A new re­port re­leased re­cent­ly by the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) is re­port­ing that as a re­sult of COVID-19, al­most half a mil­lion Caribbean tourism work­ers now face the prospect of de­cent work deficits in the form of job loss­es, re­duc­tions in work­ing hours, and loss of in­comes.

The ILO re­port says this is hap­pen­ing along­side wors­en­ing work­ing con­di­tions, and the move to in­for­mal em­ploy­ment. It points to an over­all sig­nif­i­cant and far-reach­ing re­duc­tion in the Caribbean tourism in­dus­try work­force, due to COVID-19.

The ILO re­port al­so ad­vis­es that re­cov­ery from the ad­verse im­pact on sec­tor jobs could be pro­longed by a re­ver­sal in eco­nom­ic growth and calls for a hu­man-cen­tered ap­proach to re­silient and sus­tain­able so­lu­tions.

Ti­tled “Tourism sec­tor in the Eng­lish- and Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean: An overview and the im­pact of COVID-19 on growth and em­ploy­ment”, the re­port in­cludes ILO guid­ance and da­ta, as well as re­search con­duct­ed around the re­gion to demon­strate the sever­i­ty of the cri­sis on the sec­tor’s labour mar­ket.

COVID-19’s im­pact

The re­port notes that on av­er­age, the tourism in­dus­try di­rect­ly con­tributes up to about 33 per cent of the re­gion’s Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) and over 52 per cent of ex­port re­ceipts. With ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 mil­lion an­nu­al en­tries per year (the ma­jor­i­ty of which are cruise pas­sen­gers, or from the USA), the in­dus­try pro­vides di­rect em­ploy­ment to 413,000 work­ers in the Caribbean.

Lars Jo­hansen, Di­rec­tor (a.i.), ILO De­cent Work Team and Of­fice for the Caribbean, ob­serves that this fig­ure rep­re­sents, on av­er­age, 18.1 per cent of to­tal em­ploy­ment. If in­di­rect and in­duced em­ploy­ment is con­sid­ered, such fig­ures could rise to 43.1 per cent.

“While Caribbean labour force da­ta is not yet avail­able to de­ter­mine ex­act­ly how tourism work­ers have been af­fect­ed by the cri­sis thus far, stud­ies con­duct­ed by re­gion­al or­ga­ni­za­tions and pre­lim­i­nary na­tion­al ad­min­is­tra­tive da­ta, how­ev­er, have be­gun to paint a pic­ture of what is hap­pen­ing,” he ex­plains.

For ex­am­ple, re­duced sam­ple sur­veys in­di­cate that 71 per cent of ho­tels had laid off staff by April 2020 to ad­dress the rev­enue short­fall caused by the cri­sis; some 66 per cent had al­so re­duced the work-week or hours worked; and 53 per cent had cut salaries.

Na­tion­al-lev­el da­ta from Ja­maica in­di­cates that dur­ing the (rel­a­tive) peak of the cri­sis, lay­offs reached ap­prox­i­mate­ly 75 per cent of the to­tal tourism work­force, with the re­main­ing 25 per cent work­ing on­ly two or three days a week at a re­duced rate of com­pen­sa­tion.

In Be­lize, 30 per cent of the to­tal ben­e­fi­cia­ries of stim­u­lus re­lief be­longed to the tourism sec­tor. These af­fect­ed work­ers in­clude tour guides, wait staff, kitchen staff, those in guest/cus­tomer ser­vices, house­keep­ing, and main­te­nance and up­keep.

Work­ers who are di­rect­ly em­ployed by busi­ness­es that re­ly on cruise tourism are like­ly to be most af­fect­ed be­cause of the de­layed re­open­ing of that part of the sec­tor.

The ILO Re­port points out that tourism is tra­di­tion­al­ly a labour-in­ten­sive in­dus­try with a high­er than av­er­age mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect on em­ploy­ment in oth­er sec­tors (for ex­am­ple, agri­cul­ture, food pro­cess­ing, con­struc­tion, trans­port, as re­flect­ed by in­di­rect em­ploy­ment fig­ures). The in­dus­try tends to ben­e­fit vul­ner­a­ble cat­e­gories of work­ers ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dis­ad­van­tage in the labour mar­ket such as youth, women and mi­grants and, more gen­er­al­ly, is ca­pa­ble of ab­sorb­ing work­ers with lim­it­ed skill lev­els.

A rise in in­for­mal em­ploy­ment among work­ers in the tourism sec­tor who have been af­fect­ed by the cri­sis al­so is a con­cern, and may lead to ex­clu­sion from work-re­lat­ed so­cial pro­tec­tion mea­sures.

Rec­om­men­da­tions for sus­tain­able re­cov­ery

The ILO notes that in terms of gov­ern­ment re­spons­es across the Caribbean, most coun­tries have tak­en mul­ti-pronged ap­proach­es such as di­rect trans­fers for in­di­vid­u­als and loans, grants and tax re­lief for busi­ness­es.

One of its rec­om­men­da­tions is that spe­cial at­ten­tion be placed on dis­missed work­ers, to en­sure the short­est and most pro­duc­tive spans of labour mar­ket de­tach­ment, through mea­sures aimed to en­hance their hu­man cap­i­tal such as up­skilling and re­train­ing.

For the com­ing months or years, while the prin­ci­ples un­der­lined in the ILO pol­i­cy frame­work for tack­ling the eco­nom­ic and so­cial im­pact of the COVID-19 cri­sis should lead any hu­man-cen­tred re­cov­ery process, few key el­e­ments stand out. In line with the al­ready de­vel­oped coun­try and in­dus­try-spe­cif­ic pro­to­cols for the re­sump­tion of ac­tiv­i­ties, oc­cu­pa­tion­al health and safe­ty for work­ers and cus­tomers will re­main para­mount.

“I’m con­fi­dent that the tourism that emerges from COVID-19 will be dif­fer­ent from the tourism that we have grown used to. And the key dif­fer­ence will be sig­nif­i­cant in­te­gra­tion of tourism and health func­tions to en­sure the safe­ty and health of vis­i­tors and lo­cals alike,” says Mr Neil Wal­ters, Act­ing Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Caribbean Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion (CTO).

There is al­so room for more sus­tain­able re­cov­ery mech­a­nisms such as po­si­tion­ing the tourism sec­tor to lead the green and blue eco­nom­ic tran­si­tion and job cre­ation, which can be pur­sued through tri­par­tite so­cial di­a­logue be­tween gov­ern­ments, em­ploy­ers’ or­ga­ni­za­tions and work­ers’ or­ga­ni­za­tions.

Bar­ba­dos’ Co­co Hill For­est, an eco-tour des­ti­na­tion that con­nects tourism with re­gen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture and or­gan­ic farm­ing, is one ex­am­ple of how the re­gion’s sec­tor is adapt­ing to a sus­tain­able green econ­o­my. Staff at the 53-acre prop­er­ty of­fer hik­ing treks, group plant­i­ng ac­tiv­i­ties and farm-to-ta­ble din­ing.

“By cre­at­ing al­ter­na­tive in­ter­pre­ta­tions of what tourism and its em­ploy­ment can be for Bar­ba­dos, we can cre­ate link­ages with oth­er sec­tors – in this case agri­cul­ture and food se­cu­ri­ty. We have had lots of lo­cal sup­port­ers and for­eign guests and have been se­lect­ed as one of Trip Ad­vi­sor’s Trav­eller’s Choice Win­ners for 2020,” says Mr Mah­mood Pa­tel, own­er of Co­co Hill For­est.