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This morning as we were leaving church, a group of three Indian-looking men paused to greet the rector. Two of the men obviously knew the rector and were introducing their companion to him. Archdeacon Ian asked the newcomer where he works, and he replied, "Sterling" -- the company that owns many local restaurants.
"Oh, you're a hard worker, then," the rector told him. "Two days off a month?"
The man nodded. Today was one of two days off he gets a month, and he got up early to go to church.
There are very few labor laws here. No minimum wage, no overtime laws. No incentive for your employer to obey the laws suggesting a 48-hour work week and seven national holidays a year. No OSHA, no pension plans. No striking, no effective labor unions. No effective means of redress of grievances at all, for that matter, and no guarantee that you won't be deported if you try.
Hardly a week goes by that there isn't a sad story in the paper of a young South Asian man who paid some coyote to get him a job in Qatar and the arrived in the Doha Airport only to find no job and no sponsor -- or a Southeast Asian maid running away from her physically and/or sexually abusive employer. (Mind you, I wrote that sentence without consulting The Peninsula; it wasn't hard to find articles from the last two weeks illustrating those common abuses. I even got the workers' ethnicities right.)
And yet people continue to pour into Qatar to take these kinds of jobs. People continue to stay in Qatar working these jobs, preferring these employment conditions to repatriation and the even more desperate employment outlook in their own countries of origin. Expatriate workers doing manual labor in Qatar do seem to make enough to live on and to send home to support a family in India or Pakistan or the Philippines. They just do it by working 80- or 90-hour weeks.
I'm starting to feel really crummy for grumbling about my vacation days for the year being cut to thirty. Thirty PLUS weekends AND national holidays.
"Oh, you're a hard worker, then," the rector told him. "Two days off a month?"
The man nodded. Today was one of two days off he gets a month, and he got up early to go to church.
There are very few labor laws here. No minimum wage, no overtime laws. No incentive for your employer to obey the laws suggesting a 48-hour work week and seven national holidays a year. No OSHA, no pension plans. No striking, no effective labor unions. No effective means of redress of grievances at all, for that matter, and no guarantee that you won't be deported if you try.
Hardly a week goes by that there isn't a sad story in the paper of a young South Asian man who paid some coyote to get him a job in Qatar and the arrived in the Doha Airport only to find no job and no sponsor -- or a Southeast Asian maid running away from her physically and/or sexually abusive employer. (Mind you, I wrote that sentence without consulting The Peninsula; it wasn't hard to find articles from the last two weeks illustrating those common abuses. I even got the workers' ethnicities right.)
And yet people continue to pour into Qatar to take these kinds of jobs. People continue to stay in Qatar working these jobs, preferring these employment conditions to repatriation and the even more desperate employment outlook in their own countries of origin. Expatriate workers doing manual labor in Qatar do seem to make enough to live on and to send home to support a family in India or Pakistan or the Philippines. They just do it by working 80- or 90-hour weeks.
I'm starting to feel really crummy for grumbling about my vacation days for the year being cut to thirty. Thirty PLUS weekends AND national holidays.
