On June 17, Associate Judge David A. Wiseman granted the workers’ request for a temporary work authorization, or TWA, pending a review of their lawsuit.
Myers said his clients were not required to pay any fee in getting the memorandum from Labor.
“That’s how it should be as most, if not all of them, aren’t employed,” he said
His clients, he added, also cannot afford to pay $50 for a TWA each month.
The TWA should remain valid while the case is pending in court, Myer added.
Citing the employment rules and regulations of the labor law, or P.L. 15-108, Myers said a foreign worker who files a case in Superior Court may request permission to seek temporary work pending resolution of the case.
He added that the employment rules and regulations have a provision dealing with time limits on temporary work authorizations for a foreign worker whose case is still pending in court.
If the TWA ends before the case is resolved, the employment rules and regulations provide that the foreign worker must report to Labor within 10 days before the renewal date, Myers said.
He said while the employment rules and regulations may provide limited temporary work time, it also provides for renewal within 10 days of the deadline.
“Unfortunately, that is what the employment rules and regulations state and the policy of DOL is presumably to follow it. But the fact remains that despite the ‘10-day’ renewal rule, the foreign worker will still be entitled to renew to get the same temporary work,” Myers said.
Essentially, this authorization is unlimited because the foreign worker can continue to go through the process until his case is finally resolved in court, he said.
However, he added, there will be a problem if Labor requires a guest worker to periodically return to Labor after the issuance of his first TWA.
“If my 127 clients had to do that four times a year that means DOL would be doing four times the work to issue temporary work to the same 127 foreign workers. DOL always mentions its lack of resources when it comes to collecting and enforcement of awards and orders,” Myers said.
He said if Labor decides to implement an impracticable policy he will ask the court to step in.
“The question is whether ‘temporary work’ falls under the ‘temporary work authorization’ under the employment rules and regulation, and, if so, whether there is a good argument for DOL to continue with a policy that would cost them to use more and more valuable resources to do something that could be done at one time, leaving DOL to apply those resources for more important matters like collecting and enforcing awards and orders,” he said.
