By Emmanuel T. Erediano
& Moneth G. Deposa
Variety News Staff

THE Saipan Chamber of Commerce does not represent the views of all businesses on island, according to two of its former presidents.
Efrain F. Camacho, who was president from 1991 to 1993, and Samuel F. McPhetres, president in 1996, also expressed disappointment with the chamber’s position on minimum wage and local immigration.
Current chamber president Juan T. Guerrero, in an e-mail, said although the organization “represents a majority of all small, medium and large business,” not all businesses on island are members.
Camacho, in an interview, said the chamber “definitely does not speak for all businesses.”
“They don’t speak for me,” he said, adding that he knows several businesses that do not share the chamber’s position on key CNMI issues.
Likewise, he said, the chamber’s stance does not reflect the community’s.
He said there are a lot of individual citizens who disagree with the chamber’s position on the minimum wage.
According to Camacho, who owns EFC Enginners & Architects, he resigned from the chamber in 2001 because he disagreed with many of its positions.
McPhetres, instructor and chairman of the social sciences, fine arts and humanities department of Northern Marianas College, said one of the reasons he resigned from the chamber was because the garment factories “were becoming more and more involved in the chamber activities.”
It is the garment industry that is primarily opposed to a wage hike and the extension of federal immigration law to the islands.
Gov. Benigno R. Fitial is a former executive of the island’s largest garment manufacturer, Tan Holdings.
McPhetres said he is disappointment with the chamber’s stand on several social and economic issues.
“The chamber is represented by a substantial number of businesses…but certainly not a ‘comprehensive’ number, and its sentiments should not be understood as those of the whole business sector,” he said.
The chamber, according to Guerrero, has 163 members and “is not controlled by any group or groups of large businesses.”
The chamber board, he said, is composed of individuals from different companies from small, medium and large businesses.
The chamber, according to its executive director Christine Parke, is a private, non-profit organization while the other local business group, the Strategic Economic Development Council, was set up under the auspices of the governor’s office to deal specifically with economic issues.
The chamber, she said, has a wide range of activities that “contribute to the general welfare of the community.”
Asked how many active members the chamber has, Parke said “it is difficult” to give an exact figure.
She said, usually, about 70 attend the general membership meeting which is also open to the public.
During the general membership meeting on April 11, the attendance was 42.
McPhetres questions the chamber’s stance on “federalization” issues.
“We cannot continue to hang on to a standard of living that is based on cheap labor…it’s basically wrong,” he told Variety.
“When I was president of the chamber,” he added, “I was invited to Washington, D.C. to testify at the oversight hearings about minimum wage and immigration. That time, we had a public law requiring a salary increment of 30 cents per hour per year until it reached the U.S. minimum wage and it had already gone up 75 cents…and so I explained about our minimum wage in the CNMI by citing this specific law… and the feds welcomed that, saying it’s fine.”
McPhetres said he was upset when the Legislature repealed the gradual wage hike law.
He said he felt “betrayed” by the move.
“Since then I was disillusioned not only with the chamber but with the Legislature…and I decided to (leave the chamber) because I cannot stand it anymore.”