Labor Secretary Gil M. San Nicolas affirmed the hearing officer’s order that revoked all valid CNMI work permits issued to SEAS, which include those for 11 nurses and medical ancillary staff of the Tinian Health Center, and 10 nurses of the Rota Health Center.
The hearing officer’s order also disqualified SEAS “permanently” from hiring, renewing or employing foreign workers in the CNMI.
All SEAS work permit applications now pending at the Department of Labor are also denied.
“Basically, the insolvency of the company due to an inability to collect accounts receivable, are among those that the labor laws of the commonwealth are designed to handle,” San Nicolas said in his order.
Labor, he added, cannot allow back wages and unpaid claims to pile up in the hope that the company may at some time in the future become solvent again.
“The fact that an entity of the CNMI government owes the company money does not change the company’s current circumstances and its basic ineligibility to employ foreign workers,” he said.
SEAS filed an appeal on May 13 from an administrative order issued on April 13.
SEAS has been employing foreign nurses and other medical personnel who work for the health centers on Rota and Tinian.
SEAS failed to timely pay them their wages which prompted one of the employees to file a complaint.
Labor ordered SEAS to pay the employee’s back wages.
SEAS, however, failed to make any payments.
As a result, the Labor hearing officer revoked the work permits of SEAS’s employees and barred the manpower agency from employing foreign workers.
San Nicolas, in his order, allowed payments in monthly installments.
He said if SEAS failed again to make payments, Labor will immediately revoke the permits of its foreign workers and restore all other terms of the previous order.
SEAS made payments from Nov. 2009 through February 2010, and then stopped making payments.
When payments were not made in March and April 2010, the hearing officer issued an order on April 30 revoking all of the permits of the foreign workers hired by SEAS.
It also reinstated the penalties in the July 15, 2009 order.
On May 12, 2010, SEAS submitted an appeal signed by the company’s vice president, Henry R. Cruz.
San Nicolas said the “sole ground for appeal is that appellant is without the means to make the required payments because its client, the Rota Health Center, has not paid according to its contract and unpaid billings of $197,113.56 are outstanding.”
The appeal was supported by a letter from Rota Health Center Director Crispin M. Ayuyu.
In the appeal, Cruz said “due to long period of time of non-payment of RHC…our company’s cash flow was severely impaired and our working fund was drained to the point that we can no longer cope with our financial obligations to our employees and other companies/individuals providing support services to us in relation to our business operations.”
In denying the appeal, San Nicolas said the hearing officer has provided for temporary work authorizations to the affected workers to prevent an interruption in public health services.
“Those TWAs shall be issued promptly upon application of the Rota Health Center,” the order stated.
Labor also provided for transfer for employees who choose to pursue alternative employment.
Rota officials earlier said they would ask the central government to directly hire the foreign nurses and medical personnel.
