Dickson Igwe. Photo: Provided

Now, a vocal core of Virgin Islands media persons have been lamenting of late that Natives and Belongers are increasingly being placed on the back burner in the quest for the best careers and jobs in certain sectors of the national economy. This is even more so, they insist, in the private sector, especially financial services and investment banking. One has heard soundings that Virgin Islanders are being pushed out of their own country; and that too many foreigners are taking local jobs, and so on and so forth.

There may be validation in those assertions. In any event, the best way to protect a local workforce in today’s global marketplace, and international commercial environment, is not through entitlement, and increasing regulation and legislation. In short by governments using the big stick against foreign investment and international capital flows.

No! It is the very opposite. It is by Government and businesses embracing globalism, by providing the best tools in education and training, add a globally friendly social and physical infrastructure, and creative national investment model; themes that will put the population of these Islands on the best footing to compete in a very rough and tough world.

The cry of some media pundits in the Virgin Islands is for further government intervention in the national economy to protect Natives. But this lamenting about local labor conditions is pointer to a failure by policymakers, who over many years have failed to fashion a viable and consistent immigration and labor legal or legislative framework, for this tiny island. Add a lapse in enforcement of the law for whatever reason. In any event, xenophobia and fear of external competition will not work in today’s globally oriented social and economic climate! Today’s social and economic culture, within and outside of national borders, is increasingly international in complexion.

Education remains the great equalizer. And this has been borne out by the fact that societies such as Singapore and Hong Kong, who over the decades have developed a world class education model, are competing with the best in the world in all major global markets.

Today, a multilingual curriculum, and an advanced Math, digital technology, and science based education model, are prerequisite to national development. Maybe, it is time for these Lesser Antilles to create an elite academy at the College, where the best and brightest Virgin Islanders and residents, receive the required educational attention from the country’s intelligentsia and top academia, before being selected to travel to the new centers of educational excellence in Singapore, Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, and so on, to learn new disciplines in a globalized educational culture.  

The view that there is unfairness in the local jobs market is a valid assertion indeed. And there is certainly unfairness in certain types of organization in the area of hiring and personnel management.

These are businesses, mainly financial and investment services that operate within and across national borders; nimble, multinational type businesses, with offices in major global capitals such as Singapore, Hong Kong, New York and London. And owned mainly by persons from developed economies: professionals and investors who will ultimately look to their own bottom lines before considering staffing. However, the global savvy these business professionals possess is not a rocket science that cannot be learned. It is knowledge that can indeed be acquired.

And quite naturally, expatriate business owners are more comfortable with persons of a similar ilk, with a common social, cultural, and geographic background: that is life! It is the same the world over. So employees mustn’t be surprised when a new manager arrives from someplace, probably an old friend of the boss who attended the same private school and college in the UK, an old chum at Stanford, a member of the same chartered society, exclusive club, or lodge, and who slips right into that top position, unfair as that may appear.

Or it may simply be that owing to the international nature of the business, a person that has been entrenched within the company’s culture from the start, and has worked in various countries, understanding where the buttons of power are located, with direct physical access to key clients and partners all over the world, offers the owners better returns on their human capital.

Sadly, it has always been so in business.  And like politics, all business is ultimately local; and the businessman will look after the interests of his constituency, whether it is family, friends, or associates, first and foremost.   There is little governments can do about this, save attempting to implement labor laws that are increasingly being overwhelmed by the expertise, know how, and technology, in the possession of the new global entrepreneur. Bureaucracy increasingly appears archaic in today’s world. It must catch up with technology and global integration.

But to the contrary, the multinational businessman is a savvy animal; a wily beast, able to move millions of dollars of assets across borders at the click of a mouse, circumventing local labor laws, sending scores of employees to the poor house or financial doldrums. More positively, he may suddenly decide to build a multimillion dollar hotel, resort, and casino, in ‘Shangri La,’ a project employing hundreds, affecting the bottom lines of scores of local businesses positively, and at the clinking of champagne glasses across the dinner table.

To be continued!   

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