Jobs for temp permits must now be advertised
(CNS): The Cayman Islands Government is introducing new rules under immigration legislation that will require employers to advertise vacancies when they apply for a temporary work permit. Of the more than 34,000 foreign nationals on permits or government contracts, over 6,500 of them hold temporary work permits, for which bosses were not required to advertise the vacancy. But Cabinet has approved a change to the regulations so all vacancies must be posted on the JobsCayman website before a temporary permit application is made.
The new rule, which rolls out on 31 March, requires all local job vacancies, whether full-time or part-time, to be advertised on the WORC portal for 14 days, in the same way as a full-time year-long permit. If a Caymanian applies for the job but is unsuccessful and a temporary work permit is submitted, employers will have to provide names, qualifications, work experience and background of all the applicants, the reasons the chosen applicant was hired and details of why the Caymanian job seeker was not.
Officials said the change aligns the job registration process and increases the visibility of opportunities for local job seekers. Labour Minister Chris Saunders said he hoped the new rules would encourage job-seeking Caymanians as well as employers to register on the portal, now that all available jobs must be posted before any type of work permit is issued.
“We also hope that all employers will use the portal as a first line of resource when looking for employees,” Saunders said. “This PACT Government is committed to making the necessary policy changes for Caymanians to be considered first for employment opportunities and this is another step forward in achieving this goal.”
Last year WORC reviewed and made decisions on 55,000 applications, and of those 21,040 (almost 39%) were to approve temporary work permits. The numbers indicate the long-held belief that employers use temporary permits to import labour instead of taking the time to find a suitable job seeker locally.
Acting Interim WORC Director Jeremy Scott said the new requirement means more jobs will be posted on the portal and WORC will be better able to assess the job market and forecast what skills job seekers need to close gaps in particular employment categories.
“Having this data will be vital to building a strong and capable Caymanian workforce. Therefore, we encourage all Caymanians seeking employment to register on the JobsCayman portal,” he said.
The new advertising requirement does not apply to temporary permits for people coming for thirty days or less, such as legal counsel acting in specific cases, visiting medical practitioners or other healthcare specialists, consultants, overseas vendors or those coming on specific short-term assignments.
The regulations also provide for the WORC director to grant a TWP waiver under very exceptional circumstances where there is clear evidence that it is urgently required or where the employer is seeking to employ a babysitter, nanny, specialist caregiver, caretaker, private chef, butler or any other worker in a personal capacity.
If an employer seeking a temporary work permit withholds information from WORC about a Caymanian or someone with a Residency and Employment Rights Certificate (RERC) applying for that position or if the employer provides inaccurate or incomplete information in an attempt to deceive the WORC director, either by act or omission, it is considered an offence and they would be liable on conviction to a fine of $5,000.
Employers not familiar with the JobsCayman portal can find guides to assist them in registering and posting a job ad on the WORC website. Both stages require backend authorisation by WORC administrators, so employers should allow two to five business days for this process.
Caymanian job seekers are encouraged to register and can ask to be a Job Seeker Extended Plus client, whereby a WORC Employment Services Officer can assist them in their search.
All jobs that are currently being advertised on the portal by visiting WORC’s website and selecting the Job Search tab on the home page menu bar. Using keywords for a particular type of employment provides a quick listing of available jobs by categories. Clicking the “perform search” button opens thousands of jobs being advertised.
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Category: Jobs, Local News
I don’t get this logic of making it “harder to get work permits” I would like to see how much the gov makes from permit fees start to be advertised And show where those funds go. I think the tune would change quickly. Based on the 4 permits I put in the last year, it must be a decent revenue stream for the CIG. Why actively try to kill it ?
Most Cayman owned construction companies hire outside workers to push jobs to completion while the few home grown workers come in late and sit on their hands most of the day
OR they could actually address the real problem – employers are often seeking temporary work permits because a proper permit takes months (sometimes many months) to secure, with no good reason. A properly submitted permit application with no Caymanian applicants should take weeks to determine, not months. This is just another nail in the coffin of small businesses who cannot always find local staff and can’t wait months for the approval to put someone in place. It doesn’t make help make unemployed Caymanians any more employable. Well done CIG – making the process harder again while not actually fixing the real problem, just rearranging the deck chairs.
World Class
Sand in the gears for wotes
No worries soon find a work around this desperate situation Caymanians not getting any work no matter what they come up with. Whats going to be is going to be.
Why not come out with it and state the obvious that most do not want entry level work but think they deserve management type work, and that they have neither the knowledge, skills and experience for well compensated positions?
yawn…more red tape and window dressing for a problem that does not exist.
the myth of caymanian unemployment continues….
Undefeated in the minds of the entitled
I am bit curious. If an overseas Company has branches in Cayman and it is customary to have a team memver from the overseas Company comes in to do some work, would they need to advertised? As the business permit has a limitation and usually a temporary is needed. There are no vacancy just employees from different branch working temporarily.
Need either a temporary – although you won’t have to advertise if they will be in for less than 30 days – or a business visitors permit. Which don’t need advertising either but have to work out how many vista you will need and pay for each, in advance, non refundable.
“The new advertising requirement does not apply to temporary permits for people coming for thirty days or less, such as legal counsel acting in specific cases, visiting medical practitioners or other healthcare specialists, consultants, overseas vendors or those coming on specific short-term assignments.”
Okay, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Assuming it is true that nobody wants to hire Caymanians, why do you think this happens? At the end businesses save money if they hire a Caymanian that doesn’t need a work permit, so there must be other reasons that offset the economic advantage…
This one will be extra large popcorn worthy
Crickets
Not many Caymanians left to hire if we’re all honest. The “Caymanians” that apply for jobs are mostly moronic Jamaicans with nothing between their ears but a sense of entitlement.
Caymanians are hard workers and proud people. Real Caymanians that is.
Unfortunately, and really unfortunately for most people living on these Islands, they will perhaps never really encounter real, genuine Caymanians but will encounter imported, foreign trash that do nothing other than want to bring their homeland to Cayman rather than properly adopt their own adopted homeland.
Cayman was a tough place to live, you don’t get to this position in the world without a work ethic. Ask yourself what has changed? and the only answer is the mass importation of third world clowns from Jamaica, Cuba, Honduras, Canada and everywhere else.
The community has gone, we now have 135+ separate communities. South Africans with South Africans, white with white, Jamaican with Jamaican, Canadians with Canadians and so on.
Caymanians are amazing. We just don’t actually ever get the privilege to really meet the real ones. Sad times.
Racism and xenophobia is an ugly look
English with English….
Oh wow, that’s disgusting. If that is the attitude of ‘real Caymanians’ its no wonder that foreign workers invited in to do the jobs you think you are too good for, find it difficult to integrate.
If your opinion is that they are all foreign trash with nothing between their ears, is it any wonder that all those nice hardworking people don’t want to ‘adopt Cayman culture and ideals’, if you are a representative of what those are.
You’re correct. So all this proves how out of touch all MLAs are
Turnover – drives business owners crazy.
Another change premised on the idea that if you throw enough sand in the gears of the employment market it will start to work better for Caymanians.
If you don’t want companies to hire expats, why not just stop issuing work permits altogether?
Oh right, because companies still wouldn’t hire people they don’t want to hire… and also the economy would collapse.
Sand in the gears it is.
You’re sort of right but it’s not that simple.
The abuse of the temporary work permit system to get people down here and then convert them to grants is a real problem.
That said, there are other ways they could have addressed this. For example.
Provide that temp permits can only be extended once and are not convertible to a grant – ie the person can’t continue to work while the grant application is pending.
Allow unadvertised temp permits for certain jobs only, eg for the hospitality industry and/or in other areas where there is an acute need for expat workers.
Jobs in financial services and other professional jobs should either not have temp permits at all on the basis that these are not temporary or seasonal jobs and should require a grant. If there is an urgent need there should be an option to have the application reviewed on an expedited basis at a high cost.
to use the previous posters analogy… just more sand.
Does anyone else experience going to click on the headline you want tread and as your mouse is within a thousandth of an inch the headline changes, but the click is already in motion?
“The numbers indicate the long-held belief that employers use temporary permits to import labour instead of taking the time to find a suitable job seeker locally.”
Ummm….no. Employers put in temporary permit applications first because they are heard quickly. A work permit grant takes 12 weeks! So just doesn’t work when you need to fill a role quickly and there isn’t a Caymanian available for the role. Offer an expedited fee for the work permit grant and you’ll get lots of employers going that route.
Both things are true. Mostly, temps are used to get expats here quickly and avoid pension and health, especially bartenders and the like.
you can’t avoid health with a temp permit. And pension kicks in at 9 months whether on a temp or full work permit.
Of course there is already an express fee. Makes no difference other than the amount it costs you. The concept of paying a civil service extra to do the job they are already meant to do in a reasonable period of time – world class.
Employers will now just abolish any current or future need for a Temporary permit, in response.
My exact thoughts. We will now see a decrease in temp work permits cause… what’s the point if they were just submitting the permit in order to get the employee on island faster.
Slowdowns soon come to construction industry
If so, that is a good thing. We NEED to put the brakes on runaway construction. If that manages to accidentally get more Caymanians employed, then I’m all for it.
Means crime will go up!
No way to feed themselves when they are hungry.
Usual ones that have permit and need to find themselves work to pay the $300 to whoever has the permit out on them.
Our Cause Lists continually demonstrate it’s the demented intergenerational entitlement of Caymans that don’t want to put in an honest day’s work on a construction site that are behind most of our violent crime, robberies, assassinations, gun and ammo possession, etc.
So, you are saying that good people will commit crimes when times are lean?
Is that what your parents and theirs did? You should be ashamed of yourself.
How do you imagine that less work will get more Caymanians employed?
Yeah, high interest rates are going to slow construction down for the next few years.
Hasn’t this been the law for like 2 years?
Can we please bust this popular myth that our >50% Caymanian T&BL’ed businesses and permit holders, are seeking Caymanians for $4.50 or $6.00/hr jobs? Or that there are any Caymanians willing to do that work? Please. Get angry with the business owners and government that won’t revisit the cost of labour still frozen at 1980s levels. We need to stop demonizing those unfortunates working for these scraps and shift the scrutiny to absent living wages, rising cost of living, missing consumer and employee protections from millionaire business owners that take and shamelessly exploit without giving back. Being an ass is not savvy or worthy of the reverence it receives in Cayman.
Don’t worry, if they keep crashing the economy at this rate there will soon be plenty of Caymanians working for $4.50 per hour
Our company offers $15/hour and that’s not enough for most Caymanians. I still hire foreign because Caymanians don’t like the trades and if they do, they already run thier own business and get subcontracted for more than I pay hourly.
Caymanian unemployment is a myth. there are always a subset of people in literally every country in the world that don’t want to work. Why punish business owners even more?
Time to grow the world class civil service!
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”
Groucho Marx.
good news.a lot of those people taking tempoary permit just for them to stay here on the island and that should not be happening.what happen to the quota that was once upon a time would let us know what country was here and so forth .hard time is here now and worst left to come.also how about people who taking out permit for friends and company that they have ni jobs for.
With this grammar and spelling, the sky is the limit for you, my friend.
Partnership at Maples, 3:27. That’s what they all think their birth certificate entitles them to.
These clowns are only just recognizing the necessity to advertise TWP applications?! This loophole has been used as the stepping stone to get more people in these islands for years! If it’s a genuine temporary, but urgent need that is proven to be valid, then I can understand a 3 month application being processed without advertisement. If it progresses to 6 months, however, advertisements for the job should immediately be required.
it is particularly important now that you Saunders involved….he wants companies to have security of permit holder retention…so from first permit renewals are merely filings and fees…to bad for Caymanians hoping for opportunities and promotions.
Congratulations. Your excellence with grammar and sentence structure ensures your position as an elite hire.
$5,000 is a joke figure. The starting figure should be $50.000 and keep increasing for every offense committed. A high percentage of Non-Caymanians feel they have a right to have their permits granted. They scheme with every trick in the book to tell lies about good qualified Caymanians and try to deceive WORC in an attempt to bring in their own nationality, or friends.
If they went to the Bahamas they understands the Rule of law quickly is set for the Bahamians to benefit first, however, we as Caymanians are kind and foolish and Non-Caymanians see that as a weakness and you are foolish. Good move Minister Chris and your team. Do not now buckle under pressure to change it because some white person with a business suit comes along. Hold the rope firm, let them look from within and make a great effort to help train up Caymanians. Let them produce the evidence, and their information verified.
Oh yes, the Bahamas, which is famously doing so well…
Wow, you might has well hold up a big sign which says “I’m a racist”
We need to run a headline that the fine is $5,000.00 for any wrongfully request for both the permit holder and employee that means in terms of job description salary and general abuse of the labor law
It’s a step in the right direction
once found guilty of abusing the system the company should be restricted from further permits AND renewals….it’s never been easier to get a permit in cayman then the las.decade with Aldumb and Squanders and yet they still break the rules
Says someone who has probably never had to apply for a work permit.
The number of permits is completely uncorrelated with how easy they are to get. Cayman has a large number of permits (all of which were hard to get) because there are more jobs than willing and able Caymanians available.
Don’t take my word for it, read the Labour Force Survey, it’s there in black and white.
Why? It’s much easier to parrot the often used narrative that expats and Jamaicans are to blame for all things bad.
Are you racist? There are “white” people who are Caymanians too.
Only when it suits.
The celebration in mediocrity is astounding.
How much do you jokers get paid annually?
No one thought about this simple Simon stuff from the start?
How are employers supposed to effectively advertise when there’ll be no space left once WORC realises the positions it will need to advertise and fill itself to cope with the workload when this rolls out the end of March 🤷🏻♀️
all the temp ads should effectively bury the permit renewal ads that we don’t want to have to bother with the dog and pony show of caymanian interviews.
So are renewals being posted in Job site yet? Are postings allowed to increase experience requirements by term of last permits for same position? Are slimy scumbag recruiters allowed to chum positions by advertising initially in their names? Are employers still allowed to re-advertise slightly different position titles with requirements that exclude Caymanian applicants to previous ads or that of recruiters?
What exactly are you complaining about?
Good. This is needed and long overdue. Oh, and CIG bosses are much of the problem with this too as they like to hold the employee hostage to the gov contract.
As if a Caymanian is going to do the menial labor, hospitality, or service work.
They have in the past, and they would again if they are paid a living wage. I make much less than I did before Covid, and I am very frugal. Still, I could not support my family on the minimum wage.
Put another way, if I HAD to support my family on the minimum wage, I would have to default on ALL my insurance and regress to a standard of living which I endured in my teenage years; that is a very difficult prospect for senior citizens.
I would love to go to a restaurant to be served by a Caymanian. But somehow I don’t see that happening 🙂
Even back in the day they were terrible waiters.
The jig is up. This is a JOBS program to eventually force employers to hire unqualified applicants.
Watch for incentives to hire locals or penalities for not doing so.
This is Caymankind.
This is going to create a nightmare for small business owners. Why is government focused on the small business sector that require unskilled labor? Caymanians don’t want low income jobs and who can blame them. Temporary permits allow the business owner to secure workers in high season. Forcing a year permit may not be feasible and good luck getting rebates when you need to cancel one or they turn it down. Temporary permits don’t always lead to full year permits. What they should be doing is allowing rubber stamping of 6 month permits so businesses can operate without disruption and allow a further 6 months if a Caymanian hasn’t applied.
Please can we hear from some employers about their recruitment challenges. Are there problems recruiting local staff that mean they have to go to the considerable expense, inconvenience and delay of hiring from overseas?
Or is the consideration of a work permit taking so long that they simply can’t wait and have to bring in a temp staff member to cover that vacancy?
What is really going on?
Now it’s time to justify temp work which, as it should, go to a Caymanian, if possible.
This will result in zero new jobs for “unemployed Caymanians”
So more process to add to the time to find staff when locals are only interested in high paying roles. Why are there almost zero locals in hospitality? Because the hours are rotten, and no social standing as a waiter or housekeeper. If government was serious about putting Caymanians to work they would look at why people not in specific roles. Instead of paying for friends childrens’a rugby teams overseas maybe government could fund a trade school on island for the people!
Twenty years ago, ALL hospitality jobs, dive industry and most food services jobs were held by Caymanians. Then the government got the bright idea of paying everyone a tiny amount and allowing business owners to purchase indentured servants for their businesses. You see, the government discovered that the CIG coffers swelled from the work permit fees, and they clapped themselves on the back for their financial prowess.
Caymanians simply couldn’t compete. We have no place to send our tiny wages that compound upon being converted to the local economy.
Do we want to further overbuild our islands, and cater to the uber rich, or do we want to create a sustainable dynamic which advances the livelihoods of our children. Simple as that.
I can guarantee that 20 years ago it was just the same as it is now.
So true and hasn’t changed!!!!
Then I can guarantee that you weren’t here, and that you are also fully FOS.
nope!
I’ve been living here for 20 years. those jobs were all expats 20 years ago.
After high school, I was one of only two dive masters active in the industry. Honestly it was the best time of my life, But you are correct. I will say I apologize for my fellow countrymen as it would seem they are mad at everyone for issues they where not even raised to understand.
lol. made up rubbish. 40 years ago maybe I don’t know but certainly not 20.
To what end? For applicants to forego ads and break the rules like they do now (I’ve seen ads without any response contact info)? Only for Government to approve every single application simply for the revenues? More rules which will not be enforced while Caymanians are pushed farther down the employment ladder??
Way to go Chris Saunders!
This is a great way to keep the “pipes clogged” at WORC. As well as keep us waiting for all the servers, cleaners and landscapers.
“Having this data will be vital to building a strong and capable Caymanian workforce”.
If they wanted to work they would have actively went after a job.
Or, in my experience, employers are forced to use the temporary permits because it takes months and months to get a decision on a full permit and WORC seem to have no care whatsoever about impact on businesses of not being able to recruit staff.
It’s about time.
Now, let’s talk about genuine enforcement of this and other tenets of Labour Laws.
How about we start with something a little easier, parking perhaps, and build up from there.
There is no value in setting the bar so low that it can be stepped over.
And the value in making it even harder for Caymanian businesses to hire good employees is what exactly?
Sand in the gears