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Underpaid, under-worked, and over here


Paulina will be awarded her doctorate in July. In the UK from Poland for a holiday in Somerset, she’s bored sitting about in her family’s home so she’s signed up with an agency for some temporary work. I met her and Nora before a charity function where I’m waiting to interview some of the guests. Paulina’s PhD is in chemical engineering and she tells me there will be work for her, in some country, but maybe not in Poland where her fiancé is living. She is rueful, “Germany perhaps, but then I won’t see him.” She is resigned to living where she finds work, and missing her loved ones.

A guy dressed in kitchen wear comes out and says, “There are Russian jets in our air space, and they’ve got ships in our territorial waters, off Scotland .. and they won’t leave." When he gets no response from this cheery piece of news, he disappears back through the swing doors. The barmaid leans forward and yells into the room, to no-one in particular, “We’re going to war, and I don’t give a shit!” Two to three inches of black roots have grown out into her bleached blonde hair. When she gets no response, she shouts it again, with added emphasis, then turns back to her work, sliding glasses around the shelves.

Nora is an ex-break dancer and gymnast. Now 32 and invalided out of sports, she’s been working in logistics as an office manager at home in Hungary. Both Paulina and Nora speak several languages yet here they are, in a down-at-heel venue in Somerset waiting to start an evening’s work running about with plates. Nora wants to work in the UK for a while, yet all she has been offered since arriving two months ago is factory work, and catering jobs. “In the factory,” she tells me, “They were all Polish people, with poor English.” She is frustrated; wants to use her skills. Her brother is already here, working in Dorset. "If I get nothing in the next two months, I'll return to my capital city, but I prefer to be in the countryside," she says. The guests arrive and the girls are called away to the kitchen.

When I get home there is nothing on the evening news about any threat to Scotland. The local barmaid was wise not to give a shoot; somehow trusting that our diplomats would resolve the issue. However, in town the next morning, chatting to a local builder, when I mention Paulina’s and Nora’s talents being wasted in menial catering jobs when we could use their skills and training to boost UK businesses, he says, “That’s why I’m voting UKIP, because they’re taking jobs that local people could do.” Europeans are no threat; these minimum wage local jobs are humiliating and hard, but they take them anyway because they want to work. Keen, great attitude, adaptable: every employer’s dream? Apparently not. I’m not sure what any Russians may want to do just off Scotland; it’s a pity about our xenophobia; they’ll never be accepted.
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