The View From Inside Diageo: What’s Wrong With This Picture?

The View From Inside Diageo

The Diageo plant on the South Shore of St. Croix.

Something has got to be done about the heartless attitude against Crucians and Virgin Islanders by Diageo. I have a copy of the Diageo Orientation booklet with two Virgin Islanders in management. Teri Helenese is the Human Resources Director and Lorina Pickering Dyer is the Quality Manager. All the other blacks are hourly workers. Check the facts for yourself. Ask Diageo for a copy of the orientation book, you will see pictures for yourself of all the foreigners taxpayer money is going for. 

This is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It took a few months to get this information but now there are employees on the inside that can shed the facts so the real deal on Diageo can be known by one and all.   

Out of 1,000 (local) people at Diageo’s job fair, Diageo thinks the people of St. Croix and the Virgin Islands are so stchupid they had to relocate a twenty something year old man from Jamaica (and his family) to be the Operations Director. Taxpayer money is paying for his relocation to St. Croix and his 4 bedroom rental house in Judith’s Fancy, his Patriot Jeep, food, clothes and monthly trips back to Jamaica. Senators need to be up on what is really happening here in our islands and do something about it.  

Forget the Judith’s Fancy digs. How much of taxpayer money is being used to pay for him over the time that he will be on the island? How long will he be on the island? Foreign relocations and visas cost between $200,000 and $300,000 a year. Diageo thinks Crucians are so dumb, they’d rather be insensitive and slap Crucians and Virgin Islanders on the island and abroad in the face and pay to relocate a Jamaican for $300,000 a year and not use what would be a fraction of the price to train a Crucian or Virgin Islander to do the job. Diageo could have even brought a Virgin Islander home from the States for less than $300,000 a year. Many people want to know just how much taxpayer money is paying for all these foreigners to be on our soil. This is senseless. 

To add salt to the wound, Diageo relocated a man from Belfast, Northern Ireland as the Production Team Leader. Out of the 1,000 people at the job fair, Diageo thinks Crucians and Virgin Islanders are so stchupid they flew halfway across the globe and relocated at the average cost of $300,000 a year another Diageo employee and his family.

This time completely flying in the face of cultural sensitivity by hiring a white British man with an accent NOBODY understands to manage 20 black production operators. At $300,000 a year, he too lives in the posh Judith’s Fancy. This $300,000 of taxpayer money could have been used to train a Crucian for this position. A Crucian does not need a visa either.  

To add hot pepper to the salt on the wound, of the 1,000 people at the job fair, Diageo relocated twenty year old woman, not twenty years of distillery and rum making experience, to be the Maturation Team Leader. This one is the biggest pappy show of all. Diageo thinks Crucians and Virgin Islanders are such monkeys and so stchupid we are as dumb as bats and do not have the smarts and intelligence to move barrels from the Renaissance site to the end of the airport road where all those barrels are stacked. 

We were told this woman stood up in front of a Mr. David Cutter and David Gosnell who are Presidents at Diageo, during a professional presentation and talked about her boyfriend being in “Happy Land.” Her boyfriend is not in the military, but is on a self taken assignment in an undisclosed location as a civilian worker.

She told her Warehouse Operator team many days she will be sad and break down because she misses “Happy Land” so much, so just bear with her and don’t remind her about “Happy Land.” This lil gyal need a real lesson in how not to talk stchupidness to island people. We don’t give a s**t about her “Happy Land” boyfriend. This is the nonsense our people had to sit through that day and this is the nonsense taxpayer money is paying for. This is the nonsense Diageo relocated as a Maturation Team Leader over selecting a local for this job to move barrels from one site to another.  

Out of the 1,000 people at the job fair, Diageo thinks Crucians are so stchupid they hired a man from Mobile, Alabama and relocated him to be the Maintenance Team Lead. More of our hard earned taxpayer money being put to bad use. He too has an all expense paid house in Judith’s Fancy. Senseless.  

Crucians are so stchupid there is no one on the island that had the skill to be the MAINTENANCE Team Leader. Come on people. They would not even give us that. This is ridiculous! 

Out of 1,000 people at the job fair, Diageo thinks Crucians are so stchupid they relocated another man and his family from Elgin, Scotland to be the Vice President of Operations. Vice President! I wonder what the price tag on a Vice President salary is. 

Out of the 1,000 people at the job fair, Diageo thinks Crucians are so dumb, they relocated another twenty year old from Canada to be the Finance Manager. Not twenty years of finance experience, twenty something years old. Out of 1,000 people, Crucians on the island and in the states are so dumb they could not get a Finance Manager from the local labor pool, so they had to use $300,000 a year of taxpayer money to relocate another family to St. Croix. 

Something has got to give. We the people need answers. All lawyers need to know the operation is a smokescreen. Every manager preaches the company is legally separated from the headquarters in Connecticut but this is not true. Connecticut makes all the rules and calls all the shots. 

We the people of the Virgin Islands give Diageo a brand new free distillery and 30 to 60 years. They slap us in the face by hiring all these foreigners in high paying jobs and giving blacks the lower hourly pay instead of training Crucians and Virgin Islanders to be in management too. I want to know how many of these foreigners are interested in becoming residents. After they are naturalized, how many of them will register to vote in the Virgin Islands and truly be Virgin islanders. Not one of them! They don’t give two s**t about us! They are just in it for the big salary.

Labor Commissioner Albert Bryan, Jr. has done nothing because his friend Teri Helenese is the Human Resources director, a job given to her by Governor John deJongh. The choice came down to Carmelo Rivera and Teri Helenese. John (deJongh) chose Teri and put Carmelo in the Department of Planning and Natural Resources as the Assistant Commissioner. Why? Because if these puppets are young they must do what the deJongh-Francis Administration wants. Carmelo would never allow Diageo to bring in foreigners. He would stand up, fight for us and make sure the Legislature knows what Diageo is doing spending – $300,000.00 a pop to relocate employees from across the globe. He would stop it and send them home. The two local managers at Diageo don’t support the local workers.  Senators stop sleeping at the wheel and do something about this injustice!

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