Damian Reilly joins the rest of the planet in watching the transfer saga of Christiano Ronaldo and wonders how any employer can hope to keep hold of their best staff if Manchester United can't
By the time you read this, perhaps, the story that has gripped the world, every man, woman and child, may at last have been resolved. Yes, we will all know soon enough whether Christiano Ronaldo, erstwhile show pony turned prodigiously gifted footballer, is to swap the red shirt of Manchester United for the gleaming white shirt of Real Madrid.
How Manchester United must wish UAE labour law existed in the strange parallel universe of top tier professional football. If it did, and provided Old Trafford did not fall within the confines of a 'freezone', presumably the Red Devils would have not only the luxury of threatening Ronaldo with legal action for breach of contract should his dream move to the Bernabeu take place without their consent, but the additional and not insignificant threat of slapping a six month labour ban on him. "How do you like those apples?" it is not easy to imagine Sir Alex Ferguson inquiring of the best player in the world.
Even should Ronaldo then manage to wriggle free from the clutches of Mancunian employment, his manager, a Scottish peer of the realm, could then proceed to make it as difficult as is humanly possible for the Portuguese maestro to retrieve his passport from the club's safe, thereafter to transfer his visa to Real Madrid's sponsorship.
Yes, a dose of UAE labour law sounds like exactly what is needed to pour cold water on the giddy merry-go-round of European football.
The footballer's life is a funny one, God knows, but the wrangling over contracts that seem entirely one-sided when push comes to shove, weighted only in the favour of the professional ball-kicker, must be one of its most risible aspects. Every season we hear of such and such a player opening negotiations with his respective club to agree terms on renewing a contract. Only last year, Ronaldo put his name on a dotted line beneath a supposedly legally binding agreement to commit to kicking a ball around with his friends on behalf of Manchester United for five years.
For doing so, the contract stipulated, he would be paid in the region of £120,000, or AED900,000, every seven days. But now Real Madrid want him to kick a ball around for them, and are prepared to pay him, depending upon which newspaper you've been following this fantastical tale in, in the region of AED1.25 million, each week, after tax. Will Ronaldo be able to make the move? Legal experts sounded out by Commerce say it will be virtually impossible for Manchester United to stop him if his heart is absolutely set on doing so. Contract be damned.
But how the heart will go out to him should he be prevented from doing so. Poor soul, he, trapped in Manchester earning over twelve million dollars a year. Do you hear that? That mournful sound? It must be an orchestra of the world's smallest violins.
But it makes you think... so many CEO's Commerce encounters bemoan the difficulty of retaining skilled personnel they have recruited to the region from overseas. If you believe them, there is a personnel war raging in the Gulf. If the champions of European football, and one of the richest clubs in the world, can't keep hold of their most prized asset, then what hope the rest of us, even if we do have the loyalty inducing vagaries of UAE Labour law on our side?
Recruitment in the UAE continues to be a major problem one that seems to be being addressed slowly but surely. Trying to attract very skilled professionals to the region across all sectors has long been an uphill struggle, despite the tax-free benefits. But now that Western economies are entering a period of what looks very much like a meltdown, the lure of the Middle East has become more powerful. On a recent trip to London, the people this observer spoke to seemed to a man to know at least one person in the throes of packing a suitcase to start a new life in the Gulf. Where once Europeans looked to Hong Kong and Singapore and Australia as destinations to the east in which to settle for a few years, more and more now Dubai, Abu Dhabi and, very recently, Qatar, crop up in conversation as viable destinations.
A few months ago, Commerce interviewed the regional head of a major UAE hotel chain. He talked animatedly about how difficult retaining staff had become, from managers to bellboys. When asked what he was doing about it, to prevent staff from walking out to join rivals, his answer was surprising, to say the least.
"We're giving them a higher percentage of their tips," was what he said, into Commerce's tape recorder, referring to waiters and waitresses and valets. So, we asked, they don't get all of the tip that a customer intends them to get? "Err, no," he replied.
What then, we enquired, does your hotel chain use the rest of the tip for? At this, he looked flustered. "We use it for related costs. Accommodation, transport, that sort of thing."
Let us get this straight you pay for the cost of housing and transporting your staff with voluntary donations from customers, intended as a reward for good service?
"Err, yes," came the reply.
This shameful practice is a scandal. When a customer leaves an additional tip service charge, call it what you will for a waiter, for example, he is doing so above and beyond the contract he has with the establishment in which he has dined. That contract stipulates he should pay for the food and drink he has consumed. The tip is a reward, given by the patron to the person who has served him, for doing so well. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the hotel or restaurant. For the hotel or restaurant to subsequently take this money from its intended recipient seems an awful lot like a crime which is very heavily frowned upon all over the world, and for which the punishment in this part of the world is especially severe.
Commerce then recommends that any hotel chain wishing to poach the region's brightest and best workers in the hospitality industry take the by no means revolutionary step of allowing staff that have earned a tip through hard work, to keep it in its entirety. This, surely, is the only decent and defensible policy to take.
And, further, Commerce would strongly suggest to readers for whom eating out is a commonplace experience, to make sure that all service charges that are added automatically to the bill are struck off, and then paid instead in cash directly to the waiter or waitress, only after it has been established that the intended recipient will be allowed to keep it. Doing so should make the food you eat in the UAE's opulent hotels taste all the sweeter.
The UK intelligence service said this in June: "We believe terrorists may be planning to carry out attacks in the UAE. Attacks could be indiscriminate and could happen at any time, including places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers such as residential compounds, military, oil, transport and aviation interests."
Subsequently, they raised from 'general' to 'high' their official prediction of the probability of an attack in the UAE.
Why?
The Gulf News carried stories about how plucky expats in the region would not let this grim news affect their day to day activities. It would take a lot more than the threat of mutilation or death to prevent them frequenting nightclubs or restaurants, was the gist.
This observer, from beneath his bed, wearing a tinfoil hat, has taken the news a little less stoically. It is the lack of supplementary information that is so troubling. To be told that the threat of something so awful hangs over us is bad enough, but to not be told on what information this belief has been arrived at, is worse.
Anyway, perhaps it is not as bad it sounds. As one Arab friend said with a shrug of his shoulders: "British intelligence? Ha. These days, isn't that a contradiction in terms?"
© Commerce 2008
