The Good, the Bad, the Ugly -- ELT Contract-Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Pros
The Good -- Decent salary; company pays on time. In all fairness, salaries in the Kingdom these days don't get much better.
Cons
The Bad -- 1- Picking up on Salary... it is frozen; there will never be an opportunity for an annual raise, merit raise, spot award, or bonus. $50K for six months and then a bump to $55K is what can be expected -- ever. 2- Housing... shared housing is the policy, but there are some 20 single apartments available and almost never come open. In fact because housing is not equal (1, 2, 3-Bedroom flats) and assignments are made solely based on availability, social issues among employees arise frequently. The contract as a whole is a pressure cooker -- 70-some men on single status, layered into one apartment complex on the north side of the compound (outside the old compound perimeter), working in the same buildings on base throughout the workday, sharing Recreation & Sports Facilities and compound restaurant -- the scene varies between monastery and prison block-duty. 3- No contractual vacation time. An employee has to schedule his vacation around a 6-week break at Ramadan (constantly shifting ten days each year) and two weeks at Hajj. Leaving the Kingdom during an authorized break results in a 25% pay reduction on the post-differential for the time outside KSA. 4- The contract is associated with a US Government Foreign Military Sale and so is supposed to be an "American" English Language Training program, yet half of the staff are UK nationals, with 3-4 odds and ends from other countries (non-native speakers). The company is litigation aware and prefers to hire non-American in the hope that such nationals will not initiate or pursue litigation against the company in the US. 4- The Company is non-responsive and has no HR representation for the contract in Saudi Arabia, relying on a "partner" US company, commercially registered in the Kingdom, to deal with the day-in/day-out. This largely works but was never totally satisfactory. BlueForce chooses to micromanage the contract as a ghost entity, rather than commit a trained and qualified HR professional to the contract. 5- BlueForce was a "lucky winner" in the award of this contract, three times over. The company knows nothing about English Language Training and little more about Saudi Arabia, the culture and the religion. It is a kind of sustained willful ignorance, in favor of the bottom line. The Ugly -- any charges of "racism" are unfounded. Any vestiges of racism could be traced back to the employees who claimed it.
