I work for a Saudi company. They failed to pay the General Office of Social Insurance (GOSI, pronounced ‘Goose-y’). GOSI froze their accounts. As a result I have not been paid for three weeks.
For me it is no real hardship, but I have been taking the Filipinos to grocery store for the past few weekends.
The Boss has said (in an all-hands memeo) that it was the company’s fault. Once his memo came out it was followed by another telling us to destroy the first one!
The maintenance people staged a drink-coffee-in on Wednesday. The Boss threatened to dock them a day’s pay. Giggling resulted. The base 2IC came by and asked them to go back to work. They did, but I would rather not fly on their planes for a while.
<shrug> Mr. Athena contracts with an honest-to-God real life American company (and a BIG one at that) and we haven’t gotten a check in about 6 weeks now. I think the longest we’ve gone is close to three months without a paycheck. After that happened, we set up a line of credit where we can withdraw money to cover expenses for the months when Big Company decides that it can’t be bothered to write checks.
What ever you do, don’t destroy that first letter!
I can’t believe that you’re continuing to work without pay. I can understand not wanting to lose your job. Maybe for benefits or whatever. But for most people, a job means that you’re actually getting paid, sometimes just to get by and feed yourself. At that point (if someone is living paycheck to paycheck), it’s time to move on, I would think.
Paul, my personal code of ethics says I stop work at the first missed or bounced paycheck and do not resume work until I am paid in full. I have been in your position several times in my life, as I was a starving artist for many years after college and I worked at shady, shit jobs for just enough money to pay the rent and replace my bass strings. I have in times past continued working even though I wasn’t being paid because I wanted to “be nice” to my employers. It never, ever came out well. Not once. I have had many hours of my labor stolen from me by employers, and it will never, ever happen again. And if the shoe were on the other foot, if an employer didn’t think he was getting his money’s worth out of your labor, he would fire you in an instant. Well, you’re not getting your money’s worth out of him. As my more capitalist friends take great pains to remind me, the employer-employee relationship is a business relationship. That cuts both ways. You are contracted to deliver labor, and they are contracted to pay you a set amount on a set date. If the payment does not arrive, you should stop delivery of your labor. Are you able to take goods from a store without paying for them, or is that a crime? Then why are you letting an employer take your labor from you without paying for it?
Stop work now, tell them why you have stopped work, await payment, and prepare to take legal action. This is the way business works.
Also, Paul may not have another company there to jump to. If his options are continuing on in hope of things resuming, and leaving the country, I can see his point.
Howabout elsewhere in the Gulf, Paul? Maybe the UAE? Seems from my only partially informed background it would be slightly more comfortable. Is it harder to find comparable work at comparable wages or are there other intangibles that make SA attractive?
Personally I think if I were going to get a job in the ME/NA I’d prefer some place like Morocco, but obviously the petro-dollars don’t flow as readily out that way :).
[quote=Paul]
All in all, I like working in Saudi Arabia. I do not want to go back to the US. I hate taxes that much.So you would rather live in an Islamic totalitarian state where 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were born than in America becaue you don’t want to pay taxes?
BWA HA HA! No, he’d rather live there than in a Christian-fundamentalist oligarchy where all of the Oklahoma City bombers, 7 of the 8 people who have assassinated a President, and hundreds of thousands of citizens who seceded from the Union and ended up killing hundreds of thousands more Americans were born.
See? See what I did there with slanted language? Cracks me up!
I’m an American, and I work for a graphic design company. I’ve been working there for a month and a half as a salesperson. I’ve closed a few sales and gone to several meetings (my hours are not set in stone), but I have received no paycheck. I have not received a timesheet to fill out, even. My employer hasn’t even bothered getting in contact with me for more than a week now. I’ve had to call her before to remind her to get in touch with me regularly.
Anyway, although my employer is a very nice person and I like her, I think I’m going to resign. I don’t have time to do a job I don’t get paid for.
I don’t like taxes either, but to leave the country just because of taxes (assuming you’re from America)? Or did you also go there because you like the culture, area?
