Thursday, February 12, 2009
Local
Thursday, February 12, 2009

Labor successful with backlog project but falls behind in processing appeals

By Ferdie de la Torre
Reporter

The Department of Labor has successfully completed its backlog project relating to labor applications and labor cases, but it is falling behind in processing appeals.

Labor Secretary Gil M. San Nicolas said the number of labor appeals increased last year because of the labor applications and the labor case backlog project initiated by the department.

In a report, San Nicolas noted that when they cleaned up the backlog of labor cases and agency cases, a small percent of those decisions were appealed.

With respect to labor applications, he said when they worked on the backlog, a portion of those were denied, and some of those denials were appealed.

“Although the numbers of appeals are not large, it takes time to process each appeal, and we were falling behind because of the new workload,” the Secretary said.

He said when the backlog project was initiated, they employed “outside lawyers” to assist Labor on a temporary basis, and set up a new monitoring system within the department.

As of July 15, 2008, Labor is reportedly almost entirely current with respect to old cases.

San Nicolas said the performance benchmark for the 2008 and 2009 appeals is to issue opinions within 60 days of the receipt of the appeal.