What are people’s thoughts?
I’ve a few observations as an outsider having stayed across the Maltese islands. It was very clear & a little surprising to me how so many hospitality venues appear to be kept going by migrant labour. I’m from an English speaking country where we also have a similar theme, although certainly not as apparent as in Malta.
As much as the workers were lovely and provided good service throughout, their standard of English wasn’t massively high in a lot of cases. Things were misunderstood in a lot of the places we frequented. I am led to believe there is a standard of English that the guest workers must have in order to live & work in Malta, so it got me thinking as to whether those with higher standards of English are the ones working in the UK, Canada, Australia etc. Wages in hospitality also appear to be rather low in Malta relative to those places, so maybe this also has its impact.
I was also of the perspective that many of these workers are very new in your country & I didn’t get the impression many are properly integrated yet. Does that hold true?
The politician going on record towards the back end of the article draws on a point I had wrestled with myself recently, insofar as having that balance between championing Maltese culture but also being an open place that welcomes the labour.
On a personal note, I can truly understand why the Maltese may be frustrated with certain developments in the country as of late. I know there has been concern in relation to corruption over there for example, but I’d suggest that Malta has seemingly dodged any backlash from that (so far) from an international perspective (fair play to be honest). With that in mind, the visitor numbers are only going to get higher, at which point the demand on services among other things are also going to keep increasing. A lot of this is making the Maltese wealthier (directly and indirectly to varying degrees), so what does the future look like for Malta regarding demography & industrial strategy?
https://timesofmalta.com/article/hospitality-stakeholders-urge-acceptance-integration-noneu-workers.1118740
Posted by Western_Respond6047
7 Comments
The MHRA really rests on these “no option” scenarios. The truth is that the industry is extremely exploitative. A lot of smaller hotels choose to blind themselves to the true nature of the exploitation by outsourcing their hiring.
So, basically, a small boutique hotel in Valletta isn’t going to bring someone over and hang on to their passport and threaten them with deportation should they ever complain about work conditions. They just outsource their cleaners from a company that does just that.
When I was younger I worked in a hotel. The pay was shit but it was our first job and we got good tips. Of course, the hotel had the hassle of recruiting every year, and if course young people are spirited so they had to reign us in a lot.
I would imagine they don’t do this any more because it is easier to hold a foreigner hostage to his residency permit. This last bit, I dunno, not sure if it’s true but it is what I suspect. Like you, I cannot imagine why hotels and restaurants don’t hire well educated teenagers any more. I don’t believe that teenagers don’t want to work. I think foreigners are just easier.
It took them at least 10 years to understand it. Maltese kids are too spoiled to serve other people. And Maltese owners are not willing to pay proper salaries, they need blackmailable slaves and they found them.
The enshitification of Malta continues.
‘We all own businesses that exploit poor migrant labour. We would like you to deal with the overpopulation, damage to social cohesion, the rise of racism, higher rents etc.
Meanwhile we’ll get more money charging higher prices for a worse service’
People wonder why we keep attracting higher numbers of ‘low quality’ tourism, its because the only reason most people come to malta is to see and interact with malta. Not a bargain budget Qatar. Everytime I’m on a plane I hear “Was OK, wouldn’t go back there though”
Bet none of these fuckers live in my area
Tldr; I dont want to give livable respectful wages so I fill my pockets by hiring Indians at minimum wage or lower who are ok with this because they live 6 people per apartment and have no family while spending the least they can and sending the money generated here to India, contributing minimally to the Maltese economy.
Tldr2; Hilton exploits workers to make money.
The problem started when we chased number or tourists instead of quality of tourists.
The economy started to gear towards more hotels, Airbnb’s and boutique hotels.
Funding these projects needs the promise of increased profitability.
The profitability comes from paying low salaries.
Then comes the salary-expenses loop:
Locals don’t want low salaries, so we need to bring foreign workers.
More foreign workers means higher demand in property, and more competitive job market.
Higher demand in property means that locals want even higher salaries.
And for the hotel owners:
We invested in these projects because you wanted to grow the economy. Now you must do as we say.
The solution is simple – kick out 50% of the foreign workers. salaries will go back up, some of the unsustainable hotels need to close down and finally Maltese people will want to work in service jobs again.
As a result our tourism product will improve because tourists WANT to be served by Maltese people. They don’t want to be served by a TCN who is trying to make ends meet.
As a result the government won’t need to employ low skilled people to just give them a living wage and these people will return to normal decently paid work. Government expenditure will go down.
As a result the property market will cool down and people will stop buying houses to turn into “boutique hotels” and Airbnb’s.
As a result the young people who actually LIKE working in the service industry can have a future ahead of them instead of being forced into igaming customer service jobs just to have a chance at getting ahead.
We are good at tourism and service work. Remember when British tourists used to praise us for being hospitable? These days they come and find TCNs who can’t speak a word of English.
The locals who are meant to be working these jobs are either struggling or working some bullshit government job which is a politician’s “favour”.
Malta doesn’t have the size to become a tourist destination which appeals to everyone, nor does it have the people and the workers. Tourism needs to be CAPPED and high value.
Visiting Malta should be a beautiful expensive holiday for richer people, not your chav who is coming here to get high at a rave. Or it should be a destination where you come spend months learning something (like English, remember that?) in a tourism-learning setup.
We lost any strategic thinking in tourism long ago. The formula is simple – length of stay, spend per day.
Tourists with higher spend and higher length of stay should be preferred.
Completely reset the economy and remove the cancer which is low quality tourism.
My reaction? I don’t care what the MHRA has to say. They are the problem because they are a bunch of greedy uncreative leeches.
An economy which is over reliant on shitty tourism is the source of ALL of Malta’s problems.
What happened to the “authenticity” buzz word?
Nothing is more authentic than having TCNs working as waiters in a restaurant serving Maltese food, who barely know a word in Maltese or anything about the food they are serving.
It’s not only the third country nationals who speak poor English. A lot of locals speak poor and broken English as well, despite English being an official language. I would say the average English proficiency level in the country is B2.