Union president urges revamp of Heroes Act

The Guam Federation of Teachers President Timothy Fedenko encourages the Guam Legislature to amend the language of Speaker Tina Muna Barnes’ Bill 359 or the Heroes Act.

This comes after GFT was made aware of Vice Speaker Telena Nelson’s legislation that advocates for all essential employees to be paid double pay.

According to President Fedeko many of the union’s members  and govguam employees expressed concerns on GFT’s support of Speaker Barnes’ bill. 

In a release GFT explains that over the weekend field representative Robert Koss was invited by Speaker Barnes and other lawmakers to craft legislation to justify fair compensation for essential employees. At that time the union was told $15 million dollar was the allocated budget and from that the Heroes Act was created to provide frontliners one hour of annual leave for every hour worked. Fedenko says “we are not against any bill that supports our workforce. The better bill should win and we support any equity that supports our COVID19 heroes. We do not know what the final bill will look like, however, if we feel our members have been equitably compensated without damaging our government and allowing money to be spent for others in need, we will seek alternative courses of action.”

KUAM asked Speaker Barnes for a response to GFT pulling their support and her office replied stating, “We have a compromise measure that we believe allows the governor to use federal funds to reward our frontline heroes with annual leave that they rightly deserve. The GFT agreed and unfortunately now they just want to support any measure that will pay our heroes fair compensation. We have always supported this and still do. I trust the governor will keep her word and sign Bill 359-35 should it be duly passed by our body, and that we can afford to pay for this program and deliver their funds within 10 days of the passage of this legislation.”

As of late this afternoon, Senator Joe San Agustin introduced Bill 361 which amends the double pay rule language for this pandemic emergency and future state of emergencies.