The Middle Class Job Creation Act (Bill 48)
Q. What does the Middle Class Job Creation Act do?
A. Improves everyone on Guams quality of life by creating thousands of middle class ($30+/hr) Jobs and pumping Billions of dollars a year into Guam’s economy.
Q. How will the Middle Class Job Creation Act create jobs for Guam’s families?
A. It will make it more cost effective for contractors to hire locals at middle class wages by putting a $40,000 per year fee on almost every temporary worker visa.
Q. How will the Middle Class Job Creation Act put Billions of dollars a year into Guam’s economy?
A. Every dollar paid to a local worker circulates in Guam’s economy 10 times because they spend it locally, (buying new cars, cell phones, clothes for their kids, taking their family out to eat and to the movies etc.) whereas a dollar given to a temporary foreign worker (TFW) get’s sent back to their country. (6,000 TFWs x $40k x 10 = $2.4Billion per year!)
Q. Why $40,000?
A. A block layer makes $32/hr in Hawaii versus $12/hr on Guam working for the same company on the same Federal contract. That’s a $41,600 per year difference! It costs just as much if not more to live on Guam and we shouldn’t allow the Feds undervalue our people.
Q. How will the Middle Class Job Creation Act help improve public education, health and safety?
A. In the first year this will generate a minimum of $234Million in new public funds which will go to Guam’s grossly underfunded public services.
Q. Will this cause the price of everything to go up?
A. No. Almost none of Guam’s goods or services are produced by temporary foreign workers. Of course there will be a small increase in the cost of construction but it will be insignificant compared to the general rise in wages.
Q. Is this Bill “Anti-Business”?
A. Absolutely Not! More money paid to local workers means more money spent in local businesses.
Q. Will this cause the Fed’s to get “mad” and not go forward with the build up?
A. No. President Obama is pro-union/worker and in his first couple of days in office has signed multiple worker friendly executive orders to ensure that workers that are employed by Fed. Contractors are treated and paid fairly.
Q. Will this Bill cause a shortage in workers?
A. No. There are 33,000 adults on Guam that have given up looking for work and 8.3% of those that are looking can’t find a job, plus we have thousands of family members that moved to the mainland to find a decent job that they could raise their families on. If there were 6,000, $30+per hour jobs available on Guam we would see masses of people entering training programs and coming home for work.
Q. How can I help pass this important piece of legislation?
A. Call my office 734-Matt or email at Matt@MattRector.com