Vexed Bermoothes

On May 15, Parliament debated a report commissioned by the Bermuda Employers Council entitled The Shift: An Examination of Employment Trends in Bermuda.

The debate was desultory and weak.  But you should read the report yourself.

It points out that should Bermuda’s economy expand even moderately in future years, our need for expatriate workers will grow.  There just aren’t enough Bermudians, never mind ones with appropriate education and professional experience for the international sector’s immediate needs.  This will have several impacts:

• Outsourcing off Bermuda will grow.
• The ratio of Bermudians in the working population will decline.

Bermuda does not have the policies in place to deal with these factors.

The report also opines that the use of CURE’s statistics provide an incomplete and inaccurate basis for the legislation in Government’s proposed Workplace Equity Act. Government uses the CURE data to allege that black Bermudians are under employed and under paid in Bermuda companies, requiring hiring quotas and other Government interventions.  I don’t know why this is resurfacing again now.  The Workforce Equity Act was poorly thought out back in 2007 when it was proposed – and stands on even more dubious ground today.  In Bermuda’s weak straits, it would be economic suicide to proceed with it.

The report points out several factors:

Only larger companies are included in the CURE report – 587 out of the 5000 registered to pay taxes.

It is clear that the majority of those businesses not included in CURE’s statistics are most likely small in nature and operated exclusively by Bermudians. This is significant given the likelihood that the racial balance of those working in the excluded businesses most likely reflects the racial composition of Bermudians. As a consequence, CURE’s report likely under-represents the percentage of black Bermudians in the workforce.

This, combined with some other statistical red flags mean that:

In fact, as a means of measuring true racial balance in Bermuda’s total workforce, the CURE statistics are of doubtful value.

The report also points out the skewing impact of Government’s own hiring spree in recent years.

Government has gone from employing 14.8% of the national workforce in 1981 to 17.1% in 2006.  Put another way, of the total of 2,212 Bermudians added to the workforce between 1981 and 2006, the Government absorbed 43% of the additional Bermudians available to the national workforce

Not only does this fuel the private sector’s need to import expatriate workers, but also further skews the pay and race statistics.

• Government jobs often pay less than the private sector, thus showing Bermudians at a salary disadvantage (and creating the unsustainable urge to bump up the public payroll).
• Author Larry Burchall points out that 81% of Government employees are black.   This means that fewer black Bermudians being available in the general workforce and thus impacts the racial balance in the private sector.

I am all for programmes that encourage our international companies to hire and train Bermudians – but these must be based on proper statistics and a pool of Bermudians with advanced education that meets the needs of our employers.  Let’s be real!   Furthermore, given the intensity of our international competition, carrots are going to work far better than sticks.