New
legislation in Cayman means that in future some job categories could be
reserved for Caymanians only as the legislation allows politicians to set
quotas limiting work permits for certain professions.
Although it has not yet been agreed which roles will be
restricted, hotel concierges, human resources managers and trainee accountants
are all expected to be amongst the restricted categories, and therefore
financial services firms are likely to be affected by the changes.
Key employees, non-Caymanian permanent residents and spouses of
Caymanians will be excluded from restrictions.
The new law has been drafted in response to wide-spread
criticism in the Island that there are insufficient opportunities for locals to
establish careers, with too many good positions being given to immigrants
(there are currently 20,396 people on work permits in Cayman). Although Cayman has for a long time had fairly
strict immigration and work permit controls Employment Minister Rolston Anglin
explained that the new law would allow Cabinet to set policy on immigration
rather than leaving it to immigration officers to handle on a case-by-case
basis, adding that the quota could be zero for some professions.
The new law is not without its critics. Alden McLaughlin, leader
of the opposition said it would not help good quality create jobs for
Caymanians and could end up having negative repercussions.
There is
a difficult balance to be struck. If the
zero quota roles are all low end, poorly paid jobs then this is hardly doing
much to enhance the lives of Caymanians.
If, on the other hand, there are quotas imposed for more professional
and senior roles, then the politicians are likely to face the ire of the big
firms who will not take kindly to any attempts to dictate who they can hire,
and will make the Cayman Islands a less attractive place to do business.
Law
firms, banks and trust companies have all in the past been criticised for not
employing sufficient numbers of locals, and relying too heavily on bringing
staff in from overseas, and it is hard to deny the fact that there are
relatively few locals amongst their most senior ranks. But in my view the issue of why Caymanians
are under-represented in senior roles is a complex one, and should not be
dismissed as a simple issue of racism or prejudice against Islanders. Why would any employer in their right mind want
to employ an overseas person on an expensive expat package (and face the
problem that they may decide after 6 months that they are not suited to life in
a small Island, and leave) if an equally good candidate was available locally?
The fact
that these businesses are still so reliant on expats seems to me to be because
of a number of issues. Firstly, there
are not sufficient numbers of people with the right quality of education and
work experience in Cayman to rival many of those who have been educated and
worked in some of the World’s leading centres – this is a problem faced by all small
locations and there are no quick fixes. It
is too simple to say that if a law firm is advertising a job for a newly
qualified lawyer, and there is a newly qualified Caymanian lawyer available
that they will necessarily have the same quality of education or
experience. Solving the problem involves
a huge and long term commitment to improving the quality of local education,
and facilitating young Islanders in getting top quality experience at universities
and in the early stages of their careers.
Realistically, this may mean creating opportunities for them to leave
Cayman for a period of training, before returning home.
Secondly,
there are firms in Cayman who will tell you privately that they have suffered
at the hands of a small number of individuals who have completely abused their
local status – I have personally witnessed examples where local employees have
simply decided to take entirely unannounced and unauthorised holidays at will,
saying that they can’t be sacked because they will create difficulties with the
immigration board for future work permits.
Although few of the big firms working in the Island would care to
publicly admit it, most have on board a small number of employees who are lazy
and careless. The difference is that
they can sack the immigrants who display these traits, whereas it is a
political gamble to do so for locals, for fear that the firms will be seem to be discriminating against locals. The consequence is that a small number of Caymanians have created a bad image which is entirely undeserved by the many
bright, hard-working and committed Islanders who have just as much right (and potential) as
anyone else to aspire to a top level career.
So what
do I think should be done? I don’t think
the current legislation is the right way to go about things. Instead, at least so far as the financial
services sector is concerned, I would suggest that the key steps are:
·
the quality of Caymanian education needs to be improved – there are
no short cuts here; it requires a long term investment by the government (not
easy at a time when money is tight);
·
the government should
provide financial assistance (in the form of loans) to enable aspiring students
to undertake degrees and professional training courses both within Cayman and
at highly rated overseas educational establishments;
·
international firms with
a presence in Cayman should be encouraged to offer vacation schemes and paid
internships specifically to Caymanians and to allow Caymanian trainees to get
overseas experience, through office secondments;
·
if there are appropriately qualified locals persons who apply
for a job, firms should be obliged to ensure that at least one of them is
shortlisted for interview;
·
firms should be able to follow exactly the same disciplinary
proceedings for locals as for non-locals – if any employee is dismissed without
good cause then they should have a forum for redress in a local employment
tribunal entirely separate from immigration boards and work permit decisions.
These
are not issues which Cayman wrestles with alone. In many of the offshore centres you will find
similar debates going on about how to ensure locals get a higher proportion of
the top jobs. The fact is that small
places find it difficult to compete in secondary and tertiary education with
large centres, simply because of demographics, and nor can they provide the same range of early-career work experience.
Solving that problem requires a long term cooperation between businesses
and government – not a polarised debate, or legislation which is likely to lead
to resentment by forcing candidates on businesses.
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