The Saipan Chamber of Commerce has reaffirmed its position on the minimum wage issue, calling for the creation of a tiered compensation system in the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
Alex Sablan, chairman of the Chamber\u2019s government relations committee, said the business group revisits the minimum wage issue each time a new set of officers takes office.<\/p>\n
He added that the Chamber, upon discussion, had decided to keep its position that the local minimum wage should be raised, but it should be done gradually.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe minimum wage needs to be raised to address the increased cost of living for citizens in the CNMI, but should be done by a government sanctioned Wage Review Board that brings together federal (in an advisory capacity only) and CNMI labor experts and representatives of various industries,\u201d according to the Chamber.<\/p>\n
The Wage Review Board would structure a staggered increase to build up to an island minimum wage, the group added.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, the business organization said that various industries should review economic reports and indices that would best determine each industry\u2019s ability to pay and come up with an industry-based minimum wage schedule.<\/p>\n
\u201cBenefits mandated by local labor law to nonresident employees should be reduced and ultimately eliminated once a CNMI minimum wage is reached at its highest level,\u201d the Chamber added.<\/p>\n
Sablan said in an interview that the group was opposed to instantly bringing the local minimum wage rate to the federal level, which is at $5.15-per hour.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t believe it should be $5.15. That would raise the cost of living exponentially,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He noted that a 1997 report had a recommended a minimum wage rate of $4.62 per hour. But he added that a new study should be done and that it should look at the CNMI\u2019s economic situation in 2006 and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Saipan Chamber of Commerce has reaffirmed its position on the minimum wage issue, calling for the creation of a tiered compensation system in the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}