race in the workplace last year have been resolved.

Government included the question of race in its Employment Survey for the first time last July and drew strong objections from the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce.

The chamber's executive board said it felt "information about race is not relevant to one's employment and should therefore not be collected by employers and certainly not maintained on personal records''.

But it is understood that then Chamber executive vice-president Carolyn Mello worked very closely with the Statistics Department and the Bermuda Employers Council and managed to satisfy members' concerns.

New executive vice-president Cyanne Thomas said yesterday that the Statistics Department had printed out guideline notes to accompany the survey and the Chamber had not received any objections from its members this year.

She said one of the primary concerns had been how the information on race would be collected and kept confidential.

This had been resolved with employees enclosing their information in sealed envelopes which were not opened until they reached the Statistics Department.

And employers and employees were reassured that it was not mandatory to keep information regarding race on file.

The Employment Survey -- formerly the Manpower Survey -- is sent out to about 5,500 employers and self-employed people around the Island each year.

Government officials said the question of race was included because whether or not racial groups were given equal opportunities in jobs had become a critical issue in Bermuda.

Last year's survey found that 60 percent of the Island's working population was black. But it said blacks were not proportionately represented in managerial and specialised jobs.