Friday 18 September 2009

Why Give a Cleaner's Job to Someone Unqualified to Work Here?

The more interesting question about the Attorney General's employment of a cleaner unqualified to work in the United Kingdom is why she was given the job. It is an absolute offence for an employer not to inspect and keep copies of documentation that validates a non-European Union citizen taking up employment in the UK. So why was she, reported to have been found from an advertisement on the internet, given a job for which there are plentiful valid candidates?

The 'one law for us and another for New Labour ministers' doesn't really cover it. After the red hot chili pepper cleaner and the immigration judges any public servant might have been expected to check carefully that the work statuses of their domestic assistants were in order.

5 comments:

Weekend Yachtsman said...

I suggest either (1) she was recommended by someone else as honest and reliable or (2) she was very cheap.

Casual help isn't seen by most people as "employing" someone.

Do you check the documentation status of your window cleaner?

hatfield girl said...

In our house there is all sorts of stuff lying about (too much, I once came back from Berlin and found it had got out of Mr HG's study, crossed the dining room and taken over the kitchen table while making a start on the work surfaces). I'm sure the attorney general has highly confidential stuff at home.

I clean the windows, WY, though last time I checked my documentation status it was fine (5 euro ID card signed by the mayor across the street, fine, passport, properly in date and properly stamped). Being one of the old syle feminists - not the personal is political, touchy feely kind but the clean up after yourself and clean your own house kind, getting that done cheaply because you can, really is exploitation, and usually of other women, - I only employ people to drive the tractor and use the chain saws, I'm unqualified to even think of doing that.

And Scotland's reaction to the cleaner being without proper documents was to sack her. I didn't like that at all. Not 'You'll have to be suspended until you can regularise your position, if possible'; not 'In my job I can'r offer assistance but there are probably avenues to explore, come back when and if you get it straightened out'. Instantly dismissed, liked washing her nasty hands of something that might darken her image.

gyges said...

Are you suggesting some sort of Calamity?

Botogol said...

I think 'one law for the little people, another for us' explains it quite adequately.

Carter said...

The new liberal elite don't like to employ English servants. They cost too much and are troubling to the conscience. One might even have to speak to them occasionally .... some dull small talk about football perhaps, or tiresome chatter about babies. Far too much bother.