Business friendly?

Forced two-year employment contracts equal two steps backward into economic decay. Gov. Benigno R, Fitial, who so far seems to get it right most of the time, has sure received some bad advice this time. Whoever came up with this ridiculous idea must be wearing his necktie a bit too tight.

The availability of a two-year contract is already on the books. The choice (one of the few options available at DOL) is there for anyone who wants to use it rather than the already onerous one-year version of Employer Servitude to the State. It is so wildly popular that NOBODY uses it. This new proposal is obviously not about choice, or freedom to conduct business. It is about coercion and extortion. It is about choking the goose that lays the golden tax egg. Choke the chicken if you must, but leave the goose alone.

Here is why we don’t want it:
* If the so called “labor processing fee” is for processing, and under the new proposed rule we only have to process once every two years, then why isn’t the fee for processing once the same as it is now instead of doubled? (Hint, because the rule’s only purpose is to extort more funds from business without calling it a tax).

* If passed and there is only the work to do at DOL, will one out of two DOL workers lose their jobs?

* What happens when an employee deserves a raise? Can his contract be altered?

* What if the employee finds a better deal, more suited to his talents, elsewhere?

* What happens when the employee deserves to be canned (fired)? It’s bad enough to be forced to keep a bad one for one year, not to mention two. (I recently had such an experience —a longtime foreign worker with a lot of promises [lies] but no real on-the-job skill to back it up. I didn’t find out until I had already paid the innumerable fees, to DOL, by then I was stuck with the useless scum for a year. Did I get my “fee” back? Don’t be ridiculous. In fact I had to pay another fee for the replacement with enough talent to do the job. Now they want to stick us for two years).

* If we are to jump-start this economy we need to allow business to thrive. To thrive, business needs to be productive. Businesses don’t become more productive spending countless hours and countless dollars wading through the government swamp of regulations and increased taxes (fees), they become less so.

* Hard-working, hard-pressed DOL employees don’t need yet another random change in policy causing them processing headaches.

* Where does it stop? How about five-year contracts? 20 years? Lifetime servitude?

* Once he/she is hooked onto the gravy train for two years, what motivates them to work productively? They can’t be fired. The employer is forced to pay them for two years even if they are slugs.

* It fosters an already burgeoning ‘underground economy’. (That is a dandy topic for another day). The underground economy sucks the lifeblood out of the CNMI and sends it winging to the P.I., China, and elsewhere even faster than the foreign labor dominated above ground economy.
* Now suppose you have it. They collect all the double charge money and spend/reprogram it as fast as it comes in. What monetary “emergency” do you think we will have next year at labor renewal time? Can we say double-double charged —oops looks like we will have to charge you yet again?
We are perilously close to a Fascist Economy now, with the state dictating who can work, when, for how much, for how long (whether one or two years it is dictated), at what job, with what detailed contract provisions…in fact with a one-size-fits-all forced employment contract. Economically, Fascism simply means that the means of production (businesses) are privately owned but are controlled by the Government. We are not all the way there yet, but this proposed regulation takes us yet another step toward free market annihilation and economic dictatorship. Yes, I said Fascism…a la Adolph and El Duce’. State run economies always fail. Ours will too. Then what? How are your fishing skills?

This proposed measure is not “cost cutting.” This is not “improved efficiency.” This is extortion—gun-to-the-head forced labor. Even one year is too long. Two years will suffocate business—the only producers on the island. Do not forget that government produces nothing. It can only take a piece of what has already been produced. Businesses NEED the flexibility to hire the best person for the job, at a competitive wage and be able to focus the energies of that employee as needed in order to produce something so there is something for the government to take. (It takes it by force, with a gun—but luckily for you, the reader, that is also a topic for another time).

Please drop this counter productive piece of garbage regulation before it bleeds the local economy to death.

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Bruce A. Bateman writes Sour Grapes when the moon is full and the mood strikes. Stay tuned for each exciting episode of Sour Grapes. Yes, he is opinionated.