“The fact that the CNMI Department of Labor even accumulated a backlog of almost 5,000 labor cases is incredible,” she said.
Doromal said foreign worker have to wait for months and even years before their labor cases are settled.
Many, if not most, of these workers with labor cases have no income to support themselves while waiting, she said.
“It is incredible that this agency does not enforce its own administrative orders and workers who are owed back wages are expected to collect their own unpaid judgments from small claims court or by hiring attorneys,” she said.
Cinta M. Kaipat, Labor deputy secretary, said they have completed a 24-month project to “clean up” all pending labor cases and agency cases from the years 1997 through 2007.
She said Labor started the project in October 2006 and was able to finish it in September.
Most of these labor cases, were about unpaid wages or overtime, and included agency cases against some employers’ company practices.
Doromal wants to know why Labor does not go after the bonding companies that are responsible to pay workers back wages or other monetary judgments when employers defaulted on the administrative orders.
“The Department of Labor is dysfunctional and has failed repeatedly to enforce the laws, taking no action to collect money owed to workers,” Doromal said in her e-mail to Variety.
She said if there are still millions of dollars in unpaid judgments, then these cases are not resolved.
“Paper orders and judgments mean nothing to workers waiting to receive the money that is owed to them,” Doromal said.
“Until the money is in the pockets of the workers that are holding administrative orders with unpaid judgments, the backlog will always remain,” she added. “There is a backlog of justice — over $6.1 million documented, and in reality the figure is much more because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of workers who have been repatriated with empty pockets over the years.”
Kaipat said Labor recruited attorney Deanne Siemer, who served as a judge and mediator in many complex cases in the U.S., to help clean up the backlog in labor cases.
“Deanne contributed her time without any pay or per diem of any kind, and we paid the paralegals at the U.S. minimum wage or more, depending on their level of experience,” Kaipat said in a media release.
Labor said it spent $7.25 per case to finish the 4,968 cases handled by the paralegal team.
