By Gerardo R. Partido
Variety News Staff

WITH public school system employees in suspense again over whether they will get full pay today, the Attorney General’s Office is suing the Guam Public School System for its failure to pay the “full payroll” of GPSS employees.
The complaint, filed on behalf of the Department of Labor, was filed against GPSS and Superintendent Luis Reyes.
“As I have stated many times over the past weeks, GPSS must follow the laws of Guam and pay its employees the full amount of payroll owed to them each and every payroll period, on time, and without delay,” Attorney General Alicia Limtiaco said in a media conference yesterday.
For the payroll period ending Feb. 17, 2007 and March 3, 2007, payroll deductions from the gross wages of GPSS employees were not paid to vendors within five days of the day GPSS employees’ pay was due for those pay periods.
According to Limtiaco, these actions resulted in a violation of Guam’s Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as the island’s wage and hour laws.
The complaint seeks an order against GPSS to protect its employees and the public from present and further harm by restraining the public school system from expending any government funds for the benefit of GPSS until all payroll deductions from gross wages of GPSS employees are paid.
“The AG is representing the interests of GPSS employees in this complaint,” Limtiaco said.
The next step is for GPSS to answer the complaint and the court to schedule a hearing.
Reacting to the news, Reyes said he was not surprised by the complaint, pointing out that he himself has been warning the administration about possible legal action due to the non-payment of GPSS employees’ full salaries.
Reyes said he welcomes any court hearing as this would finally clarify the issue of why GPSS has not been able to pay its employees their full salaries.
GPSS has claimed that it has not been able to pay gross salaries because the administration has not been remitting full allotments to GPSS.