Let’s face it, unless you’re making US$80,000.00 or more per annum, chances are you need an extra job to meet your recurring expenses (cost of living) and be able to pay your debts, and have something to put aside for the proverbial “rainy day”.

Even those who are making over US$80,000.00 seem to be hustling at multiple jobs or business operations, looking for more income. Well, imagine the single parent with a couple of children to raise, and dreaming the BVI Dream of one day owning a home? I don’t understand why some people berate the hard-working men and women who toil at two or three jobs just to make ends meet. It would be interesting to see what percentage of BVIslanders is getting “extra” jobs.

Like most working people, I too find it’s not so easy to save a dollar out of my fifty cents, so I recently scanned the Classified Ads and called a number given in an ad for a Secretary. A gentleman answered and I told him I was responding to the ad in the paper. He said: “Miss, when you see those things, don’t even bother call. I done have a girl but you know you have to do this for the permit”. I tried to make my case by saying to him: “If you hire somebody from here you wouldn’t have to get work permit”. But he went on saying how “She have her papers for computer, so we just going with this.”

It was useless to tell him that I have papers for computer too, and years of experience, knowledge and skills. I might not be a ‘spring chicken’ and the only thing I’m interested in is doing an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. I’m not looking for someone to “sponsor” me. But of course, employers can hire who they want and sometimes it seems that they only want those who they have to sponsor. Imagine, you looking for a job, you see one advertised, you call, only to be told “Don’t even bother call”? Well, it made me think about “Affirmative Action” and if it is perhaps time that the government should be considering such a policy in its new labour code.

What is Affirmative Action, anyway?

The term comes from the United States of America, so-called “Greatest Nation on Earth”. America’s indigenous peoples were put on Reservations while immigrants from all over the world: Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, Italy, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Asia, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean and other countries and regions, found themselves in the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave”. They all went there to pursue the “American Dream”. But there’s one race of people who went there as “Slaves” from Africa, and after the abominable slave trade was abolished, these people were promised “40 acres and a mule” so they can become part of the American Dream.

But it’s no secret that instead of the promise kept, they got the Ku Klux Klan to ensure that they got nothing more than lynchings, burnings, and unjust jail sentences. Every other ethnic group or race of people in America was “free” to pursue the American Dream but the people known as “Negroes”, later “African Americans” met a slew of racial barriers to that goal. Segregation led to the Civil Rights Movement in the long battle for African Americans to be allowed full privileges as citizens of the great US of A with “Equal Rights” as any other citizens. They needed a hand up.

In 1961, President JFK issued an Executive Order calling for a Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, as a measure to level the playing field for African Americans, and other minorities, including women. Affirmative Action has been challenged over its 48-year history, but it has made significant differences to people of the Black minority in America. It is not a hand out, only a hand up. Black people have to work harder than most to qualify for any good ‘break’ that they get.

All that to say this: BVIslanders are complaining about being the minority in their own country. Is the hiring practice based on equal opportunity or something else? Is it time for the government to enforce measures for the protection of BVIslanders in the job market? Clearly, not all BVIslanders are in the ‘privileged’ class, and stating on the Advertisement that BVIslanders and Belongers are preferred is not helping some nationals the least. A better policy has to be implemented. Recession or not, nationals with commitment; they owe the bank, the government or whatever, families raising BVI children should have access to the jobs before anyone else. The culture of dishing out jobs to all and sundry because there is no sense of loyalty to the least of our own nationals will continue to contribute to the social and daily economic problems that natives complain about.

Civil society should be aware of what is happening and do what is best at the policy and enforcement levels to help those who are seriously at risk.

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