Is the recession an OBA conspiracy?

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31: Business leaders have been accused of cutting jobs as a political move to make the Government look bad.

Maynard Dill, past-president of the Trade Union Congress, questioned the commitment of business owners to keeping Bermudians employed.

He said: “The answer to the problem is employment and job creation.

“We seem to be shooting ourselves in the foot with redundancies after redundancies after redundancies.

“Are these folks serious about economic recovery or is this a political game. What’s going on?

“We’ve got between now and the next year for this election.

“Are the players in the game, the business leaders of this country, playing along with the opposition, so they can credit the present Government with the current economic conditions by creating redundancies and keeping us in a recession?”

Bob Richards, spokesman for the One Bermuda Alliance on business and finance, dismissed the “conspiracy theory”.

He said jobs had dried up because businesses were no longer profitable.

Mr Richards said job-creation was a by-product of the primary role of businesses — to provide goods and services and make a profit.

“If there is a lower volume of goods and/or services demanded by the customers of those businesses then there will be a smaller requirement for staff.

“That’s what is happening in Bermuda today: our customers don’t want as much of what we’re selling as they did before, or, there are fewer of our customers than there were before.

“Taken as a whole, Bermuda’s customers are international business people and tourists. “The more these customers come to our island and spend money here, the greater the demand will be for Bermudian workers.

“Unfortunately, recently there have been fewer international business people and tourists and so businesses have not had the need to hire staff, in fact, they have had to shed staff because the demand for goods and services has been so weak.”

He said the cause of that weakness was the global recession and “policy bungling” by Government.

“Government’s immigration policy has alienated international business people by being bureaucratic and downright hostile.

“They have treated customers like interlopers or pariahs. This policy has been a job killer. Also the ill advised payroll tax increase was a job killer as well.

“The out of control spending by the government has also killed private sector jobs because the government can’t give businesses or Bermudians a tax break without increasing the already sky high level of public debt.

He added: “There is no conspiracy. There are only customers that are not satisfied with the service that Bermuda has provided them.”