It is rare that politicians who are working for the elite corporate ownership and managerial class, will just come out and say that they are beholden to economic elites. However, in recent days, Senator Frank F. Blas, Jr., came out and said it. His priority is big business, not the working people of Guam.
Senator Blas has announced his opposition to pay raises for permanent, merit GovGuam workers. This isn’t the first time he has opposed pay raises for GovGuam workers. In August 2022, Blas came out against paying public school teachers competitively. Instead, he wanted GDOE to continue paying inadequate salaries for at least another year.
If you are like me, you may wonder what lies behind this irrational position? After all, (1) we have the means to pay competitive wages and (2) failing to do so would leave our government with an impossible situation, needing workers but being unable to attract and retain them. So why would someone oppose such a raise? Is Senator Blas opposed to a well-functioning government? There are some self-styled libertarians who would be, but I do not believe he has a principled stance against effective government. Instead, we can listen to his rationale for opposing the pay raise from just days ago.
When Senator Blas recently came out against paying GovGuam workers decently, he explained that he was concerned about businesses. This is unusual because there is no additional burden placed on businesses by the plan to pay workers better. Quite to the contrary, when workers are paid more, they will spend most of their additional income on goods and services in our community. That means the pay raises will actually help businesses by increasing economic activity.
Then what is to be made of Senator Blas’ opposition? ACTION PAC, a political action committee started and operated by the biggest and most politically connected business on Guam, have secured commitments from most, if not all, of the Republican senators for their main objective, cutting the Business Privilege Tax from 5% to 4%. Over 85% of businesses would not see any benefit from this policy change. Only the highest revenue businesses stand to benefit. Those richest businesses are the ones served by Senator Blas.
It seems clear the tax cut for Guam’s wealthiest companies must be the reason Blas opposes the raises, if we take him at his word that he is looking out for businesses. He just didn’t want to mention how few or how wealthy the businesses he is looking out for are…
Thankfully, the people are seeing through the extremely thin veneer of respectability Senator Blas has tried to use to shield his redistribution scheme. There are few more brazen and poorly hidden attempts to directly take from ordinary workers and give to the gracious few whose interests he serves.
Few things bring the working people into a position of solidarity more effectively than shared hardship, like we saw during the waning days of pandemic, where large price rises have affected all working peoples’ livelihoods in similar ways. In the private sector, many workers received at least some raise reflecting the gradually tightening labor market and the rosing cost of living, but in GovGuam, workers get what they already had and nothing more, as the rising prices ate away at their purchasing power. The working people of Guam have more interests in common with each other than the corporate owner and managerial class. Acting together, they can build a more prosperous life for all working families on Guam.
GuamMinimumWage.org 