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Chamber to submit additional testimonies to U.S. Congress
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Posted on Sep 22 1999
The Saipan Chamber of Commerce will submit additional testimonies before the U.S. House Committee on Resources to highlight some issues which were not thoroughly discussed due to limited time given during the presentation at the oversight hearing.
Chamber vice president Lynn Knight said U.S. legislators asked why the Northern Marianas has a 14 percent unemployment situation when most companies have employed foreign workers.
However, a survey conducted by the CNMI Statistics Office show that over 60 percent of the U.S. citizens are teenagers who live with their parents. Although it is a culturally accepted situation in the CNMI for families to take care of their youth, Knight said there is a need for the Northern Marianas to have a good educational system and training so that the young people can get gainful employment.
“We need to get back to a healthy economy in order to employ the unemployed,” said Knight.
At the same time, the Chamber would like to emphasize the locally-mandated benefits given to foreign workers which enable them to save money, a situation which the U.S. legislators are not apparently aware of.
In her testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Resources, Knight said even if businesses were to hire all of the 5,000 government employees plus the 1,400 unemployed U.S. citizens, this number would still lag behind the 25,000 jobs that are now held by foreign workers.
An increase in minimum wage from $3.05 to $6.15 per hour would mean that businesses will be forced to do more with significantly less resources. “It will mean layoffs and an increase in the cost of living at the worst possible time,” she said.
Saying that Northern Marianas must be allowed to control its own economic destiny, the possibility of a federal takeover spells economic disaster, Knight said.
“This does not mean we are any less proud to be Americans. Our community shares the same values as you do. We believe that work places should be safe and that employees should not be taken advantage of.. that we should hire from the local community first, and that our staff should receive a decent living wage,” she added. (LFR)
