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Guam Jobs and Filipinos:
Making sense of it all
By Timothy Daiss

MANILA – Filipino politicians have promised 50,000 new jobs for Filipino workers to build the new American military base on Guam, with construction to start in less than two years. Guam Senators are flying to the Philippines on a regular basis to shore up work agreements and forge alliances.

Guam officials, however, claim that Filipino politicians inflate the number of workers needed for political gain. To complicate matters, an amendment in Washington, if passed, would change the playing field and limit the number of jobs offered to foreign nationals. And to top it off, American citizens are starting to ask why jobs in a US territory are being offered to foreign nationals when the US is in one of its biggest economic crises in a generation.

What exactly is going on?

All questions that deserve an answer

Two weeks ago Guam legislators, Senator Rory J. Respicio (D) House Majority Leader and Chairman of the Committee on Rules, Natural Resources & Federal, Foreign & Micronesian Affairs and Senator Judith Guthertz, who is part of the Committee on the Guam Military Buildup and Homeland Security, led a Guam delegation that met with Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) officials to inspect facilities on the former US naval base that could be used to train Filipino workers earmarked for Guam.

The buildup on Guam has been called the greatest US military buildup since World War II and will cost an estimated $15 billion.

Last week, Sept. 15, PhilNews.Com met with Senator Respicio on his latest trip to Manila.

“We came to the Philippines, not to recruit foreign workers over American workers, but because we are in need of skilled workers,” Respicio said.

According to Respicio, Guam’s population of 169,000 falls short in providing an adequate labor pool to construct the new military base that will house 9,000 US Marines and another estimated 20,000 dependents that will be relocated from Okinawa, Japan to Guam by 2014.

When asked if US citizens on either Guam, Hawaii or the US mainland should be given priority for these jobs, he stated, “It is not the [US] government nor Guam’s responsibility to fill these jobs but the contractors who will do the building.”

According to Respicio, the contractors will fill the jobs with the most suitable, most skilled and most available workers.

Senator Guthertz agreed.

“Skilled and professional workers from the Philippines and other countries will be needed to augment the labor pool,” she said, “regardless of whether Americans avail themselves of these job opportunities or not.”

Respicio contends that there is enough media coverage in the US about the Guam military buildup to inform people on the mainland interested in applying for these jobs.

However, some may dispute this claim. With so much happening in the news, North Korean sanctions, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the war in Afghanistan, the ongoing financial meltdown and President Obama’s health care fight in full force, news about Guam’s buildup is pretty hard to come by in the media.

In fact, Respicio placed part of the responsibility with individual states.

“I think states, particularly those with high unemployment, have a responsibility to their own unemployed citizens to inform them of the opportunities on Guam,” he said.

“How these positions are filled will be up to the companies awarded the bill,” added Guthertz. “The government’s role will be to ensure that fair labor practices are applied to all workers, regardless of origin or nationality.”

ABERCROMBIE AMENDMENT
However there is another cause of friction, greater than the debate about who should fill these jobs. It comes from Hawaii by way of Washington.

Hawaii Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D) included two additional amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010.

His first amendment requires that Hawaii construction wages, which are double that of Guam’s, apply to all military construction projects.

The second amendment stipulates that not more than 30 percent of the total hours worked per month on a defense construction project be performed by foreign workers.

Many claim that Rep. Abercombie, who is thought to be jockeying himself for the Hawaii governorship, is merely playing personal politics.

How, if passed, would the amendment change the dynamics of the military buildup on Guam?

Guam’s Congressional representative in Washington, Madeleine Z. Bordallo, told PhilNews.Com that she expects the Abercrombie amendment to be dropped before it comes up for a vote. Yet, if it is passed into law it would spell trouble for Guam.

“There are serious concerns regarding the cost of Congressman Abercrombie’s amendment,” she said. “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that inflating Guam’s wages to those rates in Hawaii would cost nearly $10 billion over the next ten years.”

She added that the amendment, if passed, would jeopardize the realignment of US Marines from Okinawa, Japan to Guam, thereby creating a possible rift in US-Japanese relations, and that the Department of Defense opposes the amendment as well.

Respicio also voiced his concern about the Abercrombie amendment, stating that the work of filling the Guam construction jobs would continue despite the Abercrombie debate in Washington.

INFLATED NUMBERS
Finally, let’s take a look at the numbers.

Last week, Augusto Syjuco, Philippine Technical Education and Skills Development Authority director general said that at least 50,000 Filipino construction and other skilled workers would be hired in Guam. Other Filipino officials and politicians are quoting similar inflated numbers to the Manila media.

“Those numbers are inflated,” Rispico, said. “We anticipate between 25,000 to 30,000 jobs as a result of the military build up on Guam. I expect politicians say that for political purposes.”

"We don’t want to create false hope and higher expectations,” he added. “Politicians in the Philippines are using the promise of jobs politically.”

Yet, all of this may be a moot point if the Abercrombie amendment is singed into law. To date, all the players involved, including Guam legislators, potential Filipino workers, Philippine politicians, and even the US Department of Defense, don’t have long to wait to find out. Voting on the amendment, if it’s not scrapped, is set for October.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
My column "Hong Kong Be Damned," a few weeks ago, about an OFWs trouble in Hong Kong, generated a lot of reader response. In light of this, if you know any OFW story that deserves to be told, let us know.

We are asking you to help us report the story by telling us what’s going on. Contact me using the twitter link. http://twitter.com/tdaiss or at the email below-

Tim is a journalist, author of four non-fiction books, an ESL teacher and public speaker. He has written for numerous publications in the US as well as international magazines, newspapers and websites. He holds a B.B.A. in Finance as well as a Master’s. He can be reached at timothygsu85@yahoo.com or at http://twitter.com/tdaiss.

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