HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — An impending increase in the minimum wage has been delayed by six months.
Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero on Friday signed the legislation that authorizes the delay, acknowledging that she also approved the original two-tiered plan to bring Guam’s minimum wage to $9.25 an hour on March 1, 2021. With her latest action, affected workers won’t see this increase until Sept. 1.
Sen. James Moylan thanked the governor for agreeing with his proposal.
“This legislation was not an issue I was excited about introducing, nor was it something I had campaigned on, but it is a much-needed measure at this critical time as our island faces a tough road toward economic recovery,” Moylan stated. “I supported the public law, which proposed the two-tier increments back in 2019, but just as many businesses have had to and continue to endure, tough decisions must be made.”
The work to lift Guamanians out of poverty is more difficult with “circumstances of health and economic fallout resulting from our current global pandemic,” the governor wrote on Friday to Speaker Therese Terlaje, indicating she has signed the legislation into Public Law 36-1.
“Recovery will take time, but it must include a recognition that getting back to where we were will not be enough. We must recover so well that we are better off for having had to endure this awful pandemic,” Leon Guerrero wrote. “To do this responsibly means we will have to delay — for a short time — the next planned increase in the minimum wage.”
The new law initially called for a yearlong “redating” of the minimum wage increase but was amended on the floor to cut the delay by half.
The legislation included legislative findings that assert it would be unreasonable — given that many businesses are still in a “recovery phase” and with “questionable tourism arrival numbers” this year — for the government to require additional costs to be shouldered by Guam businesses.
Guam Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero speaks during a ribbon-cutting ceremony of the newly opened Phase 1 of the international arrivals corridor at the A.B. Won Pat International Airport on Friday.
Photo by Dontana Keraskes/The Guam Daily Post
