By Haidee V. Eugenio
Variety Assistant Editor

AN employer obtained a job vacancy announcement waiver from the Department of Labor seven months after he had been instructed to present a certified JVA or a JVA waiver to support the contract renewal of a maintenance worker.
The Division of Labor issued and served a deficiency notice to Lawrence Fleming on June 5, 2006 because the application to renew Apolonio Baccay was missing a certified JVA.
That notice instructed Fleming to correct the deficiency within 10 days or be subject to the disapproval of the application.
Seven months later or on Jan. 18, 2007, the Division of Labor denied the application for failure to correct the deficiency noted in June 2006.
During the April 19 hearing, Fleming’s wife, Mary Jane, produced a JVA waiver issued by Alfred A. Pangelinan of Labor’s Division of Employment and Training Services on Jan. 29.
The letter indicated that Fleming had requested the waiver in a letter dated Jan. 22, 2007.
“This employer had many months to submit a certified JVA or a JVA waiver to the Processing Section yet failed to even request the waiver until ‘after’ the Division (of Labor) had denied the application. The employer’s conduct in simply ignoring the deficiency notice was negligent and should be sanctioned,” said Labor Hearing Officer Jerry Cody in an administrative order issued on Monday.
Cody said the employer’s delivery of the JVA waiver letter corrected the JVA deficiency and ordered the reversal of the application’s denial. However, he sanctioned the employer $150 for failure to correct the deficiency in a timely manner.
“The Division of Labor is instructed to process this application, provided that the employer pays the sanction ordered below in a timely manner (no later than 30 days after April 23),” Cody said in his two-page order.
The employer, Lawrence Fleming, is currently serving a multiple year prison sentence but he has given power of attorney to his wife, Mary Jane Fleming, to sign legal documents and process labor documents on his behalf.
The Division of Labor evidently treats the husband and wife, in essence, as a single employer with respect to the application to renew the contract of Baccay.