The Department of Labor ordered Rota Mayor Joseph S. Inos to pay Abu Taher $2,800 in unpaid wages for the period of Aug. 1999 to May 2000.
In his order dated Oct. 31, Jerry Cody, Labor hearing officer, said Taher is entitled $2,800 in liquidated damages, and “reasonable” attorney fees and cost.
The attorney fees and cost is subject to counsel’s submission of a detailed, itemized statement of the cost and the time reasonably spent for legal work, Cody said.
Inos will have to pay $1,000 for his failure to maintain adequate time and payroll records.
A labor complaint was filed by Taher on Aug. 2, 2000 for unpaid wages, breach of contract, unpaid medical expenses, failure to provide a copy of the employment contract and repatriation costs.
Taher worked on Rota from March 1998 to May 2000 as farmer on Inos’ farm in Pali’e, but he was also required to work at other locations on non-farming duties.
Taher said Inos paid him $300 per month only for his first six month, but did not pay him at all for the next 20 months, or from Sept. 1998 to May 2000.
In 2003, motions were filed regarding the proper venue for the hearing.
Hearing Officer Linn H. Asper ruled the hearing should be held on Saipan.
During the next several years, the counsels of Inos and Taher informed Labor that they were negotiating a possible settlement.
But in Nov. 2007, both parties reached an impasse and wanted to proceed with the hearing.
In the hearing, Inos testified that in the months before Taher’s application was approved, he hired him occasionally for day-work and paid him $20 per day on those occasions.
Inos admitted he employed Taher full-time as a farmer during the permitted period, but he denied telling the farmer to do non-farming jobs.
The hearing officer found that Inos failed to establish that he paid wages to Taher during the period covered by the complaint.
The order said Inos chose not to renew Taher’s employment contract, but the manner in which the worker was informed of the non-renewal of his contract remained unclear.
The hearing officer said Taher gave credible testimony that he was sometimes assigned to non-farming job, but was “unable to quantify or provide any reasonable estimate of the amount of time he spent on such non-farming tasks.”
But Labor said Taher failed to establish that he had requested a copy of his contract.
Moreover, Labor added, Taher did not allege that any monetary damage resulted from Inos’ not having the written contract in hand.
Inos would have been required under the contract to provide a repatriation ticket to Taher, Labot stated.
Because Taher neither requested nor was ordered to be repatriated, the employer’s contractual obligation to provide a repatriation ticket never arose, Labor stated.
It added that Taher has since changed his status and, therefore, repatriation is no longer applicable.
