Legislators have approved the creation of a Director of Labour, with support from the Opposition.

The House of Assembly passed the Department of Labour Act 2025 last night, with Jason Hayward, the Minister of Economy and Labour, giving MPs the background to the move.

Labour relations, previously under the purview of the Department of Workforce Development, was shifted to the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2017.

“At that point in time, the person who managed the section, because it was not a department, would have been the labour relations manager,” Mr Hayward told the House.

When the labour relations section moved to the Ministry of Economy and Labour in 2023, Mr Hayward said, the ministry “thought it best to create a Department of Labour with the necessary administrative support” to carry out its functions.

Mr Hayward explained that a newly created department could be either administrative, or statutory.

“When it was still an administrative department, it was still fine where we had reference to the manager responsible for labour relations,” he said.

“We thought it was just a simple amendment to change the manager of labour relations to director of labour relations. Chambers then advised that the process is not as simple as that.

“If you refer to a director, the director needs to be director of a department, and the department has to be a statutory department in law.

“As a result of that, we brought the legislation to first and foremost create a Department of Labour, which would be a statutory department, and at the end of that process we went to transfer the responsibilities to the Director of Labour.”

Vance Campbell, for the One Bermuda Alliance, signalled the Opposition’s support, and the Bill was passed after a half-hour debate.