HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — A failed attempt to file a complaint with the Guam Department of Labor spurred Sen. Tom Fisher’s latest attempt to reform employment practices at the Guam Legislature.
Fisher in recent months has been advocating for central staff at the Legislature, including maintenance, administrative and information technology workers, as opposed to senatorial staff, to be kept to regular working hours or else paid overtime.
Bill 161-37, which Fisher wrote, would change Guam law so that central operations staff at the Legislature are covered by local personnel and compensation regulations. Fisher told the Post he was surprised to find that basic labor protections didn’t apply to central staff.
The reason I filed (Bill) 161 is because the Department of Labor said they could not hear a complaint like that because the Fair Labor Standards Act does not apply. It does not apply to government, state, state or territorial employees who are not covered by the Civil Service Commission,” he said.
Salaries could conceivably be dropped below $7.25 an hour, Fisher noted, as legislative employees are exempted from federal labor laws, “and they would have nowhere to complain.”
His attempted labor complaint came not because of a specific incident, he said, but because of the general practice of having central staff work long hours while lawmakers “pontificate, lecture and fiddle around.”
Lawmakers last week began annual budget talks, a process that can also lead to long hours for staffers. Overtime has been authorized for budget sessions, based on internal records provided by Fisher.
‘Unconscionable’
Central staff members find their only labor protections in the standing rules set by the Guam Legislature, another practice for which Fisher has introduced legislation to end. Staff are entitled to 1.5 hours of compensatory time off, or comp time, for every hour worked over 40 hours in a week, but the comp time can be taken only at the discretion of a supervisor and expires at the end of each legislative term.
Fisher asserts that time off doesn’t equate to staff being paid for their labor and is “unconscionable.” He said he first tried to cut an internal deal with Sen. Chris Barnett, who is responsible for central operations as the chair of the Committee on Rules.
Fisher, a Republican, and a lawyer before becoming a lawmaker, drafted a contract stipulating that he would work with his caucus to eliminate the use of comp time, while Democrat Barnett would do the same on his side of the aisle. Barnett didn’t sign.
“This idea that … we’re running some kind of sweatshop here at the Legislature, I mean, nothing could be further from the truth,” Barnett told the Post.
Barnett said he was open to the conversation about changing labor practices at the Legislature and getting staff paid for overtime, but said: “Sen. Fisher, to me, he’s trying to make this (a) political stunt.”
Barnett said he declined to sign off on the deal because of that reason and because he wanted to refrain from putting anything down “in black and white” until he was sure a change was feasible.
“The devil’s in the details, and if we haven’t really looked at this process, or how much it’s going to cost, then I’m not really confident in telling the employees and giving them false hope,” Barnett said.
Working out any reform of employment practices will require senators to first identify the money to pay staff, Barnett said, adding that he has discussed the possibility with Fisher and appropriations Chair Sen. Joe San Agustin. But a change to the standing rules is a discussion that will require input from the whole legislative body, not just the three lawmakers, Barnett said.
Potential cost $100K
The kinds of changes Fisher is asking for, which include making central staff a part of the classified government service, will change the nature of the job, Barnett said. For one thing, staff would have to reapply for jobs on a competitive basis.
“They don’t compete for their jobs. And they also are fully aware that it’s voluntary that they work more than 40 hours a week. When they do, they’re compensated with compensatory time off,” Barnett said. “I know that in previous Legislatures, there has been abuse of overtime, and I think that’s what really migrated that change over from (overtime to comp time).”
Fisher told the Post San Agustin had estimated the annual cost of overtime around $100,000.
“I told him it could be that amount,” San Agustin said, “I also told him that we need to get with the Committee on Rules to find out what is the number and what have they determined and why are they allowing overtime?”
San Agustin said he couldn’t say whether the Legislature could afford to pay overtime until senators sat down and analyzed the costs and the impact of moving to overtime payments. He said the situation was a management issue first, not a money problem, and each committee was responsible for dealing with how staff used their time.
“I’m more concerned about where (staff is) at today, not what other senators want to do in the future,” San Agustin said.
Speaker Therese Terlaje, who said she hadn’t read Fisher’s proposed legislation when she spoke to the Post, said his claims that central staffers weren’t getting paid was invalid, given the issuance of comp time, but deferred to the Committee on Rules on the specifics.
She disagreed with Fisher’s insistence that work at the Guam Congress Building end before the sun went down.
“He wants us to end at 5 p.m. every day. I feel like that’s an interference with our ability to continue as long as we have to, and this is the people of Guam’s work that we’re trying to get done,” Terlaje said.
Sens. Joe S. San Agustin, left, and Tom Fisher talk during a break of the Guam Legislature’s budget session Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023, in the Guam Congress Building in Hagåtña.
