| Many construction crews in the islands consist of a combination of European and US expats and Dominicans with a few Haitian laborers thrown in. On all the islands I worked on, it was rare to find people actually from that island who were capable of that kind of work. The Dominicans and the Haitians were fine, but the US and European guys mostly treated it as one big vacation. They would stay out all night partying and then come to work and do just enough to not get fired. As another commenter mentioned, those guys knew they could always find work elsewhere even if only temporarily because skilled trades were in high demand. So they could quickly move on until they burned another bridge. I was on one job in Antigua where the project managers were able to avoid this completely. They flew in hundreds of people from Indian and had them live in a “tent town” where they never left except to go to work each day. No alcohol or drugs allowed. Myself and two others were flown in to install all the cabinets and other mill work. With the except of the stone guys from Turkey, we were the only non Indians on the entire project. |