Dear goanet readers
As I left England for twelve days to holiday in our also green and pleasant Goa
on 31 January 2012, reports in the regional
media indicated that Goan domestic workers, cleaners and caterers subcontracted
to work at Swindon's Great Western
Hospital were going on strike in protest that they were not allowed to have
four weeks holiday during the Christmas period
so that they could return to Goa and spend the festive season with their
families there. Maybe these are jobs that our
people can never do back home due to the absence of many public toilets there.
I have to agree with former Goa Chief
Minister Rane who said in a recent Asian Age article that our people abroad
work as toilet attendants.
In the United Kingdom, annual leave is calculated approximately one day for
every 22 days worked. It is not usually the
policy and practice for many employers to allow their staff to take four weeks
all in one go due to operational requirements
and usually they grant this in exceptional cases and at their discretion.
Workers in hospitals and other public services get
at the very maximum three weeks holiday in one go. Sick people being treated
need constant care and this care does not
stop just because its Christmas. Hence I found our comedians dispute a bit
puzzling. Surely, before employment, these
newly arrived Goykers would have been given their terms and conditions of
employment, or were they? As I noted, some
of these terms were translated to ensure that even Konkani speaking employees
understood them.
I understand in the United States you do not get any annual leave unless you
have worked the whole year and then you
qualify for two weeks holiday, this goes up depending on your length of service
with your employer. If you are back one
day late, you risk being told not to bother coming back to your job! I hear
this is much the case in Canada. Unlike in Goa
where most commerce goes on six months on (the season) and six months off.
On my return from Goa on Valentine's Day I was surprised to hear news reports
that the strike was still going on and
wondered as to whether the strikers income was from union funds or supported by
the community. On looking at this
issue closely the strike theme appears to have evolved for three days on the
subject of bullying, racism and discrimination
in the workplace. Has the issue of the annual leave been sorted out or are our
people just another bunch of comedians,
doing the mando with placards as part of rent a crowd to be in the public eye?
Racism, bullying and discrimation at work, school and play is still a way of
life here in England and fighting it will attract the
support of Unions and other workers as highlighted in Goan Voice UK. One only
has to look at the casework at UK
Industrial Tribunals. Admittedly, it is a bit diluted from the 1970s when we
had the Goan Standing Committee of Race
Relations and Immigration known as Goascorri. Rabi Martins was in the chair. We
had student lawyers like Henrietta
Almeida, Clive Gomes, Alex Mascarenhas, Ken Pereira and others who ran it. It
was a time when you did the police a
favour and beat yourself up as there was no point in reporting racist abuse or
discrimination at work or attacks by street
gangs on the roadside "Paki Bashing". Even renting a room was a problem . On
the bright side once an Asian bought a
house the property price next door fell giving a lot of our people an
opportunity to get on the housing ladder and own their
homes that has today seen their monetary value increase substantially.
The current publicity on the strike is about not permitting Goykers to speak
Konkani to each other during their rest breaks
at work. I find this very hard to believe as most of our hospital domestics are
staffed by Nigerians, Ghanians, Polish, West
Indian, Portuguese and other communities all speaking in their own language.
Added to this the fact that the Swindon
Hospital administrators have acknowledged Konkani and translated important
documents into this language to ensure that
Goykers have a clear understanding and there is no conflict with English law.
All public services employ translators at
great cost to public funds.
While waiting to board my flight in Mumbai, a native Goan lady with her
children pushed past me although we were
boarding the same flight. She looked like a contribution to the Portuguse
contingent of slave workers for the European
Union. I thought "somka Ghanti". The aircraft reminded me of the old Arab slave
ships, if you took the seating end to end
nearly everybody from all over the world comes to Europe from their home
countries to slave away, pay local taxes and pay
even more air taxes when they return home while the locals play smart and live
like Arabs. What a capitalist world with
seasonal migration pattern we allow ourselves to live in.
Living in England since 1974, I do not remember us being in the news as much as
we are today. In the past, at the first
sign of trouble, we would either try to sort it out ourselves or get lawyers to
fight our case.
Today the negative comments on press articles on the strike indicate the mood
of the local people here changing and
undoing years and years of hard work by our community workers. Personally, I
find the behaviour of the new arrivals from
Goa vastly different from the way we behaved and time will tell where this will
lead to.
Melvyn Fernandes
Thornton Heath, Surrey, United Kingdom
1 March 2012
melvynfernan...@virginmedia.com
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