Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association (SGMA) members continued working toward resolving manpower issues with the Attorney General’s Office and the CNMI Department of Labor at a meeting held on March 15, 2004 at the Susupe Multi-Purpose Center.

All 25 SGMA members met with Attorney General Pam Brown, DOL’s Dean Tenorio, AGO’s DOL-assigned Kevin Lynch and Steve Newman, the governor’s legal counsel, in ongoing meetings aimed at resolving issues related to the implementation of Emergency Regulations, and subsequently adopted permanent regulations, governing the reallocation of garment workers in the Saipan garment industry.

Association spokesman Richard A. Pierce after the meeting stated, “We are encouraged by the progress and spirit of collaboration today, but we still have important remaining considerations to be made before the membership will rest easy with how they can best achieve their requirements in manpower supply to meet order demands.”

Important progress was achieved when all members present agreed with the AGO and Labor on resolving conflict with the companies needs and fallout associated with the implementation of the emergency regulations last September, 2003, by accepting two conditions toward making amendments to the regulations which became permanent on February 9, 2004.

“We will now proceed with the understanding that all companies which gained employees, and their valuable government-assigned quota slots through the reallocation process, will be allowed to keep those employees and slots”, stated Pierce, “And probably more important, any company which suffered a loss in quota allocation due to the transfer of employees and their corresponding quota slots through the same reallocation scheme, will be assured to receive first service in reacquiring those lost slots through a number of means considered today.”

There are still over 200 unassigned slots from the closure of old Saipan factories not yet assigned which will be divided among companies that lost employee seats, and meetings will be held again to consider how to best recover the total number of lost quota slots.

The AGO and DOL distributed suggested regulations regarding the re-establishment of a garment worker pool at DOL. SGMA will offer comments before another meeting with DOL and the AGO.

According to Pierce, “The single most important development that satisfied our manufacturers’ longstanding concern about workers that have left their employment with the factories, and caused a slot to be unable to be refilled with a new employee, was a plan proposed by Attorney General Pam Brown. If the company files with DOL and AGO a name of any worker that has left employment and cannot be located, and in the case where verification cannot be supplied that the employee has departed the CNMI or taken lawful employment elsewhere, and if the Chinese Economic Development Association and recruiters confirm with the AGO the employee that this is the case, then the company would be allowed to fill that vacant worker slot.”

Industry leaders estimate this would solve a loss in manpower of a few hundred unaccounted for workers over the past 15 years. The Attorney General theorized that this would be acceptable and bring relief to companies for loss not attributable to the firms. Greater immigration enforcement would decrease any chance of reoccurrence.