Thread by @Ash_Stewart_

Friend in Dubai recently lost his job due to having mental health issues. A deplorable reason - but this kind of thing happens often because employees have little rights.

I wish this was spoken about. But also, when it happened to me, I was quiet

Want to rectify that now (🧵)

I was fired in the middle of the pandemic without warning, without reason, from The National. They were advertising 45 other jobs at the time.

A week or so earlier, I'd tweeted a story a colleague had written on delivery drivers being treated poorly in the UAE. I'd said...

...that we needed to treat these people better. That, like the story said, hosing the ground with water so they couldn't sit down etc and yelling at them to move was a horrible way to treat people. This was a great story and was highlighting a hugely important issue.

People were saying they would keep water & snacks by the door for the drivers now. It was really nice. Anywho, The Nat deleted the story soon after because it was getting too many hits & someone from the govt had complained. I was called by senior management to delete the tweet.

I did so, after much deliberation. There was a pandemic and I didn't want to get fired over a tweet?!

And then I got fired over a tweet.

Not a clue really what happened in the days after. I'd been asking the Editor in Chief for a catch up, she scheduled it finally for a few days after tweetgate. Subject line: "Catch up"

An hour before that meeting, it was changed to an HR meeting & I got fired. EIC didn't show up

My line manager was informed 5 minutes before the meeting that they were firing me. They didn't have a reason, they just said 'It's not working'. When the EIC finally agreed to speak to me in the aftermath, she made a small admission that...

... an Emirati thought I must have been insulting them when I said "we all" need to do better. Anywho, there I was out on my ass in the middle of a pandemic. Asked for legal advice & was told yes that is HORRIBLE & illegal anywhere else but also there was nothing to be done

The thing about the UAE is that even if I took The Nat to court over that, I would be liable for all court costs, even if I won. And the max I could walk away with is three months' pay. Which is way less than I'd have to pay in court costs etc.

It means people in the same situation as me have no choice but to be fired and do nothing about it. Also, The Nat silenced me by writing it into my end of service agreement with my final pay, that I would never speak about this on social media. Which perpetuates the cycle

Still have many great friends who work at The National. But it's a real shame that the management continues to act in such dodgy ways. Also, waiting for someone to say 'but you should have known all this being employed by state-owned media in a media censored country.'

Which is definitely true. But The Nat had such high aspirations to be better and more balanced after its relaunch. We all really believed it would be. That was, ahem, not quite the case. But I'm not here to drag them through the mud for being biased so I won't go into details.

Rant over. I never spoke up about this because I was told it would make me unemployable. That future employers might blacklist me. But nah, screw that. If future employers want to enable wrongdoing by allowing this behaviour to go unchecked, then I don't want to work for them

I just hope that others speak up if a similar situation happens to them. Companies in the UAE often (not always!) rely on the fact that employees are too afraid to speak up, because they should be thankful to even have a job in this tax-free party haven (a country I do love btw)

But I do really believe the country is trying to be more liberal and do better by its citizens. But some (definitely not all) bad apple companies are letting them down. So speak up, and talk about the wrongdoing. The cycle needs to be broken.

And if anyone is in a similar situation - please please feel free to ask me anything! I don't know much, but I learnt a little bit on that journey and anything I gleaned I would be happy to share.

Also, I can't believe I have to keep saying this, but this is NOT a slight against the UAE. I love that country and I loved working there. This is a comment on some companies that operate there - the same can be said for any country in the world.

I've carried this around with me for a year. But watching it happen time and time again to other people, it made me feel awful that I hadn't spoken about it openly. And eventually, you crack.

And here, my friends, is part of the problem:

https://twitter.com/sharkyuae/status/1455866603514613765?s=20

Oh! And, for 100% transparency, in the end I fought with them until they paid me three months' pay - which is the max amount you can get in the UAE for a 'redundancy' - which is what they ended up calling it. I think it helps them sleep at night. I still say I got fired.