In
the Matter of: Bank of America on behalf of Mullangi Naga Durga Vara Prasad,
September 14, 2016 -- The Board of Alien Labor Certification Appeals (“BALCA”) reversed the U.S. Department of Labor’s denial of Bank of America’s PERM application to permit Mullangi Naga Durga Vara Prasad to work permanently in the U.S. as a Software Engineer. The Board ruled that the Bank’s duplicate advertisements for the position in the same paper did not violate regulations requiring U.S. employers to advertise and recruit U.S. workers.
Bank
of America put two Sunday ads in the Dallas Morning News and then a third ad in
the mid-week edition of the paper. Certifying
Officer William Carlson said that the employer used the same recruitment medium
to publish both the required advertisements in a newspaper of general
circulation and the additional recruitment advertisement in a local newspaper.
The
Bank asked the DOL to reconsider its decision, arguing it acted in good faith
and that posting the ad in the mid-week
edition of the paper met the regulation’s “additional step” requirement.
At issue in the instant case is whether an employer can use the same paper to
meet both the Sunday newspaper ad requirement and the additional “local or
ethnic newspaper” requirement.
The
BALCA board said the regulation does not discuss whether the same media can be
used to satisfy both a mandatory step and an additional step. The Board held
that an employer was allowed to place multiple ads in only one newspaper, the
Dallas Morning News, to meet those recruitment requirements. It thus ordered
that the denial of labor certification be reversed and that the case be
remanded for certification.