A better alternative, according to chamber president Douglas Brennan in his letter to Speaker Eliceo D. Cabrera, R-Saipan, would be “to repeal the state mandatory requirement for employer responsibility for medical costs with those persons employed in the commonwealth from foreign nations.”
The bill was introduced by Rep. Tony P. Sablan, R-Saipan.
“Costs associated with securing foreign labor through [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] shall not be considered employee benefits and therefore are not subject to any attempt to legislate equality in compensation between and among local versus foreign labor,” Brennan said.
He added that the federal law does not state that foreign workers are to be paid wages under a prevailing wage rate system, and that the compensation for foreign nationals secured for employment within the CNMI through the U.S. employment visa classification is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor-Office of Foreign Labor Certification.
Brennan said U.S. DOL-OFLC does not dictate what wages should be for U.S. citizens and that is determined by market forces.
“U.S. DOL-OFLC approves or disapproves a specific petition application using a prevailing wage rate system based upon significant survey to only approve those individual job wage petitions that guarantee a U.S. citizen will not lose their job or disadvantaged,” Brennan said.
U.S. DOL-OFLC does not set wages for U.S. citizens, and that’s why there are minimum wage laws for U.S. citizens, he added.
Brennan said U.S. DOL-OFLC does not engage in raising wages for U.S. citizens to equalize what foreign workers may be paid but it sets the prevailing wages rates on an individual, case-by-case basis to make sure that no U.S. citizen loses their job by setting a wage scale for an individual foreign worker.
He said it is local law that requires CNMI employers to provide medical benefits to those they employ through USCIS.
“To equalize benefits received by foreign nationals in the commonwealth, the chamber supports eliminating this mandatory CNMI-only requirement,” Brennan said.
The Resident Workers Fair Compensation Act will further increases the cost of doing businesses, he added.
Chamber executive director Richard A. Pierce said that if there were enough trained and qualified locals to take positions held by foreign workers there wouldn’t be any need for nonresident workers.
