Bankruptcy and the people always forgotten in the CNMI

By Mabel Doge Luhan

Good news for people who love bad news! On April 19th, IPI declared not just moral but also financial bankruptcy!

You can find the list of creditors right here on Kandit! ( https://kanditnews.com/breaking-news-ipi-has-filed-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy/ ) Yeah, I know: it’s a pretty good read. But who’d want to be such an asshole? IPI stiffed its employees, its contractors, federal and local tax authorities, and the world at large.

But bankruptcy isn’t, as the popular imagination might have it, a company waving the white flag. Very much the opposite. It’s a company telling its creditors to “talk to the hand,” or, as YNW Melly might have it, “na na na boo boo.” Indeed, Chapter 11 bankruptcy is specifically called “reorganization” (law-school jargon for “walking out on your debts”) while Chapter 7 is called “liquidation” (law-school jargon for “you won’t believe how cheap I got that poor sucker’s Bentley.”) And IPI filed for Chapter 11 (Sirens), not Chapter 7 (Aeolus). That means that IPI’s creditors are barred from going after IPI’s assets. That’s what bankruptcy is.

Creditors! Sounds like big bad banks! Stick it to them! But in this case, IPI’s creditors are mostly government bodies and unpaid contractors. There are also employees who successfully sued. And even if not listed in those documents, there are employees who never successfully sued, and don’t have anything in writing, but still were stiffed on their wages. Despite all those unpaid obligations, IPI’s bosses happily strut around Saipan, and Cui Lijie lives it up in her little house of horrors on Middle Road. She even donated some rice to Rota typhoon victims, and the newspapers of course covered it glowingly.

In most US jurisdictions, state and local statutes and regulations specifically allow either administrative bodies (such as the local Department of Labor) or the wronged workers themselves to pursue not just the company who stiffed them, but that company’s bosses, in a personal capacity, for unpaid wages. There is no such statute or regulation in the CNMI. Gee, I wonder why CNMI law wouldn’t allow cheated workers to sue their former bosses! By the way, my favorite Das Racist track is “All Tan Everything.”

At least those wronged workers have the CNMI Department of Labor protecting them, right? No.

Whenever the CNMI’s workers file a complaint about unpaid wages, they know well enough to go the federal route. They know the CNMI DOL is useless, or worse: complicit. The CNMI DOL has never been for helping, encouraging, or protecting labor or workers. It has, since ever since, been about shaking down workers and employers while weaponizing the financial grievances of non-workers and non-employers.

For all the meaningless “workforce plans” and “reports” the CNMI DOL forces employers to submit, and all the (clearly illegal) former plans for a CNMI DOL issued “worker ID card” or “worker fee,” how much does CNMI DOL actually monitor and enforce protections of workers? I’m referring to those esoteric, hard-to-understand violations that might require some “trainings” in Honolulu or Boise. For example, employees forced to underreport their hours. Employees forced to pay for work supplies. Or employees illegally charged for CW filing fees. 99% if not 100% of the CNMI’s private-sector CW employers follow at least one of these illegal policies. Most of the CNMI’s CW employers follow all three. This has been going on for decades and CNMI DOL has never cared. Workers don’t vote, and the CNMI’s payscales don’t leave much in workers’ pockets for campaign contributions. Non US citizens can’t contribute to campaigns anyway. The CNMI DOL cares about the “local” (wink wink) workforce. And people who have lived here for decades, and have funded the CNMI DOL with their tax dollars, aren’t “local.” So the beat goes on — and IPI’s cheated workers suffer mostly the same fate as all the CNMI’s other cheated workers. They were dead before the ship even sank.

IPI will spend the next few years tap-dancing out of its debts. For them, it’s just business. For most of us, it’s entertainment. No big deal either way. The only losers, the people who actually feel the pain of this bankruptcy, will be the cheated workers: modest mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises.

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Mabel Doge Luhan is a woman of loose morals. She resides in Kagman V, where she pursues her passions of crocheting, beatboxing, and falconry.