TOMORROW, President Obama and the First Family will arrive at Martha’s Vineyard, joining the great and the good on this tolerant, ethnically and racially diverse playground of the rich and not so famous off the Massachusetts coast.
UCC students James Linehan and Barry Donovan expected they’d catch a glimpse of the most powerful man in the world, as they were working on the Vineyard. But they returned to Cork a couple of weeks ago, disillusioned and considerably poorer.
In doing so, they and a law student from Portobello College in Dublin, Killian O’Hara, have cast an unflattering light on the unmentioned, exploitive side of the transient, tourist-driven economy of the island.
Linehan and Donovan were among two dozen students from Irish universities who obtained J1 visas and signed up to work for the summer at the Boathouse, an exclusive club overlooking picturesque Edgartown harbour.
Scott Anderson, general manager of the Boathouse, recruited Irish students to fill out his staff, who cater to a well-heeled clientele that pay more than $6,000 (€4,200) in annual dues, on top of a once-off $140,000 (€98,000) entry fee. Food and drink cost extra.
During his recruiting tour in Ireland, Anderson stayed at the Shelbourne in Dublin, Hayfield Manor in Cork, Adare Manor in Limerick, and the Glenlo Abbey Hotel in Galway. The students who followed his call to Martha’s Vineyard got less than a five-star welcome. The Bunkhouse, a run-down, decrepit building just a few hundred yards from the exquisitely-appointed Boathouse, was the accomodation afforded the Irish men. There are plenty of beds but no smoke alarms or any place to prepare or store food. A police officer candidly calls it “the immigrant ghetto”. For this, the workers pay $75 a week.
“We sat around for the first three weeks,” says Linehan. Part of the problem was the weather. It lashed in June, and July wasn’t much better. But according to O’Hara, who was hired to supervise the Irish students, it went well beyond the weather, a simple case of supply and demand.
“The Boathouse hired too many people,” says O’Hara (22). “Last summer, they didn’t have enough staff, and they weren’t going to be caught out again.” Anderson denies he hired too many staff, and blames the meagre working hours on the weather. He also defends as comparable to what other workers get on the island the housing for his staff, who besides the Irish included Americans, Serbians, South Africans, Albanians and Romanians.
Relative squalour is not a condition unknown to many university students, but student after student, regardless of nationality, say their biggest complaint is that they were promised almost limitless hours and found that promise empty. They say they took the job on the premise they could pay for or supplement their studies.
“The most hours I worked in any week was 35 and there were weeks I worked 20 hours or less,” says Linehan. “We spent a lot of money just to get there. None of the Irish workers will break even.”
In the end, O’Hara became the leading voice of the students, especially the Irish. He clashed with Anderson repeatedly. When he tried to stick up for the Serbs, he says Anderson told him to leave the Serbs alone as they had a different deal, the implication being it was not as lucrative.
Anderson denies this, saying there is no hierarchy of ethnic groups, while acknowledging the locquacious and engaging Irish are a favourite of members, and adding, “the Serbian students claim they’re fluent in English when they are not.” At one point, O’Hara spent $130 of his own money to buy food for the Irish students. When he offered to donate some hours to supplement his countrymen and women, he says Anderson dismissed him as daft.
Anderson denies all this, and of O’Hara he says, witheringly, “Killian thinks he’s a lot smarter than he is.”
A few weeks ago, O’Hara resigned. He was broke and homeless. His former colleagues took pity on him and sheltered him. E-mails show Anderson threatened to have him arrested and deported if he kept sneaking into club property to sleep. An Irish student gave O’Hara $7.50 for the ferry back to the mainland.
“I felt like an immigrant from a century ago,” O’Hara says. “Penniless, in the US.” He will return to Ireland on Wednesday and says he is determined to blacklist the Boathouse from repeating its flashy slide-show presentation to Irish students.
The Boathouse management sent out a letter to members this week, in response to what it called an “unflattering” account in the Boston Globe of its treatment of employees. The letter suggests the complaints come from a single “disgruntled former employee”. And while it goes to great lengths to explain the benefits the Boathouse returns to the community, it says that, after this summer, workers will no longer be housed in the Bunkhouse.
Kevin Cullen is a Boston Globe columnist