IN THE INTERIM—More Blacklisting in Kuwait Abounded
Since I couldn’t afford a lawyer to force GUST to either higher me back or pay me off—as other employees who speak Arabic have done in the past--, I simply got a new job.
I subsequently found worked elsewhere in Kuwait. However, one year later--after I published this research on wasta in Kuwait, on Op-Ed News last summerhttp://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_kevin_an_070711_sustainability_2c_kuwa.htm, I began almost immediately to get pressure in Kuwait (at an unbelievable level) from many unseen sources, but often stemming from the family of investors, who own GULF UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY in KUWAIT.
First, in late November 2007, my full-time job teaching at an Oil Company was also ended in a lay off—alongside a group of other 45 year olds.
Next, in early December 2008, the American University of Kuwait (AUK), for whom I had been planning to teach part-time starting in 2008, sent me an e-mail stating that I would not be teaching with them.
Subsequently, in January 2008, my new boss in a part-time position of mine at AMIDEAST in Kuwait picked a fight—or what appeared in retrospect to have been an unfair and a staged fight with me—and dismissed me. On the way out the door, he shouted loudly at me how certain unknown voices emanating from Gulf University of Science and Technology were spreading terrible and untrue rumors about me. He threatened, “Your reputation (from GUST) precedes you.”
I responded to this blackballing by first meeting with that American NGO’s (AMIDEAST) head in Kuwait about the unfair and clearly illegal sudden dismissal from my part-time teaching load.
This director for AMIDEAST Kuwait agreed in our meeting that her employee had behaved unseemly and inappropriately. She also agreed to tell her employees to stop spreading rumors about me based on innuendos from unknown peoples at Gulf University.
Next, I met with the Vice Chancellor at Gulf University of Science and Technology and asked that he send the word out to Human Resources and elsewhere at GUST to cease and desist from harassing me at my new work locations and stop stating false things about me whenever some employer calls to ask about me.
Then, in April, I signed a lucrative teaching contract for one of the private schools in Sabah Salim.
So, I was relieved to think that the familial blacklisting by Kuwaiti (crony monopolies) of my good name had ended in Kuwait.
ONCE AGAIN BEING BLACKLISTED
Suddenly at the end of this very May 2008, I was suddenly called to the school in Sabah Salim where I was readying to teach starting in August.
That day, I was told that this very new school of mine had received orders from their own parent company, known as IPE, which owned 12 other schools in the Middle East region. In the memorandum, that school in Sabah Salim and all the other IPE schools were not any longer allowed to hire any teachers whom had formerly worked at Gulf University of Science and Technology in Kuwait.
It is not clear how, when, nor why this new deal was made between IPE and GUST.
However, this time I was surely not the only prospective teacher in a bind by IPE’s new rule. This is because several other former teachers at GUST were being blacklisted as well from working with any IPE schools anywhere.
