Barbados Today

Tourism stakeholders have been singled out as major culprits engaging in the practice of outsourcing high level employment positions which could easily be filled by locals, and a senior trade union leader is pleading with Government to take a tougher stance.

For the second time this week, veteran trade unionist Senator Caswell Franklyn highlighted the issue, this time contending that while low level local hotel staff were being treated like “dirt”, top level positions were being filled by people who “know nothing about what they are doing”.

During his contribution to the Upper Chamber during debate on the Barbados Tourism Product Authority Amendment Bill 2019, Franklyn said he had encountered hotels employing human resource managers from as far away as Egypt.

“I don’t know of any Egyptian who is more familiar with Barbados’ labour laws than the Barbadians who have been doing it for all of these years, but this is happening in the tourism sector in Barbados,” said the union boss.

“When you see the work performance of people brought in at the higher level, you know they have no knowledge or ability in the job, but we continue to allow these tourism players to blackmail the Government and get these work permits.”

The General Secretary of the Unity Trade Union, Franklyn argued fraudulent tactics were being used to keep non-nationals employed and he claimed that in some cases the high level staff from overseas were more likely to disregard labour laws.

“We have a hotel company in Barbados, who over the last few years had about six human resource managers. When the Barbadian human resource managers refuse to do certain things that the company wants or says that Barbadian laws don’t allow it, that person is gently moved out of the picture,” he claimed.

Earlier this week, Franklyn blasted attempts by North American club-style retailer, Cost U Less, to fill the position of store manager with an overseas applicant after claiming to have found no suitable candidates locally. At the time, he pointed to the tourism sector as the worst example of such practices, but expounded while in the senate.

Of the local staff which he described as being treated “like dirt”, Franklyn said many were young women who were used for their beauty and discarded after reaching a certain age.

“You’ve got to be young, 25 or 30 and ‘perky’ to keep your job down there, especially when you are working around the guests. This is happening in Barbados today and nobody is doing anything about it,” Franklyn contended. kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb