The GAO representatives met with the Society for Human Resource Management CNMI Chapter at the Pacific Islands Club yesterday.
They refused to be interviewed or photographed.
They told the society members that they are here to get an assessment of the island’s businesses so they can “understand” the local economy and use feedback they collect in their next annual impact report.
The GAO is the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress.
The GAO representatives asked businesses some questions to assess the current business conditions on island, what steps the business owners have taken to cope with the impact of the minimum wage increase such as what new technologies they have implemented, if any, and if they have made any changes in their business format.
The representatives said they have already started distributing questionnaires to local businesses.
Uncertainty
The business community on Saipan noted the deepening economic uncertainty.
Some small business owners said they won’t be hiring more employees.
Others said they are forced to reduce working hours of employees to 32 hours per week, and have hired part time instead of full time workers so they won’t have to pay for regular benefits.
They have also demoted employees and reduced their salaries to avoid terminating them and implemented other cost-cutting measures.
In response to questions from business owners, the GAO representatives said the delay in the 50-cent minimum wage increase in 2011 does not mean that the mandatory increase in 2012 will be $1.
The representatives also presented the results of the GAO wage study for the CNMI, how they conducted the study and what methods they used to collect data from their respondents.
In 2007, the U.S. enacted a law incrementally raising the minimum wage in the CNMI.
The law applied the first 50-cent per hour increase in July 2007 and mandated additional increases each subsequent year until the CNMI minimum wage reaches the U. S. minimum wage of $7.25 per hour in 2015.
The current local wage rate is $5.05 an hour.
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