Labour shortage a growing threat, warns construction leader

As Barbados braces for the free movement of people with three other CARICOM countries next week, a major player in the construction industry warned that entrenched labour shortages are escalating into a critical threat, even as the authorities scramble to attract more workers into the trades.

Executive Chairman of the Maloney Group, Mark Maloney, admitted that his own businesses have been struggling to secure enough workers to keep pace with demand.

“We’re finding challenges not just getting people in general, even people from overseas,” he told Barbados TODAY. “And I think with technology it will help us bring people on more because people don’t want to do hard labour for very long, they want to move on to something else.”

Maloney stressed that regulation and oversight were essential if labour from across the region and beyond is to be integrated successfully. “I just think making sure that all the regulatory processes are followed, that people have the right work permits, that their living conditions are proper, that they’re being treated properly and that we have the right people because bringing the wrong people in the country is not good either because that is what a lot of countries have with crime and so on.

“So I’m all for employment of good people, whether it’s good people locally or good people regionally or from [further] away, but making sure that we’re doing it right.”

From Wednesday, citizens of Barbados, Belize, Dominica, and St Vincent and the Grenadines will be free to live and work in each other’s countries without the need for a work permit or a CARICOM Skilled National Certificate.

While welcoming the free movement initiative, the cement, concrete and building magnate cautioned that its long-term success would depend on stability and sustainability: “Free movement doesn’t mean that people are going to pick up and just come like that and leave their homes, you have to entice them and you have to make sure you’re bringing good people and that it is sustainable. Because a person working in my company that’s getting paid $15 an hour and someone has offered them a job in Bermuda for US$20 an hour and they jump and go there, how long is that going to last?”

To offset labour shortages, innovation and technology must be central to the industry’s future. “We’ve done that in our group, we’re innovating, we’re using factory things in a manufacturing environment where it’s safer, it’s cleaner, people like to work more than they like to work on a hot construction site,”

Maloney declared. “You can get structures up quickly and then you’re getting into the finishes and all of that and then you can do the projects quickly and then move on to another one. Because people also get bored…. And that happens through technology and innovation and then we get productivity. The more that you innovate and the more that you’re bringing technology and the more that you’re developing people the more productivity that you get.”

His remarks come as the country debates how to secure the future of its construction workforce.

Henderson Eastmond, executive director of the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Council, recently warned the country is on the brink of a construction labour crisis that pay alone cannot resolve.

“Despite rising demand and market-driven salary increases, young Bajans continue to turn away from the trades, often citing the physical demands of the work,” Eastmond told journalists. He added that long-standing cultural attitudes and an education system that sidelined vocational training have compounded the shortage.

At the same time, there are signs of renewed interest.

Principal of the Samuel Jackman Prescod Institute of Technology, Ian Drakes, on Monday reported that this semester has brought “a buzz” to construction courses.

“I’m seeing people who are saying, ‘I’m in carpentry, second-year diploma,’ and it’s a young lady and she’s excited. Persons doing joinery, persons doing masonry – I saw students actually learning to plaster,” he said.

Plumbing courses are in particularly high demand, Drakes said, buoyed by new government scholarships aimed at strengthening the construction workforce.