Tongue-In-Cheek

Silent Wings

In a moment of temporary euphoria, one often sees corporate team leaders go 'Give them wings to fly' referring to the young turks that join their organisation. But don't let the conviction in this exclamation fool you, for it is more often than not uttered without genuine intention. In the hospitality industry, clipping the wings of new entrants - in particular industrial trainees - is now becoming legendary.

I say that not without proof. In my personal conversations with students of hotel management institutes, I have encountered many distressed souls. I stumbled upon some interesting feedback one day on how, many of these industrial trainees get treated. 'Slaves' is what comes close to the profile these students described to me. They are lucky if they are paid peanuts for a stipend.

I spoke to a student who did his industrial training at one of the leading Indian hotels near the international airport in Mumbai. He worked late nights and long hours, slept at stations, came back to work early morning to the same routine. He had to put in some 16 hours of work with no stipend! As if this was not enough, he had a very verbally profound senior who believed that industrial trainees were hands to make his work light.

Women get the shorter end of the stick. A young lady working at a well known hotel property in South Mumbai had to deal with seniors who thought that women must be hired purely to satisfy personal urges. When she told her senior off, he made her professional life unlivable and she finally decided to opt out.

While, I'm a strong believer of dignity of labour, there is a fine line between working hard and being treated like slaves. Of course, every new comer - in any industry - needs to go through the grind. But there are limits. I am almost certain that many such, or worse incidents, occur in many hotels across the country. The funny part of the 'Treatment of Industrial Trainee Issue', is that whenever I have tugged hospitality professionals with this topic, they turn into the 'saas' that Ekta Kapoor so finely portrays in her 'K' serials. They almost echo each other, "I have been through that too". So, does this mean that the ill-treatment meted out to them should be passed on to the new comers as well? Should we let the dominoes fall, one after the other? Many will agree with me when I say that the industry today is not what it used to be many years ago. The HR practices seem to be evolving the world over and dignity of labour is beginning to take precedence in the corporate world. But what stops the hotel industry from changing its attitude towards industrial trainees? Don't clip their wings just because they are silent.

Savio Rodrigues
ehc@vsnl.com