The chairwoman of the Casino Control Commission on Wednesday refuted charges that the Divi Carina Bay Resort was violating local hiring laws.
Commissioner Eileen Petersen was responding to comments made by Raymond "Usie" Richards, a legislative planner for Sen. Adelbert Bryan, who recently said the new resort and casino’s hiring practices were discriminatory against black Virgin Islanders. Richards’ comments came on the heels of a controversy last week surrounding a local radio station’s plans to hire a DJ fired from his stateside job for making racist remarks.
Richards noted that some 20 "white continentals" had recently been at the Department of Health applying for food-handling cards in order to work at the Divi Carina Bay Resort and Casino.
Petersen, however, was adamant that hiring at the resort was compliant with the Casino Control Act. The act states that at the end of the first year of operation, 65 percent of the employees at a resort/casino must be bona fide residents. The figure rises to 75 percent at the end of the second year and to 90 percent at the end of three years.
The act defines a resident as someone who has been living continuously in the V.I. for five years, or a native-born Virgin Islander.
"As far as we’re concerned, they (the Divi) have been complying with all . . . regulations," Petersen said Wednesday.
Petersen said the CCC must license all employees at the resort and casino before they start work. While the resort and casino has imported personnel from off island, Petersen said the majority of those people are short-term specialists who will train locals and eventually leave.
"The Casino Control Commission is aware of all employment at the resort. We have a system where we monitor who is employed and what position," Petersen said. "There is no sound reason for them to want to violate the Virgin Islands Casino Control Act."
The casino act was approved for St. Croix in 1995 as a means of increasing the amount of hotel rooms on the island as well as a way to create jobs for locals.
Despite the Virgin Islands being a predominately black community, discriminatory practices have occurred in the past, making Richards' accusations plausible. In the Brown and Root scandal of the mid-1990s, it was revealed that the personnel contractor for then Hess Oil of the Virgin Islands was hiring an inordinate amount of white stateside residents, contrary to local laws.
In another case, yet to be litigated, a group of Virgin Islanders is suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture for alleged discriminatory practices in its rural home loan program. The U.S. government has already settled a multimillion-dollar suit with African-American farmers on the mainland for similar illegal practices.
Richards, meanwhile, said that monitoring employment practices to ensure there is not discrimination against Virgin Islanders should not be left just to the Divi resort and the CCC.
"The responsibility is not solely Divi’s. It’s also the government’s," Richards said. "If there is no enforcement, then, in fact, we will find these instances."
Petersen said that if Richards continues to feel there is a problem with hiring at the Divi Carina Bay Resort, she will look into it.
"I will take his information and conduct an investigation," she said.
At the end of January, the CCC reported that the Department of Labor had issued 155 work permits for the Divi Carina Bay Resort. At that point 128, or 83 percent, of the permits went to bona fide Virgin Islanders.
Some 110 people graduated from the V.I. government’s casino training school as dealers. The Divi casino will initially hire about one-third of the graduates. A total of 150 people are expected to work at the casino in a variety of positions after its opening, scheduled for the mid-March.
