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Charlotte Amalie
Friday, March 29, 2024
HomeNewsArchivesLABOR DOCKED-PAY ISSUE NOT RESOLVED YET

LABOR DOCKED-PAY ISSUE NOT RESOLVED YET

Labor Commissioner Sonia Jacobs-Dow dodged questions Sunday about a walkout of 13 employees at the Labor Department office on St. Thomas who had their pay docked for failing to attend a three-day retreat on St. Croix during V.I. Carnival week.
Speaking to reporters at the dedication of the refurbished Government House in Christiansted, Jacobs-Dow would say only that "the department is moving in a forward direction, and there are some hurdles that must be overcome."
There was no word whether the job action by 13 of the 17 employees whose pay was docked would resume Monday. Calls to union representatives about the matter went unanswered over the weekend.
The work stoppage occurred after the 17 employees received their paychecks Thursday and found that their wages had been docked for the three days.
About 40 of the Labor Department's 187 employees missed the mandatory retreat, held at the Divi Carina Resort on St. Croix. Jacobs-Dow had said beforehand that employees who could not or did not want to participate could file for annual leave pay for those three days; the other 23 who missed the retreat did this, she said.
Some of the workers who had their pay docked said Friday that they had valid personal reasons for not attending, including, in some cases, having no one to look after their young children.
In a brief meeting with the disgruntled employees Friday, Jacobs-Dow agreed to restore the pay docked if the workers who missed the retreat filled out a form requesting leave retroactively.
The retreat was a training conference to create a federally mandated "one-stop career center system" within the department and was entirely federally funded, Jacobs-Dow said. One aspect of the experience, she said, was team building.

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