Saying the V.I. Labor Department is "falling apart," Sen. Roosevelt David agreed with a Senate colleague Friday to call a meeting to determine what's amiss.
David, chair of the Senate Labor and Veterans Affairs Committee, was responding to a July 12 letter from Sen. Adlah "Foncie" Donastorg asking that the committee investigate Labor employee complaints about the way the department was being managed.
While neither senator went into detail about what the apparent problems are, Donastorg said it is important that the committee follow up on the complaints because Labor Department employees "have no recourse – they work for the very agency that normally handles these complaints."
David agreed, saying, "If we have a problem within Labor, who is going to solve the problem? We must, at the end of these hearings, have some solutions to these problems."
On Friday, David said he had scheduled meetings earlier this month with Labor Commissioner Sonia Jacobs Dow, but they were postponed because Dow was ill. They have been rescheduled for July and August.
David and Donastorg agreed that the Workers' Compensation program and Industrial Development Commission beneficiary employment practices should be investigated.
In light of recent layoffs, Donastorg requested that the committee investigate labor practices at the V.I. Telephone Corp., Bluebeard’s Castle Hotel and the Westin Resort St. John.
At the end of May, Vitelco’s parent company, Innovative Communication Corp., laid off 18 workers, 12 of them from the phone company. In February, 10 Westin employees were laid off without being offered jobs in other departments.
Still, in a somewhat prickly response to Donastorg's request, David said he doesn’t "subscribe to the practice of the Legislature’s micro-management of executive branch departments or agencies.
"I will, however, convene the committee based on specific and corroborated instances of the mistreatment of employees and/or unsavory labor practices in the government or private sector," he said.