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Harry Vassallo, forgets public politics and focuses on the tribulations of private struggles. What he sees is not heart warming
Anna cried on the phone. I ignored it. No, I pretended that I hadn’t noticed because she was trying to hide it. She had called to pour her heart out about her misery at work. Perhaps I could do something about it. Perhaps I could not. I could listen.
She was depressed and she had a right to be. She was not just bitching about a colleague. She was bursting with misery. Separated and bringing up a child as a single parent, she had gone back to government service as soon as she felt it was fair to her boy.
She had given her child three years of care and had been obliged to resign from her government job. On her return she found that her ten years’ service now counted for nothing in establishing her seniority. She had to pull strings to end a stint as a casual employee and find her way back to permanent staff status.
Trying every means to improve her income, she had followed courses at university and elsewhere. Still the promised call for Executive Officers in her department never came. She had been through hell and high water to make the grade.
The boss in her little island of government power runs the place like an autocrat. His immediate subordinate is neutralised by being allowed to double his salary through overtime. Further down the pecking order no overtime is allowed. His favourites are put on the fast-track with or without qualifications. Posts are created, interviews are held but the result is a foregone conclusion.
Anna is not a violent person. She will not strangle her boss. She goes home and cries when her child is not watching. She feels let down by her union and does not have the energy to embark on a lone crusade against the system. Feeling vulnerable as it is, she has no stomach for calling in the Ombudsman. As it is, she is passed over for promotion. She does not want to become a pariah. She wants to avoid the abyss.
Most people try not to be noticed. It is a major virtue for a civil servant not to let on whether one has political loyalties at all. Some people believe that it should be enough that one does one’s job well. They never develop the contacts, the skills to weave and dodge as necessary rachetting ever higher up the ladder.
Anna does not have the time. It would be different if she had managed to make herself popular in her village. A little local prominence improves one’s CV significantly. Who cares how hard you do not work if you can sway your village band club? Accounts may baffle you but you can head the accounts department if there is a sack of voting preferences to be directed at a rise of your eyebrows.
She would have done better if she had been born a male. There would have been more opportunities to socialise and build up political clout. In her village she is a housewife with a hurdle. In the political scales she is a featherweight. In Malta’s third millennium feudal system, she is a serf. At work she can be ignored. Her tears are never seen or heard.
She has a right to weep. With the reform of the civil service as planned, her boss will go from king to demigod. The girls with blouses two sizes too small for their wonderbras and no ‘O’ levels will have all the promotions they like. Anna has a flat landscape before her stretching all the way to retirement. Now the hire and fire options to be granted to her boss will make her life a further trial without improving efficiency one little bit.
I wanted to tell her to spit in her boss’ eye and get another job. Hang government service, seniority and the petty tyrannies of petty minds. There are private firms looking for people with her skills and qualifications. Leave it all behind. Shake the dust from your sandals Anna. Learn to fly.
It would not have done any good. She was not ready for rebellion. She felt that she was in no position to take risks. I have no idea what her family safety net is like, but my guess is that it is nothing impressive. With a young child to worry about, unemployment must be a nightmare she cannot contemplate. She feels imprisoned and her prison is real to her. She seems to have seen enough trouble already. How would I help if it went wrong?
Anna asked me to write this. It is all she asked. Perhaps she’ll call again and tell me that she has been to a few job interviews and looks like she will be gaining her freedom someday soon. I hope she swims in money. I hope she never forgets where she has been.
I hope that she never forgets her desire to change the system. I hope that she never gives up hope that it can be changed. Perhaps her boss will read this and take another look at his staff. Perhaps some other boss will do so. Perhaps there will be other Annas who can channel their experience of injustice into a will to change the system. They are a power or they will be when they realise they are.
Dr Vassallo is Chairperson of Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party
www.alternattiva.org.mt
harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt
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