Email this page
Print this page
Feed
Watching out-of-state license plates on cars streaming into Bar Harbor is like bird watching. You can mark the passage of time by the plates around town, as cars from Vermont and Massachusetts of the early vacation weekends give way to New York and Ohio plates once the summer heats up. By the time residents spy the exotic plates of California and Alaska baking in the sun, a Maine chickadee plate is as rare as an open parking spot.
The irony of the slogan on that Maine license plate—Vacationland—is not lost on Lou Kiefer, executive chef at the regal Bar Harbor Inn. “I don’t know who named the state ‘vacationland,” says Kiefer, looking around at his busy kitchen. “We’re working really hard.”
In Bar Harbor, the Vacationland tourist crush lasts some five months, requiring an army of workers who have the skills to keep tourists safe, happy, and well-fed. Not only does Kiefer work like the dickens to keep up with the workload during the summer—during the off-season, he and employers like him must spend their winter months tracking down the next year’s flock of workers at job fairs and interviews on U.S. and foreign soil.
Advertisement
Nicole Witherbee, an analyst for the Maine Center for Economic Policy, says tourism industry employers must grapple with two demographic trends: Maine has the oldest average population in the nation and the state economy is expanding faster than its population.
“We have more jobs than people,” Witherbee says. “In Maine, we’re never going to fill [them] without immigrants.”
Kiefer agrees. Despite his wintertime recruiting trips, he usually can’t find enough U.S. workers to fill his needs at the Bar Harbor Inn. For one thing, he can’t keep up with the salaries and prestige offered by bigger resorts. “You can’t believe the competition with resorts,” he says of vying for employees with multiple Ritz-Carlton resorts. “Up until recently, people would volunteer to work there.”
So, like an increasing number of employers, Bar Harbor Inn human resource managers look outside the U.S. to fill kitchen, wait staff, and housekeeping positions. Many large and midsize Bar Harbor employers like the Acadia Corporation and Geddy’s Pub also are turning to the J-1 foreign student visa and H2B temporary foreign worker visa programs to fill their worker needs.
Jorge Acero, foreign labor specialist at the Maine Department of Labor, says there have been over 2,000 H2B worker applications filed by Maine employers since the beginning of the year, most of those in the tourist trade. Bar Harbor employers are forced to look outside the U.S. because it’s hard to entice Mainers from other parts of the state to relocate due to the high cost of housing, and many college students are foregoing menial labor jobs in favor of more specialized summer jobs. “They want to get internships to move their careers ahead,” Acero says.
Yet hiring foreign workers on visas is no quick fix, either. Employers must prove they cannot find U.S. workers to fill positions and go through three separate federal departments before even being allowed to interview prospective employees at American consulates on foreign soil. And the workers usually must be paid the prevailing wage. It can cost some $2,000 per employee just to fill open positions with foreign workers.
But for their efforts, employers are rewarded with a highly motivated workforce that will jump at the chance to make American wages, says Acero. “They’re here to work and they’re very consistent,” he says.
South African Subashni Lynda Naidoo is a line cook at the Bar Harbor Inn. Naidoo likes working in the U.S. because she feels safer here than at home, where the crime rate is soaring. After spending parts of four years at a resort in Boca Raton, Florida, she decided to accept the job offer in Maine. She arrived in May, which she says was a bit of atmospheric shock to the system.
“When I first got here, it was, like, pretty cold,” Naidoo says.
Finding foreign help has become more difficult recently, as the H2B visa program has become ensnared in a larger immigration debate. In the past, returning workers like Naidoo were not counted toward an annual quota on H2B visas, but that provision recently expired. As of late May of this year, Congress has not been able to pass an extension of the returning worker provision because some congressional members feel it should only be dealt with as part of a larger bill that deals with all immigration issues.
The gridlock has left employers like the Bar Harbor Inn scrambling for workers, and some have even elected to provide housing for Washington County residents who are willing to relocate for the summer. Others have found a loophole to extend the H2B visas of workers already working in other U.S. resorts.
Employers like Kiefer have little to say about the larger immigration problem because they are too busy trying to find help.
“I’m on the ground floor. I can’t even think about that,” says Kiefer. “I just need somebody to wash dishes.”
Not all seasonal workers are from across the pond. Until recently, most tourist jobs in Bar Harbor were filled by family first, then college students. Hiring family is a long-term survival technique here, not a case of nepotism, as many of the smaller shops and campgrounds are mom and pop operations. In fact, many year-round jobs offer some flexibility in summer scheduling because of an unwritten understanding that employees will be called away to help out family during the summer season.
Elizabeth Carlin is the niece of the owners at Hadley Point Campground and has been working the front desk here for several summers. “As soon as I was able to start working, I started working here,” she says. A college student studying to be an occupational therapist, Carlin enjoys the campground’s friendly atmosphere where she can talk with tourists and “basically plan their vacations,” she says. Of course, she admits that, as the season goes on and the temperature rises, so do tourist tempers.
“The middle of August, they seem to get a bit crazy,” she says.
Another challenge Carlin shares with others in the Bar Harbor workforce is how to hold down more than one job. In addition to her campground job, she also waits tables at night and works as a nanny on the weekends, all while commuting off-island from Surry. Oh, and she’s taking four college classes, too.
Some of Carlin’s coworkers at the campground are at least twice her age. These days, in addition to relatives and college students, local employers are relying more and more on a steady and experienced pool of “retired” workers—especially a group known as work-campers who will work in exchange for a free or discounted place to park their campers or RVs.
This is retiree Denise Leisch’s first summer as a work-camper at the Mount Desert Narrows campground. She and her husband, Mike, retired, sold their California home, and began to travel in their RV. After a few years, she says they got “tired of golfing and goofing off.” So they responded to an ad looking for help in the back of an RV magazine and decided to drive up to Maine—“right in the midst of the highest fuel prices,” she says.
Leisch says many RV couples are turning to work-camp jobs to cover their living expenses. The jobs provide schedule flexibility, and the opportunity to explore a place for a long time. The Mount Desert Narrows campground is expected to employ seven work-camper couples by summer’s end, all of whom hope the work will keep their expenses down.
Employers in every state but Hawaii have advertised for work-campers in Workamper magazine, and even Amazon.com has set up arrangements with work-campers to help during the Christmas rush. No one knows how many work-campers are out there, but the number appears to be pretty high: One mail-forwarding business in Texas for work-campers and other RV residents has its own zip code.
Seasonal work in places like Bar Harbor is a perfect fit for retirees, says Dr. Charles Colgan, a public policy professor at the Muskie School of the University of Southern Maine. And as baby boomers edge closer to retirement age, Colgan says, many “aren’t even thinking about full-time retirement.” One study found that 85% of older Maine residents wanted to work past retirement age. Many of them come to places like Bar Harbor and find what they’re looking for: short-term jobs with flexible hours where they can contribute in the strapped seasonal job market and earn their housing, food, and/or extra cash. “It’s a good match of the employers’ needs and the needs of other workers,” he says.
Acadia Bike and Coastal Kayaking in the downtown also employs several work-camp couples to attend the business’s front desk and drive vans. But the majority of the bike repair crew and sea kayak guides employed at the company are young, strapping outdoors types. Half of the crew comes fresh from ski resorts out west or kayak guide jobs in warmer winter locales, says general manager Kay Ligon.
Acadia Bike and Coastal Kayaking attracts many new guides because it is one of the only outfitters willing to train employees to get their guide licenses. In Maine, new guides must pass a grueling written exam about boating laws and a legendarily tricky oral exam about rescue situations. If they don’t pass, would-be guides must wait a month before taking the exam again, which is a big chunk of the summer season.
Even if they pass the test, the new trainees still must grapple with the weather. If the weather is cold, windy, or rainy, or all three, tours don’t go out and they don’t work. But in the heat of the summer, with some guides often working two tours a day every day, a little unexpected break from the work schedule can sometimes be a good thing, especially around lunchtime.
Chances are many of the guides will find their way across the street to Gringo’s, a burrito joint with retro ’70s album covers on the walls, at least once this summer. As they enter, guides call out to the owner, Dirk Erlandsen, working in the kitchen.
Erlandsen is himself a veteran of summer restaurant jobs, having worked at a bar and grill next door and a bakery down the street, among other places. After he found himself seeking out burrito places in other towns, Erlandsen decided to bring the burrito home to Bar Harbor.
“I thought I’d fill a niche,” he says. Even though Gringo’s is a local favorite, it doesn’t stay open year-round. Erlandsen tried to keep the place open for two winters, but he couldn’t find enough wintertime customers.
“Everything boards up down here,” he says. “In the winter, everybody gathers their nuts and squirrels in.”
For summer workers who want to stay on the island year-round, it can be as hard to find work as it is to find a good burrito in the winter. Steven Bodge, co-owner of the A&B Naturals grocery store further down the road, says young people must either try and get by with the odd construction job, work somewhere else, or apply for unemployment benefits to ride out the winter.
And even though off-season jobs are scarce, the cost of living remains high during the winter. When Bodge first moved back to Maine from Boston, he found the cost of living in Bar Harbor was the same as in Boston. “It was a rough first winter,” he says.
Bodge opened A&B Naturals, in part, because it was the only way he could figure out to afford to live on Mount Desert Island. So far, the plan seems to have worked; the store has attracted quite a following in its first year. But even so, Bodge still has to live within a tight budget. “I’m living with two housemates,” he says.
Both Bodge and Erlandsen say they have been lucky finding good help, relying mainly on recommendations from current employees. But it is rare to find a store in Bar Harbor without a “Help Wanted” sign hanging on a window throughout the summer. Even with the recent influx of work-campers, there simply aren’t enough employees to go around.
Despite bank-breaking prices at the gas pump, Bar Harbor expects another booming tourist season this summer. And despite the labor shortages, Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce director Chris Fogg says employers will find enough help to help tourists have a good time.
“We always find a way,” Fogg says.
