GET ACCUSTOMED to working alongside Jamaicans, Guyanese and Chinese.
Robert “Bobby” Morris, deputy general secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU), made this call when he addressed the 13th annual conference of the Human Resource Management Association of Barbados at the Accra Beach Hotel.
“We’re going to have to change the biases and all of the attitudes and the xenophobia . . . all of those feelings that only Bajans should be in Barbados working,” he said.
Morris reminded the human resource professionals that they would no longer be able to recruit employees from Barbados alone but must be prepared to bring people from the Caribbean and beyond.
“This is going to be a mixed kind of workplace,” he said.
“The younger generation will accept that easier than the baby boomers. They are the ones who don’t have any concerns about race or anything like that. They mix more easily. They are not concerned about taking risks,” Morris said.
The trade unionist said emerging cultures had to be based on productivity because this “is going to [position] us where we should be in terms of regionalism and globalism”.
“Those are the two things that are going to change the entire workplace.
“There is no workplace that will not be impacted by those significant features in the environment,” he said.
Morris said companies need to be “compliant and ready to deal with those realities”. (NB)
