workers, she claimed that she had been completely unaware of the regulations requiring employers to post JVAs on the website.
DOL requires any employer who hires a foreign national worker to file a declaration on the department’s website stating its reason for rejecting each U.S. citizen, and Xing Wang Development failed to do that when they did post two JVAs in 2016 for a manager and a supervisor. Wang-Rios disclosed that she never reviewed those online responses and never posted an employer declaration.
Xing Wang Development had failed to submit a quarterly workforce listing and did not submit a complete workforce plan for 2016. DOL requires employers to submit these items in order to qualify for a Certification of Compliance.
