Bermudian Worker Discriminated Against

 Bermudian Worker Discriminated Against

Allan Doughty represented a Bermudian carpenter by trade with 30 years experience, who filed a claim that he was discriminated aginst with the Human Rights Commission in 2008. In February 2021, the board made their ruling known.

Featured in the Royal Gazette, 10th February 2012.

Read the full article here

A local construction company wanted black Bermudians on the job site in order to justify work permits, but had no real intentions of promoting or training black Bermudians for the job. That was the crux of a board of inquiry ruling handed down yesterday on the human rights case of Pernell Grant against Apex Construction Management Limited.

Mr Grant, a Bermudian carpenter by trade with 30 years of experience, claimed he was discriminated against in a complaint first filed with the Human Rights Commission in June 2008. Nearly four years later the board, headed up by Paul Harshaw, made their ruling known at a brief hearing held at the Department of Human Affairs.

The complaint lists three respondents, Apex Limited, Andrea Battiston, the company’s operations manager who essentially was Mr Grant’s boss and Kevin Mason, the site superintendent, or second-in-command. He never appeared before the board for the inquiry at any stage. The evidence was taken over three days in October last year.

The crux of Mr Grant’s case was that he was offered employment on terms less favourable than the terms offered to others employed by Apex. The others consisted of groups of Polish and Canadian contract workers.

Mr Grant claimed he was denied the opportunity to work overtime and that he suffered reprisals based on either “staged” or false complaints used to justify termination of his employment. He worked for Apex from September 2006 and was terminated in April 2009.

In the 15-page ruling the board stated outright: “The Respondents had absolutely no intention of training or promoting Bermudians generally, or black Bermudians in particular. We are under no doubt at all that the Respondents wanted ‘black faces in the hole’, that is black workers on the site in order to support their claims for work permits for contract workers.”