MANY small businesses in the CNMI are already dead, having long ago, even before the hike in CUC rates, died of natural causes — the recent hike in oil prices in the global market which led to increased prices locally at the gas pumps, at CUC, and at grocery stores being just one of the many causes — but have yet to be given the appropriate burial, with some owners digging into personal savings to keep businesses teetering on the brink in expectation of “better times” while other owners simply cannot close up shop until they have transferred all their employees to other employers, a feat they are going to find increasingly more difficult to do with changes that are about to take place thousands of miles away, changes that will forever either make or break us.
These are usually businesses whose only investment in the CNMI has been the $50 they paid for a business license, a license they misconstrued to mean carte blanche permission to search and abuse every possible loopholes in the local labor and immigration laws.
And search and abuse they did, “recruiting” scores of relatives and friends and others running from hopeless poverty in their home countries to come to the CNMI and further swelling the ranks of “unemployed” contract workers here and making it even more difficult for local workers to negotiate a wage beyond $3.05 per hour, prompting a hearing officer to wonder out loud as to why the road-side barbecue stand that never has any customers would need a manager, an assistant manager, an administrative assistant, and a slew of other workers. Recent directives coming out of labor are undoubtedly aimed at just these small businesses which the CNMI would be well rid off anyway.
Back to the proposal to hike the minimum wage being proposed several thousands of miles away by individuals who seem disinterested in our realities, economic and otherwise, and who have never even bothered to come to our shores — will a hike in minimum wage make or break us? The general consensus is that it will break us. The general observation is that there was a time when the level of economic activities in the CNMI, i.e., level of garment orders and number of tourists to the islands, would have supported that drastic a wage increase. But that time is certainly not now.
If businesses are closing doors because they are having a difficult time of it even at our lowly minimum wage of $3.05, juxtaposed against all other increases in the cost of doing business brought about by factors external to our economic and political controls, then, pray tell, how will businesses be able to afford the drastic hike in minimum wage, especially now? How will such a hike help our economy?
When you find yourself on a sinking boat, the tendency is to jettison the boat to keep it afloat for as long as possible while awaiting help. You do not take on more cargo — this will only sink the boat faster.
And remember, we are all in the same boat.

JOE ASANUMA
Tanapag, Saipan