From Banana Farmer to Banana Daiquiri: Employment

FROM BANANA FARMER TO BANANA DAIQUIRI: EMPLOYMENT CHAPTER 3 has come to rely on tourism. Pointing out that some 150 people WCI~ to bc employed at the 212-room hotel - the island’s largest - he indicated that ‘worken must regard themselves as stake-holders with everything to lose if the venture fails’. The Rex, owned and managed by Marketing and Reservations International, had instantly become one of the island’s From Banana Farmer to biggest employers. The local newspaper Grenada T&y pointed out that Banana Daiquiri: ,nore than 75 per cent of the hotel’s staff had been previously unan- ployed and had no experience of hotel work.’ In one generation, the coming of tourism has changed the pattern of Employment employment and the structure of communities for ever. Peasant sconomies have been moulded into service secton where cane-cutters became bellhops and fishermen are turned into ‘watersport off&rs’. For every new hotel room in the Caribbean, roughly one more new job Where statistics exist, the slide away from agriculture into the service is created. In a region beset by chronically high unemployment, any job, sector in the last 30 years (and in some islands in the last 15 years) looks even though low paid, seasonal, unskilled and with few prospects, might dramatic. Rural communities, tint dislocated by migration, now find that seem welcome. For as Jean Holder, Secretary-General of the Caribbean rhc young move to the tourist, coastal areas looking for casual work in Tourism Organization, states, employment in tourism is ‘the difference the way that in other parts of the world they drift to the cities. berwecn social order and social chaos’.’ Tourism provides not just direct Traditional Ii&patterns are altered as women become wage-earners, employment in hotels, casinos, restaurants, shops and transport, but also often for the first time, in the hotel sector where the demand for indirect employment in the services and industties spawned by the domestic work is high. Economic interests become more stratified with industry. It also fuels a peripheral ‘informal’ economic belt where the the higher-class locals identifying with the tourist interests and better able poor and unskilled strive to earn an income from selling or providing to exploit the opportunities offered by foreign capital and personnel than services to tourists on a casual basis. rhr unskilled majority. Whether tourism is an efficient generator ofjobs is’s matter ofdebate, Throughout the Caribbean, up to one in six workets finds direct but what is significant is that the Caribbean relies on a strategy that employment in tourism, more than in any other region of the world equates jobs with tourism. On the tiny island of Aruba, for instance, the according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. Accurate figures pursuit of toutism brought unemployment down from 40 per cent in are hard to come by, but the Caribbean Tourism Organisation estimates 1985 to virtually zero a decade later. The assumption that tourism will that in 1994 tourism provided direct employment for 216,000 people in provide, reflects the region’s dependency on tourism; at the same time it thr region, with some 580,000 gaining indirect employment from the highlights the lack of alternative forms of employment, especially in the industry.’ snder islands. In general, it is the countries with the most ‘mature’ tourist industry, This view finds telling expression at the formal opening of a new the biggest hotels and the least diversified economies which are most hotel. The gala occasion where government bigwigs, local celebrities, dependent on tourism employment. The mass tourism of the Bahamas, airline executives, hotel owners, public relations officers and tourist for instance, supports 45,000 jobs, representing 35 per cent of formally board officials rub shoulders for cocktails and long speeches is not only employed labour. In more diversified economies, such as the Dominican used as a demonstration of faith by the investors in the stability and Republic, Barbados and Jamaica, the figures are lower despite the well-being of the country, but also provides an opportunity for local importance of tourism to the economy as a whole. For example, 71,710 politicians to celebrate the biggest job creation scheme since, quite Jamaicans were employed full-time by the tourism industry in 1992, possibly, the opening of the last hotel. which amounted to some 8 per cent of the total workforce.’ In conf~~f, When the Rex Grenadian Hotel opened in December 1993 in work generated by tourism in countries such as Trinidad and Guyana has appropriate style, the then Prime Minister Nicholas Brathwaire was there nlade, to date, little impact on employment figures. to savour the moment; his speech revealed the extent to which Grenada In the hotel sector, Caribbean nationals are largely concentrated in 52 53 unskilled jobs, Until very recently, they tended not to be in the top jobs. i opportunity for a guaranteed income, however small, which is not Middle management posts are now often held by Caribbean nationals, ! subject to the sun, rain 01 a fickle market. For women, hotel work is while white-collar jobs in the front-office and sports sections of hotels i regarded as suitable employment since it takes place in ‘respectable arc sought after by the school-leaving children of the local middle class. : surroundings’ and is an extension of traditional domestic skills. Indeed, Most hotel work, however, is relatively low grade: the security officers at : women switch to hotel work from domestic service as ‘helpen’ because the gate, bellboys in the foyer, ‘room attendants’ servicing the bedrooms, ; of higher pay, regular hours and better conditions despite the disruptions gardrnen sprucing up the foliage, cooks, barmen, waitresses in the i to family life caused by shift work. restaurants and bars, watersport ‘&cers and deckchair attendants. Many , For similar reasons men see employment in the tourist trade as of these workers remain unskillrd and untrained. Sometimes it appears : preferable to traditional work in fishing or agriculture. A young man that tourism is used as a desperate measure to soak up the unemployment j from Bequia explained: ‘Man, when I working in de hotel in de harbour rates of the unskilled. Or even as Derek Walcott put it: last year, even though I getting paid really bad wage I at least know dat each week I gonna get dollar for pay for food and thing. An when 1 finish work I know I ain’t hafi think about going fishing or nutting.‘* Indeed, one of the few surveys into worker attitudes in Caribbean hotels found a high ‘worker satisfaction’ rating. Of 654 hotel employees interviewed in 1990 at 12 of the larger hotels (including six al-inclusives) in Jamaica’s main resort areas of Monrego Bay, Ocho Rios and Negril, For a region steeped in poverty, there is no shortage of recruits for i almost every worker felt ‘very positive’ about being part of the towist .,i’ such jobs. Supply in most cases, in fact, far outstrips demand, although in 1 industry. ‘The hotel workers in these larger hotels have a strong tourism some islands such as Antigua, St Maarten, Aruba and the US Virgin self-image and feel a sense of pride in being part of a vital industry,’ Islands, a labour shortage has required migration (particularly by women) commented the survey done by the Jamaican pollster, the late Carl Stone.’ from other islands to fill the jobs at the bottom of the pile. In Aruba, Most of the interviewees also enjoyed their work: they liked working labour has even been brought in from the Philippines. Tourism still with people, dealing with foreigners, learning about foreign countries, of&n, as Gordon Lewis wrote almost 30 years ago, opportunities ‘at once ! learning useful skills, getting basic training and apedence. The job more comfortable, more exciting and more socially prestigious than 4 I satisfaction was far higher than that for the Jamaican labour force as a work in the agricultural sector’.” In larger hotels with high occupancy : whole: 87 per cent compared to 61 per cent (in the 1982 national work rates, a (rare) &year-round clientelr and trade union representation, : attitudes survey). Of those who did not like their work, most complained employees may be reasonably well paid, a ‘room attendant’ with good ‘: of unfair accusations of stealing guests’ property, management harassment tips can make more in the peak season than a shop assistant or a clerical and poor relations with other workers.‘O worker. In confrast to the high rate of job satisfaction, there was general A long-standing trade union movement within the hotel sector has dissatisfaction in relation to other criteria. Except for employees at the helped to improve wages and conditions, especially in the more all-inclusive Sandals resort, workers complained of ‘relatively low wages mainstream resorts. Indeed, one reason given for the reluctance of and meagre benefits’ and did not believe that ‘they were getting a fair investors to buy into the Caribbean is what they consider to be high share of the benefits’. At Sandals only 35 per cent felt that they did not labour rates. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, total payroll receive fair shares, but 73 per cent of other hotel workers said wages and and related costs wcrc 13 per cent of room revenue in the Caribbean in h&s were low. The resentment of these workers was fuelled by the 1990, compared to 6.1 per cent in Africa and 9.2 per cent in Latin belief that the hotels were making hefv profits. Grassroots opinion America. Only Europe and North America had higher costs.’ supported the view of worken: asked whether they thought hotel However, for most hotel employees, especially in the smaller establish- workers got full benefits from tourism, between 70 and 78 per cent of ments, both the perception and the reality of the industry entail seasonal respondents outside the industry said they thought wages and benefits work, low wages, poor conditions and scant security.

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