LBJ Medical Center board chairman Mase Akapo has assured senators that internal corrective action has been made to ensure that the salaries of the hospital's Human Resources director and her assistant are kept at the level when the pair were first hired as contract employees.

The hiring of the HR director and the assistant director as contract employees, and their subsequent conversion to career service was the first issue discussed during Tuesday’s Senate LBJ/Health Committee hearing chaired by Sen. Mauga T. Asuega, who was not pleased that LBJ officials who were there to testify didn’t bring with them the requested reports — such as LBJ’s organizational chart, which includes the pay scale.

The HR director and assistant director were never identified by name during the hearing, but a Samoa News story last month — following complaints from hospital employees — identified the director as Mrs. Komiti Emmsley and the assistant as Dr. Akenese Nikolao Mutini.

At the outset of the hearing, Sen. Laolagi F.S. Vaeao said one issue pertaining to the hospital that came to his attention, as well as the attention of other senators, dealt with the hiring of these two people, along with the issue of their salaries.

He said these two individuals were reportedly hired as contract employees, but were only on the job for a few months before their employment status was converted to career service. He wanted a full explanation from the LBJ witnesses, which included chief executive officer Joseph Davis-Fleming and chief medical officer Dr. Iotamo Saleapaga.

Mase explained that these two positions were advertised as career service but following the interviews, the CEO decided that it was best to start the new persons as contract workers while observing their job performance for a period of time, to see if they were suited for the posts. He said this decision by the CEO was due to problems in the past, however, he didn't give any examples.

(Samoa News should point out the advertisement that ran in the paper beginning, Thursday, Sept. 12, 2013, for 4 days, for the position of LBJ “Director of Human Resources” did not identify the position as “career service” or “contract”. Samoa News further notes the position of “Ass’t Director of Human Resources” was not advertised in the Samoa News, and could have been an ‘in-house’ promotion.)

Mase said the CEO sought, and the board gave its approval to putting the two employees on contract first. He said the CEO found the pair to be very good employees handling various HR matters including a reclassification of the LBJ pay scale.

With such good job performance, the CEO decided to carry out the original advertisement of these two posts by placing the pair on career service status, which is also a provision in their contract, Mase said, adding that based on the new reclassification of pay scale, it also increased the salaries of the two individuals.

However, Mase said the CEO didn’t seek the board’s approval for converting their status to career service, because Davis-Fleming thought that the original approval — to hire them in the first place — still applied.

Mase explained that this issue has since been addressed internally between the board and the CEO, wherein the two individuals were made career service and “we returned the salaries to where they were when they were first hired.”

While thankful for the explanation, Laolagi said he was still “not fully satisfied" because he truly believed that "if you advertise a career service [position] and you hire that person, there is a trial period. That’s why you should have never put that person on contract in the first place. After the trial period — and you realize it's not working — then you have to release [that person] and you will still be protected by law.

“Because of the trial period, when you look at the performance and it's not up to par, that’s when you say ‘you’ve got to go’,” he said, adding that the hospital’s handling of this situation was the reason other long time employees went to senators with their complaints.

Asked by Laolagi as to the salaries of these two individuals, Mase first noted that such information is “supposed to be confidential information”, but then said the HR director’s salary is Step 1, Grade 18, which is about $63,000 annually and the assistant falls under Step 1, Grade 17, which is a bit lower (but the salary amount was not revealed).

“That makes sense to me, because when this issue was first brought to the Senate’s attention, the salary was about $80,000 to $90,000 and the question that came to mind was, ‘how can a human resource director at an [ASG] entity be making more than the human resources director for the whole government?” Laolagi said referring to the ASG DHR director, “who is on contract”.

(According to the ASG FY 2014 budget document the ASG-DHR director’s salary is $65,000, while the deputy director is $60,000).

Mauga told Mase that this type of hiring practice is “another problem that we have in this picture coming out of LBJ” and that the CEO and the board chairman “are not working together”.

Mauga said the committee wanted to see the LBJ organizational chart with pay scale and this information was requested in the letter to LBJ. He then verbally requested that this information be provided to the committee.