Paul Henriquez
PHILIPSBURG--Employers want to address the abuse of short-term labour contracts, which has been an issue of concern for many over the years, but they want to do so from “a different perspective,” according to St. Maarten Hospitality and Trade Association (SHTA) president Paul Henriquez, who addressed the issue in Parliament on Monday.
“As far as employers go, … we would also like to address it, but from a different perspective. We do believe that on the one hand … more employment should come out of this cycle of short-term contracts over and over, but in order to facilitate that, there needs to be flexibility and willingness to be mobile within the labour force itself and these things are difficult to regulate,” he said.
Henriquez was at the time responding to a question raised by National Alliance (NA) Member of Parliament (MP) George Pantophlet. Henriquez said he does not know the percentage of workers in the hospitality industry who are on short-term contracts.
Pantophlet asked why the onus has to be on government to always regulate these matters. He said he had a cousin who had been working on a short-term contract for 15 years and indicated that employers who engage in issuing short-term contracts are contributing negatively to the economy.
While he can understand hotels employing persons on short-term contracts as extra workers who are hired for the high season, he stressed that it should not be that persons are working two, three and four years on short-term contracts. “I don’t understand the logic of this.” According to Pantophlet, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) speaks about flexibilising the labour laws, persons who are working in jobs of a permanent nature should have job security.
Henriquez said that while he shares Pantophlet’s concerns on the abuse of short-term contracts, part of the issue is that everyone needs to operate within the legal framework that exists.
“You say as employers we need to act differently, but we need to work within the environment that we have. Lots of people are negatively affected by these short-term contacts, especially when it comes to new entries in the labour market. ... These contracts came about due to the seasonality of our business and unlike Aruba, we haven’t been able to adjust very well.
“You do need more people in high season than you do in low season and that’s unfortunate, but the construct itself, the fact that the labour laws allow for these temporary contracts and that they are being used, you stifle flexibility and mobility because the person that has the permanent contract feels secure in their job whether they perform well or not, so they will never be replaced by someone who is in this temporary contract cycle and these are issues that need to be addressed in a holistic way when it comes to the labour market,” Henriquez maintained.
“And, in addressing those issues you are actually going to improve the investment climate, you are going to improve employment in general. There are going to be better-paying jobs if we do this right.”
He alluded to a Social Economic Council SER advice and indicated that St. Maarten needs to move away from job security and move towards income security whereby people are secure in their income.
He spoke about SHTA’s recommendation for a social safety net that will assist in retraining persons, amongst other things. “And then you create the flexibility. If you create the flexibility and the mobility, you would ensure that the workforce go and upgrade themselves and go and look for these higher-paying jobs and at that moment, when that starts happening, that is when you are going to see big improvements in the economy and everybody’s social economic welfare,” said the SHTA official.
“But I can understand what you are saying, you can just scrap the temporary contract and then everybody that works is permanent, [but – Ed.] most likely they [employers] will still find [a way] to work around [that] and whether that means that everybody becomes their own private enterprise and every single person in housekeeping is going to be an independent contractor and stuff like that, to a certain extent the market is always going to find a way to get what it really needs.
“I do think that there is a job there for government and legislators to come up with legislation that, over time, in the next three to four years, we can see significant changes … and everybody that is right now suffering from these temporary contracts will be very happy with.”
SHTA has meetings with the unions on this matter on a regular basis.
