The disquietude of justice

Kangaroo Court, Brookline, MA 1951 by P. Frederic Julian

On the island, going to court means putting your bling on. 

Big bling. Saucer-sized bling in the form of a medal on a wide red ribbon worn by those referred to in common parlance as 'lay judges", those fine upstanding citizens who are given the privilege of impersonating Christmas trees while sitting in on labor disputes at the local courthouse.

Elected by their peers every few years, these pillars of the local community are a representative sample of the local workforce. As such, they have a day job from which they are automatically excused whenever court duties arise.

That's when they don the bling – in this particular case gold for the man, silver for the lady – and go sit in the courthouse's tiny library to listen to the sordid tales of workplace woe of the little people.

Like me.

In which outsider dares question the status quo

On Thursday morning, I, the plaintiff, had the pleasure of gazing at large medals on chests during a little shindig known as a mediation hearing, a misnomer for a nauseating and awkward meeting during which Gold Medal impressed upon me in no uncertain terms that if I intended to stay on the island and find another job, I'd have the very unattractive "lawsuit label" permanently stuck to my forehead from now on.

It was therefore in my interest to drop the case sharpish, he hinted not so subtly every time he asked me what I wanted to do. A pattern quickly developed whereby I answered his question by requesting the case be sent to trial only to be asked again what my decision was a few minutes later. 

So I jazzed it up a little with variations on a theme.

     "Please send this to trial". 

     "Then this will need to go to trial". 

     "I'd like this case to go to trial please".

     "Given the situation we're in, this case might as well go to trial".

     "Yes, I would like this to go to trial, thank you". 

Inwardly, my brain was struggling to keep up with the absurdity of it all. I held the gaze of the medals and remembered to breathe, occasionally shooting a sideward glance to an increasingly sour-looking ex-employer.

When discussing one of the three major demands that make up my lawsuit, Silver Medal helpfully chimed in with something about the needs of the business. That we were all gathered at the request of an employee who strongly felt her needs, requirements and rights in the workplace had been either ignored or denied seemed to elude her altogether. 

I guess she probably hadn't read the file, seeing as she swanned into the courthouse no more than 10 minutes before the hearing, promptly disappeared into the registrar's office then just as promptly emerged bling in hand with Gold Medal in tow.

Then there was the moment when one of the medals even defended my ex-employer for not going to the Post Office and picking up the recorded delivery letter I had sent him to formally oppose my being forced to take time off until the end of my contract.

     "Businesses get busy and sometimes there is no time to get the mail", Gold or Silver said. 

I remained mum and numb.

Because on an island where there is no mailman and everyone has a PO box, the Post Office is by default a central part of our daily life. Like it or not, we all go there several times a week. What's more, we're intimately familiar with the workings of one of the few and therefore much-loved institutions that provides a lifeline to civilization. On an island the size of a postage stamp and with a Post Office that is open morning and afternoon from Monday to Friday, if you don't go pick up your mail, it's generally because you cannot be bothered to do so. 

Or perhaps because one of your relatives who happens to work there tells you who the sender of that recorded letter is (NB: this information is no longer available to recipients – the Postal Service wised up a few years ago as people used to refuse recorded mail all the time when they saw who it was from) so you judge it safer not to go to the counter to ask for it because if you do, you are legally obliged to accept it and sign for it.

So you let the letter sit behind the counter until the regulation fortnight expires and it is returned to the sender with "unclaimed" on the front.

Not to be outsmarted, I sent a copy of that same letter by regular mail a week later. I still didn't get a reply but at least I gave my correspondence a fair chance to get read.

In which outsider is seen as intellectually-challenged 

For comprehension and continuity's sake, let's backtrack a little. 

I came to this remote fleck of rock in the armpit of North America for a 6-month editorial project designed to put the emigration of one particular ethnic group in the context of history and write about those places and people that never get talked about.

Within three weeks of landing, my editor announced that the sinking news outlet I was attached to was struggling more than ever. Suddenly, there was no budget for the project anymore despite it having been previously commissioned. I was told to magic up some funding myself but not to worry as my copy would be given pride of place in the publication regardless.

In other words, would I work for free?

Politely, I told the editor to stick it. I also immediately relinquished my translation and copy editing responsibilities with said news outlet and promptly re-invented myself as a multilingual hospitality skivvy in order to cope with the eye-wateringly high cost of living on the island.

Locals oohed and aahed in admiration. "You've been here five minutes and you already have a job?", they said with a hint of annoyance.

Truth be told, I did briefly marvel at being hired. Then I reminded myself languages were a scarce commodity on this defiantly monolingual island, it was just a skivvy job on minimum wage and my employer couldn't care less about a resumé he never even asked for. 

But I was immensely grateful for the work that boasted an hourly rate double what the news outlet had forced me to accept. Most importantly, I was finally able to fill up the fridge.

It was high season, the company was short-staffed and overtime was plentiful so I worked as hard as I could. Whether mop in hand or making up fruit plates for breakfast, I often mused about self-funding my editorial project after the end of my contract, something overtime should hopefully make possible.

Then my August pay cheque arrived and overtime was nowhere to be found.

Confounded and curious, I made enquiries with the local government labor law enforcement agency and discovered this to be a serious legal violation among several others I didn't even suspect, having never worked in this country before. 

By working 10 to 12-hours daily without any weekly rest, I was crestfallen to hear that I unwittingly broke the law by exceeding the maximum working week, albeit with the encouragement and blessing of my employer who is therefore liable for any legal pursuits this could entail.

Then my September pay cheque arrived and again overtime – previous or current – was nowhere to be found.

Meanwhile I also discovered that the colleague on a permanent contract with whom I shared front desk duties earned about 650 USD more a month, which goes against the – admittedly controversial – national rule of "same job, same pay". 

That's when I finally understood that I had probably been hired precisely because I was an outsider, didn't have a clue and would therefore be extremely cost-effective with little to no risk of becoming a complainer. 

Plus I was very keen to work, obscenely overqualified and extremely professional. In short, quite the irresistible package.

Gold Medal said I couldn't contest an hourly rate I had previously agreed to and the ever-helpful Silver Medal argued that seniority explained why my colleague earned more, a fact I didn't dispute because I was too flabbergasted to remind her that yes, according to the local collective agreement applicable to this industry, it indeed does. 

To the tune of 3% maximum in this particular case. 

Much like her colleague who seems to have language comprehension issues, I suspect Silver Medal doesn't do numbers.

Finally, two weeks before my contract was due to finish, I was unceremoniously informed that my services would no longer be required as of 10:30am that morning and that I would spend the rest of my contract at home enjoying time off in lieu and paid leave. 

To celebrate the untimely end of our business relationship, my employer even kindly handed me a homemade printout that converted my overtime into time off, conveniently overlooking the fact that overtime is always worth more than regular hours, 1.25 and 1.50 times more to be precise, again as dictated by that cumbersome component of democracy otherwise known as the Labor Code.

In which outsiders and islanders are not equal in the eyes of... oh, never mind

Going back to the mediation hearing, what happened in that room was barefaced intimidation from the very people who are elected to represent the law and therefore duty-bound to impartiality. In short, the people in whom I had placed my trust.

Those being the very same people who warmly shook my ex-employer's hand before the hearing - but not mine - and also neglected to introduce themselves to me. 

While it is mostly true that islanders all know one another, outsiders like me seldom have much of a clue about who's who or how folks might be related. Sometimes, it's probably best not to know.

We also tend to assume the common courtesy we extend to our interlocutors will be extended back to us. 

Alas, out of the five people – two lay judges, my ex-employer, the court registrar and I – who took part in Thursday's mediation hearing, three overtly dismissed the case as a flight of fancy from a self-important outsider who wanted to make a quick buck. 

What they failed to understand – again because I suspect they had glanced at the file rather than actually read it – was that filing a civil action lawsuit against my ex-employer was the very last resort after he chose to ignore my requests to sort out my irregular situation. Those requests were recently reiterated on my behalf by the labor law enforcement agency in an official government-sealed letter that quoted the relevant articles of the Labor Code that had been violated as well as the possible sanctions.

The above is now a separate case and a potential criminal lawsuit opposing the labor law enforcement agency to my ex-employer.

>> On an island where most of those employed in low-paid jobs have no qualifications and suffer in silence because they dread being seen as unemployable if they complain, I'm bucking the trend by forcing the law to take notice. 

After what happened on Thursday, I have no doubt I am now being perceived as a threat to the local workplace ecosystem because I dare question tacitly condoned practices that seem as deeply-ingrained in the local way of doing business as they are illegal. 

The case goes to trial on Jan 17 in front of not two but four medals.

Bling, bling, bling, bling.