Services Terry Lister tells Cathy Stovell about the new laws. Do you agree with Senator Maxwell Burgess that Payroll Tax reductions should be given to companies who comply with the regulations? Let's put that in plain English. In plain English that says that I should in essence pay somebody for not being a racist. Think about it? ------------ How are you going to guarantee that there is confidentiality, especially in areas like salary? We guarantee confidentiality in the same way that confidentiality is guaranteed with the information that goes in the manpower survey, and the Human Rights Commission. It's the same Secrecy Act. People are bound to it. To the best of my knowledge there have never been any problems with it.

The only instances that I am aware of since I have been the Minister have been when the party involved chose to go and talk to the Press.

The Bill Shoaf situation. In Bill Shoaf's situation the only person who talked to the Press was Bill Shoaf. If he had never talked to the Press then the Press would have never known that he had a case. From start to finish the Human Rights Commission never spoke to the Press on it.

---------- Are you going to make the re- sults public? The Human Rights Commission publishes a report every year on its work that details the number of cases of the various sorts. One could never read that report today and determine what companies are being discussed but you certainly know the nature of complaints that are being dealt with. That's what we'll be doing. We'll release information in summarised tabular form that will allow the reading public to know exactly where the statistics are.

Just as form three shows by race the number of people in each racial mix, in different job categories, showing five categories, then goes on to show those same people according to their salary and the same people according to their benefits, we'll have an annual report that shows that in summarised form for all the 500 registered companies.

We'll also have an annual report that shows that same information in the 15 industrial groupings that's the extent of the information that will be available.

At the end of it all the reader would be hard pressed to say this is a report that talks about company A, B, or C. That would be impossible because of the summarisation process.

---------- What will happen to offenders? In the short term offenders are going to be encouraged to do the right thing.

There are two types of offenders. One is the non-filer and the second in the public's mind probably, is the person who doesn't comply or make any attempt to move toward complying with industry norms.

The non filer, we have penalties in place for. They'll be fined and hauled before the courts and I assume that the pressure of public displeasure would cause that person to fall in line in the future.

Who wants to work for a company that refuses to file its reports? It doesn't make sense. And once it is the law that 500 companies are responsible to file and 499 do and the 500th doesn't, then they stick out like a sore thumb.

Regardless of the fine we give them, the fine they really face is the fine within their company ie. their employees saying why am I working here and the fine of being shunned by their colleagues in other companies who say `what is your problem' so that is a bigger fine, if I can use `fine' rather loosely.

For those that actually file and appear not to be moving in the right direction, firstly, that has to be established over time, so you measure that over two or three years.

The first set of reports that get released will simply be that first point in time, that first snapshot that says `okay Bermuda after all these years of he said she said, here's the real deal' and the Bermudian populous will then get to decide whether what they are looking at is fair and reasonable or unfair.

And the companies will have their perspective, obviously.

`A minor fine is not the answer' As each year goes by one will want to see some normalised pattern being formed and that's all we can hope for.

---------- And if they don't you'll fine them? Well, I'm not really too concerned about how we'll deal with them at this point, and to be honest, some minor fine really is not the answer. If you think about it.

If I come back to Bermuda 25 years old and I come back to Bermuda bright as two buttons and I look at the lay of the legal practise in Bermuda and I think that I could get together with two or three of my buddies and we could get together and form a firm and we could make a certain amount of money.

But then I realise I could never make the type of profit and personal gain that I could make if I were to join one of the two big firms so therefore I join one of the two big firms and work my way to the top and then at age 35 I've watched others come in behind me who are now partners and I am still in the middle of the firm and I really am as bright as two buttons, something is wrong and how are we going to deal with that. Taking that firm to court and fining them, does not fix the issue. So I have not made a lot of noise about fines, I am not interested in the fine, there has to be some other means of fixing that situation, than having him pay a cheque to the Accountant General.

That person who is as bright as two buttons needs some justice so somehow that's got to work it's way out, but that's down the road. we have nothing on the books to deal with it yet. We are starting this in a very user friendly way. It's somewhat disappointing that those who are involved in the process have not embraced it in such a user friendly way up until now, but I think we can overcome that together.

----- A captives insurance article has charged that the regu- lations hinder good business practice? That is not unusual, that is the type of comment made about any regulation that is ever made. The only time businesses ever embrace regulation is when it will cause other regulations not to follow.

One of the reasons Bermuda has been successful in the OECD fight is because of the self regulation that has been put in place over many years and built upon that regulation was led by those people who were in fact going to be regulated but they knowing that regulation was going to be necessary, sat down and got involved in the process from the very start and built together a successful regulatory system. Apart from that people never embrace it its like saying would people welcome increase Payroll Tax.

----- But they are saying it is going to hinder good business prac- tice They will say that about anything. I am not prepared to break stride about a comment like that.

----- `I believe God just made people' How is this going to affect business? Many are saying they will have to take on additional staff to cope.

I would suggest that at the end of the tenth year, the grand total of people hired to fill out these forms will have been zero, that is my prediction.

It's just another red herring thrown out, it's not a problem. Anyone who has seen the forms knows. Form 3 for example simply says, `name your staff, who are the people that work for you, what is their racial group, their salary and benefits'. Computerised versus non computerised environment. How long is it going to take you to gather up that information and put it on the form? Is it enough time so that you are going to hire somebody who you will have to have on your payroll for 52 weeks? Think about it. This is submission of a form, that will not take a lot of time.

As far as Form 4 we are going to be tracking hirings, promotions and terminations. Do you think these things were going on all along? Yes. So now you are actually going to document it. Make one more line of it if you've got a computerised field you put another line in it and your computer is programmed up front. If the company is not computerised it is probably pretty small which probably means it would take them no time to do it on a napkin. Go left you're wrong, go right you're wrong on this one, that's the honest truth.

If you try to unmake that argument you will fail no matter which way you make it. To those that make it with such fervour and vehemently, it just sounds good and they believe, `If I shout loud enough I must be telling the truth'.

----- How do you think it will make staff feel? I would like to think it would make all staff feel pretty good. I'm tired of hearing things like there is one department in Government that had a motto that if you want to hire a body hire a Bermudian but if you want to hire talent, hire a foreigner. That was something that was here before we got here, something we have inherited and we have worked very hard to deal with that.

That was the mind set of one Government department and I believe that mind set exists in some other companies.

We certainly have to get past that. And by using the CURE approach we will fix some of that because CURE is saying there's a bright Bermudian who happens to be black who hasn't had an opportunity so he's in the middle or on the bottom.

The person above him who didn't deserve to get the job was either a white Bermudian or a white foreigner.

If he was a white foreigner then that was a wasted work permit because the person holding it doesn't really have the talent plus the company is paying all this money for the person. But if that person was a white Bermudian what you were doing was perpetuating on Island racism or on Island historical things that were not good. You cannot spin it out in a positive way.

I don't believe that brains were given to one group and not another. I believe there is a normal distribution curve in all races. God just made people.

That being the case, once we get rid of all the emotional stuff and just step back and look at the numbers, one has to question why they look the way they look. You just have to. You can't say `it's this it's that'. It's a big word starting with `R'. That's the problem. These things that this Government is doing are attacking that `R' word that's all we want to do. We want to attack it and slay it.

Anywhere in the world a company with ten employees is a small company. In Bermuda there are 500 companies registered with less than 10 employees only 24 of them are black owned.

Now back away from that and tell me if I should accept that as a statistic, whether we as a nation or little island should be happy to think that we are a 65/35 percent racial mix and we have 24 out of 500 companies, just about 5 percent are black owned and of those 21 have less than 30 employees. It's sad.

It's just sad.

Anyone who sees that statistic and gives you a successful argument that it just happens and it's not racism, you have to be concerned about that person.

The only thing one should say is `that's historic racism and we're not going to perpetuate that anymore'. I'll accept that from someone who may have been perpetuating it in the past -- that's the only answer you can give.

You can't tell me it's brain power, or bad luck, or that blacks throw their money away instead of investing it in business because whatever things that we may have done as people, other people do.

----- This may not remedy that No but fortunately I have a hat called small business development corporation, I have a hat called equal opportunities. I have a lot of work to do I'm busy.

This is a busy ministry we have a lot of work to do, every time we turn over another stone, we find something else.

Terry Lister