By Haidee V. Eugenio
Variety Assistant Editor

ONLY 33 percent of the monetary awards imposed by the Department of Labor for workers’ back wages, liquidated damages, and sanctions awarded in administrative orders were collected last year, latest government data shows.
Labor’s Administrative Hearing Office also ordered 69 nonresidents to depart the CNMI for violations of labor laws and regulations.
The Labor data, presented by Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Villagomez to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during an oversight hearing on the CNMI on Feb. 8, did not specify the number of those ordered to depart who actually left the islands by the end of 2006.
Between 2002 and 2006, Labor ordered the most number of aliens to depart in 2004 with 499 individuals.
Labor, which held 436 administrative hearings last year, imposed $615,198.60 in monetary awards but collected only $203,618.66.
However, this does not necessarily mean that the monetary awards collected in 2006 were imposed on the same year; some of them were imposed the previous year but were collected only last year.
In 2005, Labor collected more in monetary awards than it imposed. It imposed $44,541.06 in monetary awards that year but collected $322,816.22.
Besides workers’ back wages, liquidated damages and sanctions awarded in administrative orders, the collected monetary awards also include those issued pursuant to stipulated settlement agreement.
The sanctions imposed alone reached $40,485 in 2006, but for the same period, Labor collected only $16,441.20.
In his testimony to the U.S. Senate committee, Villagomez said procedures are in place to make sure that current labor cases are resolved in a timely manner to prevent any further growth in the backlog due to changes implemented by labor investigators and hearing officers.
“The department’s hearing office has dramatically increased the number of hearings conducted and the dollar amounts awarded and collected,” said Villagomez, referring to the 436 administrative hearings held in 2006 compared to 398 in 2005.
In 2006, Labor issued 406 administrative orders, a 12 percent increase from the 356 issued the previous year.
Between 2002 and 2004, the number of administrative hearings held ranged between 197 and 682, while the administrative orders numbered between 155 and 582.
“The number of hearings naturally varies from year to year depending on several variables, including the number of complaints filed, the complexity of the cases, the length of particular hearings, and the number of hearing officers working in a given period,” Villagomez told the U.S. Senate panel chaired by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.
Villagomez said beginning on Oct. 1, 2006, the Department of Labor mounted a serious effort to significantly reduce the backlog of about 3,000 pending labor cases involving about 5,500 employees from 1997 through 2004.
He said in the first stage of the project, Labor closed nearly 1,000 cases by the end of 2006.
Labor also granted the employment transfers of 232 workers in 2006, compared to 523 in 2005 and 1,080 in 2004.