By Jamie Elliott
I’m definitely feeling up-beat about the Brick Lane project – the one that’s trying to help waiters stuck in dead end cash-in-hand jobs in Bangladeshi restaurants on that famous east London street. (See previous blog posts)
Last Monday we had a meeting at the Bangladesh British Chamber of Commerce (BBCC) where for the first time plans for English classes for waiters felt really concrete. Tower Hamlets Council has recruited English teachers, including a Bengali speaking tutor, and fixed a date for them to start. The BBCC is also hosting a dinner for the partners to meet restaurant business leaders where its chairman is going to ask restaurants to provide a minimum number of staff to take part in classes and encourage owners to offer staff time off in lieu for the time they spend learning English.
There is a ‘but’ though. The enthusiasm for English classes is almost in inverse proportion to enthusiasm for tackling the problems of low pay and informal working. Many of these waiters are working for much less than the minimum wage – as little as £3.00 per hour – as our “Waiting for Change” research report showed (download a copy here). Many get no holiday and don’t even benefit from cash tips left by customers. They work six days a week – 65 hours over split shifts – leaving them little time for anything else.
There is a reluctance amongst all the partners to really address these tougher minimum wage / working conditions issues. Yes, English classes will help. It’s a first step and maybe this issue needs to be addressed at the beginning, which can then be the stepping stone to further activity in the near future. We know that trust is key to making change happen, and this takes time to develop. But it’s frustrating that things are happening at a slow pace particularly with the businesses who – to a large degree – are breaking the law and ripping of their workforce. We must continue to persuade them with the ‘carrot’ of business support to develop and improve their business practices, and maybe use the ’stick’ of the enforcement agencies to ensure they comply with employment law
