Employers eye school leavers to plug gaps

The business process outsourcing (BPO) and hospitality sectors are banking on a recruitment drive for high school graduates to cushion the effects of a shrinking labour pool as more Jamaicans are lured to greener pastures to fill vacancies in North America amid a global worker shortage crisis.

Struggling to attract and retain workers for entry-level and mid-level non-managerial positions in manufacturing, hospitality, food and leisure, employers in the United States and Canada have set their eyes on countries like Jamaica.

Data from the Planning Institute of Jamaica Performance Review for January-March 2022 indicate that the island’s labour pool stands at 1.34 million persons, with some 83,500 persons unemployed.

While a recent recruitment drive by Royal Caribbean to find 10,000 Jamaican cruise workers has reportedly been oversubscribed, many job seekers are shunning the local tourism sector, which has already lost an entire generation of its skilled labour force to other sectors, following the economic fallout from COVID-19.

The tourism sector contributed 9.8 per cent to Jamaica’s gross domestic product in 2019 and sector leaders have been anticipating stronger numbers since then.

“It is not the first cruise ship operator to have pulled our workers away, but we are making sure that we ramp up our training within the industry,” Clifton Reader, president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA), told The Sunday Gleaner. “Our membership will be doing internships with students from schools and will be looking to the Caribbean to pull trainee managers from our properties in destinations that may have excess capacities because their tourism is not as robust as Jamaica’s.”

CONFIDENT IN PROGRAMME

Reader, the general manager for Moon Palace in Ocho Rios and chairman of the advocacy committee of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourist Association, is confident that such a programme will supply the industry with the talent needed.

But tourism employees say inadequate attention to the welfare of workers has been a source of contention and is among the reasons for the apathy.

“In my situation, you have several members of my household working in the sector, but we still cannot pay our bills,” Lavern*, a housekeeper living in St James, told The Sunday Gleaner.

“It is far better if one person is working a good job and can take care of the family than every adult working and you cannot pay your bills, and you can be sent home for the simplest of reasons because you are on short-term contracts,” she added.

The meagre earnings have disqualified her from acquiring loans or other benefits to improve her life, Lavern claims, but she is hoping that her application for a job in the cruise industry will be successful.

“I just want to change this narrative, but it won’t happen in the local tourism because I am of the view that Jamaica pulls foreign hoteliers because they are assured that locals will work for little or nothing,” she said.

While admitting that some of JHTA members are lagging behind, Reader said that several properties were moving to improve working conditions for employees.

“Take, for example, gratuity was never usually recognised as part of the salary and that is why a lot of people could not get NHT (National Housing Trust) loans, but through a push by JHTA and others, the banks and NHT are now recognising that because gratuity could be 100 per cent of basic salaries,” Reader pointed out.

The increase in competition for labour is also not surprising for Claude Duncan, country head for Sutherland Global Services, who is confident that the outsourcing sector will continue to attract the best in local talent.

INCREASE IN COMPETITION

“When you have a competition for labour, you will see increased creativity as to how you attract and retain labour,” Duncan told The Sunday Gleaner. “The growth will be dependent on a number of factors, and one is the increase in the overall talent pool.”

With some 40,000 school leavers annually, Duncan said, “Students will take different paths, but I think each sector will get their fair share, while some will show a preference for particular sectors.”

There are currently 56,000 workers employed in the outsourcing industry which is valued at approximately US$890 million annually, with just over 100 operations across 12 of the island’s 14 parishes.

Sutherland Global is the largest employer of labour in the sector with more than 8,000 workers at its five sites, and Venton Brown, the firm’s associate vice-president in charge of human resources, is satisfied with the number of persons showing interest in the sector.

“If you look at our performance through COVID and when you look at the performance of our programmes, which is a testimony of the talent entering our company, we do not see a concern at this point,” he said. “Whether or not there are threats on the horizon, we will wait and see, but at this present time we are comfortable.”

With the outsourcing sector’s push to upskill its workforce, Duncan does not believe that BPOs will be as hard hit as other industries by overseas recruitment campaigns.

“ ... We take from a wider pool, including kids out of high school, so as long as they have the requisite pass rates they can come into our industry, build a career and grow,” he added.

Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton has also disclosed that the Government is eyeing an overseas job-rotation scheme for nurses to stem the rate of attrition in that sector.

Sunday Gleaner efforts to get an assessment of the current labour situation from portfolio minister Karl Samuda were unsuccessful.

However, one government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, believes the current situation sets the stage for importation of labour.

If we are unable to satisfy the needs of our own labour market, then that would put pressure on the state to import labour,” said the official.

“As a Government, we should not be the ones pushing these 10,000 workers to Royal Caribbean. That should be left to the free market,” the official added. “What we should be doing is sit with [Finance Minister] Nigel Clarke and find ways to coerce the hoteliers and other investors to place greater value on our workers, because how we treat these workers can be the downfall of this Government.”

mark.titus@gleanerjm.com