In his message for the June newsletter, Saipan Chamber of Commerce president Doug Brennan said very little work has been accomplished in surveying and establishing prevailing wage rates here in the CNMI.
“The chamber wants to assist the CNMI Labor Department that has began to accept applications for wage determinations to take part by contacting businesses and do the survey work,” Brennan said.
He said many CNMI companies have already filed for and been granted H-1 visas but these companies whose employees were already issued work visas used the prevailing wage rates of Guam, Hawaii and U.S. mainland.
Brennan added that CNMI businesses must be surveyed and the timely data supplied prior to the determination of a prevailing wage rate so that local businesses can be afforded reasonable labor costs and not use those labor costs in Seattle, Honolulu or Guam which are much higher.
“We are confident we can get this work done to help the chamber by helping all businesses and the CNMI government,” Brennan said.
Employers applying for non-resident U.S. work visas will have to file a prevailing wage determination as part of the visa application process.
In December last year, CNMI Society of Human Resource Center president Eric Plinske said the CNMI was not included in the prevailing wage system of the U.S. Department of Labor but businesses and employers could join efforts and come up with an island-wide survey and submit an application to the U.S. DOL
In a live tele-conference with U.S DOL representatives William Rabung, director of the National Prevailing Wage Center for the Office of Foreign Labor Certification, and Paul Gotte, supervisory immigration program analyst at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Prevailing Wage Center in Washington, D.C., these officials said there is no money available to conduct a survey, but businesses can apply for a prevailing wage, applicants must use the online forms at http://icert.doleta.gov/ for faster processing and follow up. Gotte said it usually takes from 30 to 60 days for them to reply to prevailing wage determination applications.
Brennan said the chamber is still “banging its head against the wall” trying to get answers to questions that are very important to the lives of businesses in the CNMI.
Six months from today, the umbrella permits issued by the CNMI Labor Department will become invalid and businesses still have no idea when the CW regulations to be used until the transitional period expires in November 2014 will be issued.
“We have absolutely no idea what will happen to our businesses, let alone a very large portion of our employees that may well not qualify for eventual employment through U.S. work visas,” Brennan said.
He said businesses need to see those regulations “so they can make plans based on its contents, budget for implementation and try to make ends meet with what will surely be another increase in the cost of doing business.”{jcomments off}
