We care about you, but not too much

The relationship between an employer and an employee is like any other relationship. For example, if you went to your best friend and said, “Mate, I really need your help - I think somebody’s trying to kill me!” and they told you “Sorry, but we’ve only known each other for 7 months”, you probably wouldn’t be sending them a Christmas card.

Not many birthday cards, then, for Gordon Brown or David Miliband’s from our Iraqi employees. This post could get a bit long and I could get a bit ranty, so I’m just going to focus on the main points here:

1. An assistance package has been offered to some Iraqi employees, the nature of which is not clearly defined, but seems to be limited to financial assistance. That’s the positive part, but it goes downhill from there.
2. The package will only be available to staff “who have attained 12 months’ or more continuous service”. I’m not convinced that the militia that are targeting those working for the British government are using length of service as a criteria for selection, and the government should not either.
3. In addition, the statements make no mention of the families of these staff, who are equally at risk. The offer should be automatically extended to include any members of family that staff also believe to be at risk.
4. Staff are also able to apply for exceptional leave to enter the UK or to apply through the Gateway programme for resettlement in the UK. A number of people have pointed out that this is utter bullshit - essentially the government is saying that they can apply for refugee status, a right which they already have. The point is not simply to recognise their rights, but to act on them, and quickly.
5. Former and contracted (as opposed to directly hired) staff may be covered by this offer, but the government makes no commitments in this regard. Once again, I’m not sure that the militias will make this distinction - they tend to be quite inclusive in their death-dealing.

In order to have any impact, this offer needs to be made as widely as possible - the criteria of 12 months should be withdrawn, families should be included and all categories of staff eligible. Of course this sets a problematic precedent - should any future staff also be covered by this, and will that then lead to people applying for jobs solely in order to get out of the country? Luckily I don’t have to worry about stuff like that, because I’m not the one who’s got to implement the policy.

I’m glad that the government is acting on this, but they need to act quickly and comprehensively if this is going to have any impact. As well as the rumbling of the blogosphere, the meeting at Parliament apparently went very well, the Times has been carrying sterling coverage, the BBC has weighed in, the British Army Rumour Service are on it, and there’s a MySociety-style website called weoweittothem. Even the Heavy Metal community is involved, sort of.

I knew this post would go on longer than planned. You probably stopped reading about eight paragraphs ago, didn’t you? So I’m going to break this off and tell you what you can do in a separate post. After a slice of burek and a glass of yoghurt, of course.