Remember that pothole you complained about? The aircon that broke when the power spiked? The rude government employee who waved you off when you had that urgent issue? The wage increase you worked your butt to get, but you still haven’t? The price of groceries? The GPA payment plan you still can’t afford? The corruption, racism, and sexism that goes unpunished?
The abuse of your tax dollars as a resource to address everything else but the issues that matter to you is the result of a systemic manipulation of democracy into a corrupted oligarchy that places the profits of the big boys above the interests of the everyday Guamanian. On any other day of the year, I would agree with you that this is how the system is and there’s nothing we can do about it.
But not today.
Today is one of the two days we get every two years, when every one of us is equal to the other.
This is the day we get to look at the most powerful people and realize they actually are afraid of everyone they saw as disposable.
There’s a catch to this equality, though. True equality depends on you actually voting today. You have until 8 p.m.
Did you know that if every single hotel, restaurant and grocery store employee voted with purpose for the candidates who represent the issues that mattered to them, the entire election would belong to them? They would elect candidates who would spike the minimum wage closer to a living wage. They would roll back the anti-union so-called “right-to-work” statute that has prevented the organizing of workers to protect their jobs and fight for better working conditions and pay. They would demand performance-based merit reform in public service and remedies against the corrupt.
One of my favorite lessons in politics comes from how former Governor Eddie Calvo earned votes from Filipinos in his reelection campaign in 2014.
Some Chamorro politicians reduce Filipinos to a voting bloc that can easily be swayed by stupid resolutions and proclamations, or a visit in a barong to a Filipino organization banquet. Mr. Calvo didn’t underestimate Filipinos or any other ethnic minority in Guam. He knew better.
He understood that Filipinos desired far more than trinkets of affection. They wanted respect. That meant fighting for the values and issues that tended to unite Filipino voters. He saw an opportunity in the fact that the overwhelming majority of hotel, restaurant, and grocery store workers were Filipinos of all ages. And they were struggling to get by while their GovGuam counterparts were getting big raises.
Some time in early 2013, BJ Cruz introduced legislation to raise the minimum wage thrice over a three-year period. The proposal scared and angered the Chamber of Commerce and the Guam Hotel and Restaurant Association. There was no organized voice for the workers within the industries these business organizations supposedly represent. That largely has to do with the Republican-passed Right to Work Act that has effectively prevented these workers from organizing.
The going theory at the time was that the chamber and the GHRA had cause for respite on the legislation. While the Democratic-led legislature was likely to pass the proposal, the theory went, Republican Calvo whose family enjoyed the privilege of profits for decades would veto the bill.
After a few weeks of debate on the issue, I attended a dinner with the governor at Roy’s inside the Hilton. On our way out, I asked the governor to go up to the worker who was escorting us out and ask him what he thought of the minimum wage increase proposal.
The man smiled from ear to ear, “We want that,” he said.
I’m not sure if that smile was about the issue itself, or whether he felt so darn good that the governor himself had asked him his opinion, but I am certain Mr. Calvo spent that night thinking on what that man told him.
By the morning he had made up his mind. He called me into his chambers and told me to prepare his announcement that he would be proposing a minimum wage increase. To make a long story short, that increase is the minimum wage we have now. It’s been 10 years.
If you’re a hotel or grocery employee earning below $18 an hour, you’ve got to ask yourself why neither the legislature nor the governor – both under Democrat control – have so much as proposed the idea of a minimum wage increase (which would effectively shift wages upward for those currently earning below a living wage) or the abolition of the Republican-era union-busting statute. And don’t count on republicans to do it. They’ll be the first to screw you.
In fact, the last time any politician did anything meaningful for hotels and restaurants was when Michael San Nicolas got Guam included in the Biden-proposed Restaurant Revitalization Fund Replenishment Act of 2021. That money was what allowed several restaurants and hotels to bring workers back from the devastation of the pandemic.
What’s been done since? Judging by the numbers of poor and working class Guamanians who have left Guam, and the inability of businesses to find workers, I’ll tell you what the incumbents have done: NOTHING.
Why have you seen the incumbent elected officials dining and attending functions at your hotel or restaurant, but you haven’t seen them lift a finger to promote your economic interest over those of the profit makers who line their campaigns with big money?
It’s because they don’t give a shit about you.
So if that matters to you; meaning, if your economic interest and your place among equals matters to you, then today you’ll get up for whatever it is you’re doing, and before 8 pm you’ll go to your precinct and cast your vote.
Don’t count on the same politicians who didn’t give a shit about you the other 729 days of the past two years to suddenly care about what affects you. Put your money where your mouth is. Vote.
You have until 8 p.m.
