Pegasus Podcast
@thepegasusapp https://www.thepegasus.app/🐴 Conversations with the movers and shakers of the global equestrian industry. Hosted by Pegasus founders Sam Baynes and Jen Tankel.
Pegasus Podcast
Why Grooms Need Someone Advocating for Them with Lucy Katan
Lucy Katan is the founder of three major equestrian organizations: the British Grooms Association (BGA), the Equestrian Employers Association (EEA), and most recently the International Grooms Association (IGA, along with her cofounder Courtney Carson, who we also interviewed on our podcast).
Drawing from Lucy's wealth of experience and unwavering commitment, we explore the efforts of the BGA and IGA in advocating for the rights and improved working conditions for grooms.
We also shed light on the complex dynamics of the employer-groom relationship, underscoring the impact of these dynamics on employment rights and regulations within the horse grooming profession.
In this episode, we discuss:
- The stark contrast between the VIP treatment received by riders and the harsh realities faced by grooms.
- Why 55% of grooms in the UK don't have a written contract.
- The obstacles encountered when reporting the abuse of grooms.
- And more.
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From fast entries to real-time results, Pegasus makes shows run smoother for organizers and easier for riders to stay informed and on schedule. Check it out at www.thepegasus.app
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And the result is that when a child comes from a more affluent household, more often than not the parents have greater aspirations for what that child is going to do with their life. They've been better educated, they've come through better schooling. Therefore, the manual role of working as a group is very, very much frowned upon by parents. They're aware of the poor employment and they go. I don't want you to do that role. I want you to become educated and do something that is better than that.
Speaker 3:Hi everyone. My name is Noah Levy and I'm the producer of our Pegasus podcast, hosted by our founders Sam Baines and Jem Tankle. On today's episode, we are hosting Yus Kitan, the founder of three major organizations the British Grooms Association, the Equestrian Employers Association and the International Grooms Association. Luce is on the ground, working to make the lives of grooms around the world better, with accomplishments such as giving grooms a voice at the FEI. Listen to this episode if you want to know what it takes to make a change in equestrian on a global level. All right, let's get into it.
Speaker 2:Luce, thank you very much for joining us this morning For our audience, just want to give them a quick two minute overview of who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1:Hi guys, my name is Luce Kitan and I am the founder of the British Grooms Association, based in the UK, and the founder of the Equestrian Employers Association, also based in the UK, and also the founder of the International Grooms Association, based in the UK. But for worldwide grooms who are working within FEI sport, all right that's a lot of foundering happening.
Speaker 4:So where are you currently based in the UK and can you break down each of those companies that you've started?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm based in London. No horses anywhere near me, which is kind of cool by me. It's not all about people. If I'm really honest with you, it's less so about horses for me, but I have members of my team that are deeply passionate about four-legged animals. I used to be. I was an international dressage groom. British team nearly went to Olympic Games Sydney but the stupid four-legged animal went lame so we didn't go. I'm reaching it to Osgon but that led my flame and I did subsequent games not with horses after that, so I'm permanently taking one.
Speaker 1:How often putting the other one on Portfolio working is the smart way of describing it. So British Groomers Association the oldest organisation 15, 16 years old, now around 4,000 members. We are the professional association for everybody that works with horses in the UK. The remit of membership is that you have to be working within the UK or a British groom abroad. So we have members of different nationalities, but they have to be working within the UK. It is what is known as a professional association and also a social enterprise.
Speaker 1:I'm a social entrepreneur and my dream is to see the groom's world a better place. So to see the groom's world to be a better place, you have to help those that are employing the grooms. So about eight years ago, we launched the Equestrian Employers Association and the remit of the EEA, as we call it, is to support and educate employers how to become better employers, which, of course, benefits the grooms, but not only that the employers and their own businesses. So the EEA has about 1000 members and it's a predominantly online business and it's about supporting the employers with their human resources, their HR and how to run their business. So we have a series of online tools, which we can talk about later, but series of online tools to help them to run their business.
Speaker 1:And then the final one, the IGA, the International Grooms Association. That's the baby in the crop, because that's only two years old sorry, only a year and a half old, should I say formed in May 2022 at the request of the FEI, and that organization will never have doesn't have the capacity for a big, too big a membership, because the only grooms that really it is for is for those that are working at FEI level, be it their rider is competing at FEI level and they're the traveling groom, or if they're associated within the yard. So that's the kind of remit for those grooms. So, for example, if you are a pleasure leisure groom for a dressage rider in the US in the sense of the rider is riding dressage but not competing at FEI level you're welcome to join. But the IGA is not actually set up for you, it is for those competing at FEI level.
Speaker 2:You were a equestrian professional before you jumped ship and went into the social entrepreneurship world. What was the ongoing problem that you were observing that pissed you off enough to decide? No one's doing anything about this and, bloody hell, it may as well be me.
Speaker 1:Great question so I can answer it easily. So in 2002, we went to the world equestrian games as part of the British team. It was at Hadeath in southern Spain and it was the worst competition event show whatever you want to call it championship that I'd ever attended. The grooms were so poorly treated. We had awful food. The one good thing was that there was a swimming pool for the grooms, but I think that was more luck than anything else. Some of the older guys quite enjoyed that. I was a little shy.
Speaker 4:Was it warm enough to swim. That wasn't a cold plunge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it was hot. Lots of people got involved. I can't remember being, because it was my kind of, I don't know, it wasn't for me, but anyway.
Speaker 4:I would be right in there.
Speaker 1:But, anyway, that was the about the only good thing. The food was atrocious. We had to stay, if you can imagine. We got given our accommodation and it was what? Basically a sea container style thing, port, a cabin type thing, with six bunk beds, terrible bedding, and it wasn't split male, female, and we had two guys in the room that we didn't have a clue who they were. So we were the British team of four and we had to share with two people that we had no idea who they were.
Speaker 1:Okay, not right. Well, our belongings weren't safe. I mean, it was just horrible. It was awful. The food all the grooms just ended up eating every male out of McDonald's that had happened to be close by, but, moreover, grooms were just not respected. They just weren't treated well on the show. So I came out of that and then what happened was that, I think quite quickly after that, we went to an event, believe it or not, in Russia, in Moscow, and we went to an event called the President's Cup and Putin actually came down to the stables and strokes on the horses. I have vague memories of it, but it was a long time ago, anyway these vague memories?
Speaker 2:is this vague memories like it was a long time ago? Is this vague memories? Like you know, there was a few drinks here and there that one Exactly, which is most of my life.
Speaker 1:Anyway, would he like to?
Speaker 4:divorce this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he came down. I like to say vague memories, but he definitely did, anyway. But I mean obviously different times then. But we all I remember was that all the grooms were put up in a hotel. You had your own room, we had good food, we were treated pretty much as equal citizens within the showground, we were invited to all the parties and on the last night there was supposed to be this gala dinner and it rained with fireworks not good near horses, but anyway showed that they didn't really know what they were doing, but which was, I think, in a weird way, the benefit to the grooms, because they didn't really know what they were doing and there wasn't this old fashioned view of the grooms are there and the riders are there Anyhow.
Speaker 1:So we went to this banquet on the last night, which was a new Bekostani feast. I remember that towards the end, suddenly the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra started playing from behind the curtains and the curtains opened and we were like, wow, this is amazing. And then, at the very end, so this was like one heck of a party at the very end there were all these speeches and Anki van Grunzen was there and it was dressage. It was only dressage. Anyway, there were these speeches the judges made a speech and Anki made a speech. Oh, the Russians have welcomed us and we all had, by this point, a lot of vodka. And one of the girls on the table said I'm going to make a speech because we'd all been talking about grooms and that this was so different and so well, we've been so well treated, anyway. So this girl, australian girl I can't remember her name she stood up.
Speaker 4:I'm brand. I'm brand.
Speaker 2:I've got an opinion and you're all going to hear it.
Speaker 1:They're going to give the girl a party though, yeah, we say, well, refreshed, well, I say that and so. But she went to the front and she made a brilliant speech about this is the way to treat. Grooms were equal, we should be respected and this is the way. And everyone gave her the biggest cheer and afterwards I thought to myself gosh, you're so right, this is the way to be treated and that was kind of for me. I had had my own experience of very poor employment, being very traditionally bullied in the workplace. I was fired completely unfairly. I should never have been fired. It wasn't my fault. I lost my job and the whole thing. It pushed me to my own. I don't want to dramatize, but my own sort of mental feeling, so great scenario, all because of poor employment, and it was all of those things that came together that made me go. No, grooms need a voice. Grooms need an organization to belong to.
Speaker 2:Going back to those days. You know we spoke to Courtney, who you work with, the International Group Association, and she said a lot of these. Some of these problems still persist today. The thing that I've always really struggled to comprehend is that writers and grooms are usually quite close, they work together right, and they usually have a relationships that go beyond just employment. That in many respects, is a friendship, because you spend so many hours a day together, you work so closely together, all that sort of stuff which one would think, and because they are your employer, one would think that that would extend into oh, when we travel to a location, the writers would make sure that the grooms are taken care of.
Speaker 2:But what you're saying is is that back then, and so this day as well, there's still this mentality about the writers get treated well over here and the grooms go over here and they're kind of an afterthought. What has been your experience with how? Because ultimately that's the show manager's mistake, right, the show manager thinks they need to treat writers better than they need to treat the grooms. But one would think that the writers would then stick up for the grooms and try and insist that they are given better facilities, better resources. How does that kind of all unfold in reality? How does it end up that this team gets split and the writers are just okay with that?
Speaker 1:It's historical Riders go left, grooms go right, or vice versa.
Speaker 2:It's like getting onto the plane and going first class capital class.
Speaker 1:It really is. In many cases it really is, and it is exactly that. And the rider, I think, is perceived, the athlete is perceived as a VIP. They often get access to VIP areas. They're perceived as the most important people on the showground. Without them competing, you have no show.
Speaker 1:However, there are actually three other important people on the showground. The first is the owner of that horse, but usually I'm going to be honest the owner is the owner, because they have money and they can afford to put themselves in VIP. They don't have to get up early, they get there when the horse competes. So that's usual of the owner. The next one is the horse, who has to have the best facilities for them to exist, and I would say in general that the horses.
Speaker 1:The welfare of horses is very topical and in general, that is well done less so at the lowest star shows, but in general. And the last is the groom, and the problem with the groom is that they are the one that brings it all together, because without the groom. So actually, if you want to really say that everybody's, everybody's important, everybody's a VIP, but the groom is the one that is not treated as such in so many circumstances and it's historical, it's culture and it's about culture change. So, for example, through the International Grooms Association, we've been working with our show supporters. We've got about 25, 30 show supporters that have all pledged to make things better at their show and they work with us and we give them some ideas. And, for example, I went out to Sotogenbosch in Holland this year earlier this year and was delighted and the director, Frank Kempelman, was very proud to show me that his rider's lounge, which is where the riders go and hang out, has a new sign and the new sign is the Riders and Grooms Lounge.
Speaker 4:Hurrah. Have there been any other significant changes?
Speaker 1:So now the grooms are allowed in. So at that show the grooms are allowed in the Riders Lounge and it's not the Riders Lounge. It's now the Grooms and Riders Lounge. But you know, that actually makes a massive difference, because the grooms have good food, they have somewhere to sit and chill, it's close to the stables and I said to him it's amazing that it's taken this many years for you to make that small change right.
Speaker 2:What do you say when you said that?
Speaker 1:He agreed, but then also ask the FEI why it has taken them so many years for the grooms to have a voice at the top level of sport.
Speaker 4:So it sounds like it's not coming from any malicious intent, it's just they've been forgotten due to history and culture.
Speaker 2:I propose another alternative idea and tell me if I'm wrong, because you've worked on a lot of shows yourself from a professional perspective not just being a groom but also working out shows and helping out. So you've seen behind the operational curtain. We've been to some America's largest shows. We know the teams that have run a lot of those largest shows and the one thing that seems to be relatively consistent is that every show, no matter how big it is, seems to be a last minute effort to try and get it all organized and get it all done. And you've got a small team, often with new staff, trying to conduct a massively logistically complex event with limited resources. And knowing them and knowing that they're not malicious people, it just seems like we just didn't get round to it, or we just didn't think of it or we forgot about it.
Speaker 4:That's what I mean. Yeah, I don't think it's anything. I personally, as an outsider to being a groom, I don't think it's anything malicious. It seems like they've been the forgotten ones for a while and then and they haven't spoken up loudly enough, they haven't had someone advocating on their behalf, like what your organizations are doing. And so now that that's shifting, people are like oh yeah, of course you can come to the riders.
Speaker 1:So I'll give you a really good example. We ran a campaign in the summer called hydrated grooms happy hydrated grooms, because loads of grooms fed back, especially in all these heat waves, that there's no water in the stables for the grooms to drink and they had to drink out the hose. Okay that they were filling the horses' water buckets or washing the horses off. Now, this isn't always practical. One is the water safe. Two, actually it's not that easy to sometimes fill your water bottle from the hose if it's got a spray thing on the end or whatever. And three, it's just not always a good thing to do. Let's just say, and we discovered that countless shows had no water provision. No, like water bubbler, you know other sort of things, or water bottles to the stables.
Speaker 1:So you've got the grooms working all day long in the outside in the heat, no air con, and they're the ones without the water. Whereas you walk into the media centre, vip riders, lounge, organisers, office, everywhere there's a water bubbler, as we call it, or water machine. You start to look into this and you think, well, why is that? Do they not care about the grooms? Is it like someone actually goes like you're saying, oh, let's not order water for the stables because we don't care about the grooms? Or is it because every single year, the job of ordering water passes down to the next person who's working in catering, cleaning and waste or whatever you want to call it, that department of the organising committee of the show? And it's almost certainly that.
Speaker 1:So what you need to do is you need to interrupt that this is what's happened every single year and make a change, and then that change will be set going forward. So if in the year 2023, at that show, the water bubbler is introduced to the stable with a high capacity because they know it's going to be hot in July 2023, then what you will find is when the water company come to the order for 2024, they're going to reorder it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's just on the checklist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, so you've got that. But I will challenge that. There is, unfortunately there is also there's a cost element for the shows and they haven't had to put this groom cost in. So, for example, you'll get some shows where the riders all have their own room but the grooms have to share, with no safeguarding policy, no care about who they're sharing with. So hang on a minute, why does the rider not share, but the groom has to?
Speaker 1:So you could be, with all due respect, a pretty wealthy, 22 year old, successful show jumper. You've been given some good horses and you're talented because you're competing at top level. But you're 22 years old and you go to a show with your 55 year old, super experienced, multiple Olympic world games groom because you're paying them good money, but they're 55 years old, they've done the circuit. So you, as a 22 year old young girl oh boy gets given your own room, but the 55 year old, seasoned groom has to share with Tom, dick or Harry. There are some things that, yes, are about culture sorry about logistics and interrupting that. What's happened before? But there's other things that show organizers. When we say we want the grooms to have their own room, they push back and I don't know, can't afford that, but hang on a minute. Raraj is.
Speaker 2:When you say, like the athletes, the riders, they get their own room. My first thought was well, that's what usually happens in sport, right? Because the athlete needs to be well rested because they're a finely tuned athletic machine In riding. Although there is a lot of the athleticism in riding, it's not like the 100 meter sprint, where that person needs to be perfectly calibrated because they are doing it with an animal that carries a lot of the athletic burden, so they don't really need that perfect night's sleep and that perfect routine and that perfect diet in able to perform at the level they usually perform at. Am I wrong in saying that?
Speaker 2:I think it's irrelevant, because well, it's relevant when it comes to the argument that athletes usually the reason why athletes are usually given their own room and the argument for it across most sports is they need a controlled environment in which they can perfect their sleep patterns, they can perfect their diet, they can perfect their routine, because in order to perform at the highest level, they need to try and keep consistency in how they do things in the writing world. I don't think that's really that relevant.
Speaker 1:It's not relevant, full stop to athletes because when it comes to the pinnacle of their career, which is the Olympic games, they have to share in the Olympic village. So no right, it doesn't. It doesn't really work. But I hear where you're coming from. I think it's more about culture and it's about cost and it's about the rider being is to tear thing and it's the rider being treated as more important than the green. And what we need to achieve is we need to achieve the status where the groom, every actor on the stage of that show, is treated the same, is treated equally, and they all have different roles and remits, but they should all, as far as their well, from their well being, they should all be treated equally, and that's kind of where we're trying to get to, hey are you an equestrian event organizer looking to put on your next clinic or schooling show?
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Speaker 4:T H E P E G A S U S dot a P P going back to the show that was in Holland where the organizer was like loose, I've got this really big change. And here's plus grooms on the sign. Were there any other aspects that he considered, or was it one where he just thought simply, I'm going to add the riders lounge and make that accessible to the grooms? I've done my job here. And moving on, I guess question being are people really having a hard think about the way that they've been treating groups of their shows, or are they kind of looking for those quick wins?
Speaker 1:I think they're looking for quick wins that are popular, but that quick, when that is popular, can really make a difference to the grooms. So there's another this. I mean this is a good show, that this is a good show for grooms, full stop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not a bad show but like you know other things, like there's a bar on the edge of the working in and the grooms are able to go into that bar and have free drinks and have whatever they wish to eat. They do nibbles and stuff. But the interesting thing is I said Frank to the grooms know this oh yeah, they know this.
Speaker 1:So I went and asked the grooms do you know this? No, I didn't realize we could go in there. So it's again about comms. It's about changing things. So a really good idea that we have at London International Hall show. Now when the grooms arrive there's a QR code on the wall and the grooms have to scan that QR code and it adds them to the grooms WhatsApp group of the show. Okay, so all the comms can come through that WhatsApp group. That's a really good development because you can put start list and someone can manage it from their computer, and so it's just about caring about organizations. But that's kind of the work of the IGA and what we're focused on. Bga and EA is focused more on good employment and supporting grooms, sure. So before we just move on to that, to your point about using WhatsApp and tech.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure how much you know about what we're building a Pegasus but we're essentially building out the first truly modern event management system for the equestrian competitions across all disciplines. But it's interesting a lot of people think that software is quite objective, like it's a tool that you interact with, do what you need to do. So you're actually building software. It's actually. You actually have quite a lot of subjective control because you're guiding people through a process and when they get to the screen, they just do what you've designed it for them to do, thinking that they're acting autonomously, but they're really going down the path that you want them to go down. And one of the key things for that is to point this was getting out. Is this malicious? Is this just absent mindedness?
Speaker 2:What we've got on our platform for competitions is that there is a part when you're going through the process that's like a page for grooms. Here are the inputs to be considered for grooms so that when the show managers creating the event, they're forced to engage and consider the idea and be like put on the map where is there going to be a water station for grooms? Put on the map where the water station is going to be throughout the actual facility, so that they can plan where the horses that they're moving around the facility are going to be able to get water next to rings and stuff like that. So it's about creating that forced engagement with the idea in order to make them like, oh yeah, shit, we should probably take this into account. Now we're going to see in experience how that unfolds. When it comes to pricing, as you said, money is a big indicator in this, but that's one of the small things that we're doing in the short term to try and improve that situation.
Speaker 4:When, also with the what's that messaging to, instead of having to go and scan a QR code when grooms have registered as a participant at the show, they can elect to be a part of a messaging system on our platform so they can engage in it, and then the next show they're already on the platform, they don't have to set up another what's that group, etc. So just making it a lot easier for the communications, to your point. But you did mention a good show and that is a good show. But you had also mentioned good employment before, so I know you had. That was something that you wanted to talk about, so is that?
Speaker 2:yeah, do I get into that now or yeah, absolutely. Let's shift into the other side of the equation, which is that you've gone for tooth and nail for the grooms, but you realize that ultimately, in order to get good employment and good situation for the grooms, you need to educate the employers. So do you want to go into the equation employers association, and what was the moment where you actually made that leap to do that organization?
Speaker 1:I always realized that we needed to help employers. So on the British group association website we always had from the beginning, we had a section called the employer zone so employers could come along, join up and they could get all the information on that. And then one day somebody well known event rider in the UK called me up and he said I get what you're trying to do, but you really need to make it its own organization, because why would I as an employer, join the grooms association? And I thought he had a really valid point. So that was when we split everything off to do with employers and employment into the EA and BGA remain for groups. So the stands for good employment and it's a phrase that I've created myself because I put a capital letter on the G and a capital letter on the E. So good employment, meaning that the individual that is employed by the rider slash yard owner, business owner I was succinctly employer Adheres to what we call the code of good employment.
Speaker 1:so they have all the legislative requirements are correct. So, from contract employment to national minimum wage, to pay slips, to pay holiday. But then there's also other things in there, about being a kind and caring employer, because that's also important, and a listening employer and one that develops their staff for their own careers, which benefits everyone.
Speaker 2:So with the question employers association do you get much of an insight into how employers in the industry are thinking about the big picture trends of Finding staff, access to staff, being able to afford to pay staff as salaries need to increase because cost of living is increasing, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's a spiders web, if I'm honest with you. Honestly it's spider's web. So the buck stops with good employment. Okay, so you have to start with good employment. When good employment is not in place, then other things go wrong and that is where the recruitment and retention issues occur. Okay so, if good employment is in place, then it's not guaranteed, but you're more likely as an employer to retain your staff and more likely to attract staff to your yard.
Speaker 1:When poor employment is in place, it always ends in tears, it always ends up in staff leaving and it potentially can lead to investigations from the tax people here in the UK, known as the HMC, because grumpy staff are more aware nowadays so they will report. But the sad thing is it also often destroys the groom's career because they end up leaving working with horses, which overall for the industry has a really bad impact. I mean, just this week I spoke to a groom who'd been working in an event yard poor employment, five grooms with the incorrect employment status. All have been told they were self-employed contractors, when they were not. They should have all been employees. All five have left and only one of them is still working with horses. Okay, that, yeah, and I hear it all the time. They've had enough, I don't want to do this anymore and fed up of being treated like this and I don't want to do it anymore. And the other thing that happens with grooms and poor employment and why I'm so passionate about it is that it always leads to some level of mental health, mental wellbeing issues.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, in the most simple sense, the law states here in the UK and in Europe, and I suspect the same in the US the law states that you must be given a written contract of employment particulars on or before the first day that you start work. Okay so, your written contract. And the moment the employer doesn't comply with that, it's always a big red flag. Wave the red flag, because what that means is that the employer is not adhering to the law. But also, they don't care about you really, because they're not. They're not investing in you. They're not investing in you as an individual because, from the very first step, they're not giving you what you are legally entitled to, nor what is right to do. So then you as the groom because the BGA has shouted over Facebook for many years about this you as the groom are going oh, I need a contract. Oh, it's one week, I haven't got one. Oh, now it's two weeks, I haven't got one. Oh, it's now three months and I haven't got one. How do I broach this with the employer? How do I go to this? So already your mind's starting to wonder to think. And we've had grooms had one the other day who was a jumping groom based abroad on a tour, one of these long shows. No contract, not paid correctly.
Speaker 1:She was on medication for depression and it was all linked. She cited that the whole thing was linked to her poor employment. She left. She handed in her notice because there was no contract. She had nothing to refer to. She handed in her notice. She was told you've got to stay here for another month and you've got to work for me for another month. Now this is a girl on antidepressants, crying every time she's calling to her parents on the phone. She's really not in a good place. She's being bullied and marginalised where she is currently.
Speaker 1:And anyway, she called the BGA and we helped her and we made her realise, or we just informed her, that the I go with facts right and the law states that she only had to give one week's notice. There was nothing more. There was no contract, so therefore you have to revert to the law. So the law states that she only had to give one week's notice. She had two weeks holiday leave to take. The employer said she couldn't have it. Therefore, there's only one option and that is that it has to be paid or she could take it as her notice period. So we advised her to give one week's notice and to use her holiday for that notice, and she did that. She booked a plane and that day she was on a plane home back to her parents. Her parents were hugely grateful Because I think the mum was. There was a point where the mum was seriously concerned for the welfare and well-being of her child and all of that was linked to poor employment, all of it.
Speaker 2:So I mean, how does this happen? Is this a case of? I imagine it plays out something on the lines of they post a job ad or they're somewhere. They're here through the grapevine, there's a job available. They apply, they talk, they say it sounds great, come down to the barn next Monday. They arrive the moment they arrive, they get given tasks and duties and all of a sudden, the weeks have gone by and there's been no official paperwork and then they feel nervous to bring it up. I assume it goes something along those lines as far as why the employers don't actually go through the official process. Is it just culture? But when they've had complaints against them in the past, they've obviously been awoken to it and they've decided to continue to ignore it. Is it lack of education? Is it not wanting to spend money on lawyers to pay for employment contracts? How does it happen? What is the systemic issues that create a reality in which a lot of employers do this, not just one or two?
Speaker 1:So you have the brilliant phrase that the horse world seems I mean, the horse world seems to be unique, and there's this brilliant phrase. So it's just the way it is with horses, it's just the way it is. Oh, we just ignore all employment law, wherever country we're in.
Speaker 1:We just ignore it because that's all right, it's just the way it is with horses and you have grooms saying that, oh, this is just the way it is with horses. You have parents saying that, so it's always just the way it is with horses, and we have employers say that, Unfortunately, the bad news is it's not the law and it shouldn't be that way of horses, and it's basically everything I stand for and have campaigned for so many years on it, and my team does as well. To answer your question, are we at the stage really now where we can and I'm running a blog on this at the moment where we can't give those employers the free reign of yeah well, I just didn't know about it? I mean, really, you really didn't know about it, or are you blatantly being ignorant, naive and avoiding the law? You know?
Speaker 2:And also they can only really claim that if they've never, ever ever had an employee complain or raise a concern or even ask a question, you can only claim you didn't know about it until the first time someone asks you about it. The moment they ask you about it, you are now aware.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be really honest. I think there's two reasons why it happens and it happens. I mean, we've just done a survey. Imagine this I've been doing this for 16, 17 years in total and we did a survey, and 55% of grooms and sprongs, if they don't have a contract of employment in the UK. I just saw the result and I went oh right, well, I've achieved nothing. What?
Speaker 3:have I achieved.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, literally, I was so deflated and OK. So why does it happen From the employer's point of view? Honestly, I think it's sheer ignorance. Ok, I think that now the EEA exists in the UK and there is no excuse. It costs just £49.50. I don't know what's that about $80 to belong and you get every HR tool under the sun there for you to produce. Ok, so if you as a business can't afford that amount, then you shouldn't be in business. Right, we have been in.
Speaker 1:We've been reported in Horsenhound nearly every third week for about six years. If you don't know about us, then you're living on the moon and you're choosing. You're choosing, you're opting not to seek the support that you should have. So that's number one. Number two I think it's a tax fraud. In more cases than not and I suspect that would roll over into the US as well, I think it's a tax fraud. It's fraud and they're using the people that are working for them by giving them the wrong employment status. They're choosing to not have insurance, the correct insurance, or pay tax and national insurance for these individuals. So it's a purposeful tax dodge. The oh, by the way, you're self-employed, you've got to pay your own tax and assurance. But, by the way, you're working for me full time.
Speaker 1:It's an oxymoron, the things don't go together and I'm like it's my biggest thing. I mean, I literally I just want to shake all the grooms of Great Britain in particular and say come on, guys, don't accept this. It is wrong. The third problem is the grooms themselves, and no one else says this apart from me and the grooms themselves are a massive part of this problem Because, unfortunately, mainly due to the love of the four-legged animal, they go and work in these positions. So what they do is they smoke the fire, they keep the fire going. Oh, I didn't realize. Well, again, you have a professional association. Nearly every groom knows about the BGA. Ok, they know about it If they have not bothered to Google it. I mean we spend a lot of money on SEO and whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's not hard to find. You know If you and if you go, if you're kind of a grooming, you're going oh, I'm too cool for that. Well, I've no idea why you would even think that, oh, I don't need that, I'm not in trouble, I don't need that. Well, I don't know why you would think that either, because we all have a breakdown service for our car, so why don't you have a breakdown service for yourself? And the same breath, that same groom is going oh, I want everything, I want the money, I want everything to be right for me. Well, belong to your professional association to make it right and don't go and work in these jobs. But that in itself and I said at the beginning of this piece that is the spider's web that in itself me saying that is not so simple, because the groom is often. The demographic of the groom is kind of like 18 to 25 years old. Ok, that's the peak. So they're still young, they're still influenced young adults.
Speaker 2:They don't want parents to get involved right, it's admin and kids are usually like well, my parents usually took care of my admin. If I just ignored it, it'll never come back to bite me.
Speaker 4:Well, and they probably worked at the barn themselves growing up Like they were the kid at the barn that was taking care of their horses, and now they're just getting paid to do it, so they don't realize that they haven't been into a corporate professional atmosphere to know that that's not how they should be treated with work. Fine, if you want to do it on the weekends, but not with work, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's another angle of the spider's web. So you can see this is such a complex subject matter. So you've got the fact, but you've also got the power issue, and this is another thing that I'm afraid is not so great in our industry, and I think this happens talking to Courtney quite a lot in the US as well. So you've got the fact that if the groom is going to work for a rider, they never have an HR department, like you mentioned, in a corporate world. But you go and work for anyone and there'll be an interim, there'll be a line manager, there'll be some bigger firm, but you're basically going to the one person that you're working for who has two other employees, so you're dealing one to one.
Speaker 1:If that person has any form of success, so they're well known. In any way, there's an automatic or I'm too scared I can't say anything kind of set up, so the responsibility lies on the employer to do it right. Of course it does, and we shouldn't even be having these conversations in the year 2023. It's mental. All of this is mental because if you go and get a job in McDonald's or KFC or Pizza Hut, you're employed correctly, so why should it be any different?
Speaker 2:When it comes to the grooms, is there also this challenge, which is that if you're a junior groom and you're joining and there's an older groom there, is there any workplace bullying within the groom hierarchy about the older groom being like don't bring that up. If you bring that up, I'll find someone else. Because the senior groom is like this is my operation. I'm running it, don't get in my shit.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You've hit the nail on the head and it happens way too much and the groom has to be a tough individual. I'm not going to lie. I was probably not tough enough.
Speaker 2:Really it's pretty tough Liz.
Speaker 1:No, I really am. No, I like it. I'm not as good as you, I'm a bit of a. I like the nice things in life and I didn't want to share rooms and so I changed career and I'm giving it back, that's for sure, and some. But yeah, I mean that absolutely happens. And I mean I don't understand that they feel a threat, that their job is a threat if they've got a younger person coming up. I think it's sad and I would say that that's very changing as generations change. I hope that that changes.
Speaker 1:An analogy that I always use with parents in particular, of regarding good employment and good workplaces and I say to them just imagine if your son or daughter came back and said oh, I'm going for a job, or I'm working the job now and I get paid below the national minimum wage. I don't get a contract, the machinery is kind of quite dangerous, could actually kill me. It's quite dangerous. Oh, there's no health and safety. No, we don't bother with that.
Speaker 1:And it goes on and on, and then at the end and the mum says well, you know what is this place? Oh, well, it's a factory. Yeah, it's a factory that makes something or other, the mum will be like you're not going to work there, or factory, or shop or whatever, you're not going to work there. But the groom goes oh yeah, it's so-and-so's yard. And the mum goes yeah, sure off, you go. That's brilliant. Well done, darling. You wouldn't let them go and work in a factory in this way. I mean, I wouldn't dream of letting my little monkey of a daughter go and work in a yard in anything where all labor rights were ignored. So I find it bizarre. So the parents also have a responsibility. But that's also not so easy, because then they have their child. Who's going? Mum, I want to work in this yard. It's the most amazing opportunity ever. And you see, so the spider's web is very, very messy.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, you said 18 to 25, all these points that you're saying all assumes that the power lies with the employers, because there's less jobs than there are grooms looking for jobs. But everywhere else in the equestrian industry the opposite labor market narrative exists, which is that we're running out of volunteers, there's not people wanting to give a show manager roles because they go into debt. There's not enough people getting into equestrian sports anymore. That means that the businesses are struggling to find the trainers are struggling to find students, et cetera. What is the reality on the ground? Are there more grooms and there are jobs available? And if there aren't, how have the employers been able to maintain this stronghold when all the leverage in the market is with the labor, who have multiple options available to them?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So to answer that, I think that the pool of grooms to work in the industry professional grooms it has diminished immensely over the past 10 years and here's my reasoning behind it. There are, first of all, yes, there are still many, many grooms that want to go and work in yards. But the honest answer is, of those 10 that might apply for a job, how many of them are actually quite serious about the role? Okay, and how many of them have genuine career aspirations? And I will say I am somebody that says the career of working with horses does not have to be a lifelong career. Okay, we can all have more than one career within our lifetime. That is okay. And it is okay for a groom to work up until their 30s, then go and have a family and then go and do podcasts, for example Absolutely fine, I've got no problem with that.
Speaker 1:But here is my Lucy thoughts on the grooms coming into the equestrian workplace. And the Y 10 years is significant, probably a little bit more when the recession hit in 2008,. Horses became more expensive and also within the UK, this kind of within the riding school sector, this kind of go and ride for go and work on the yard for pony rides, all of that sort of started to stop because health and safety came in. People started to look at these things, so that kind of go and own pocket money on the yard thing became a little bit of a thing of the past. The result is, over that time period, those that started riding horses, ponies, were from more affluent households. Okay, and this is a proper generalization. But think this one through and apply it into the US.
Speaker 2:I love a sweeping statement Keep going.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, so go with me on this. So I've tried this on so many people and everyone agrees with me, so I'm willing to be challenged. So those that started riding ponies after the recession because life became more expensive, they are were from more affluent households, and that affluence has had to increase because horses have become more and more and more expensive, right. And the result is that when a child comes from a more affluent household, more often than not the parents have greater aspirations for what that child is going to do with their life. They've been better educated, they've come through better schooling.
Speaker 1:Therefore, the manual role of working as a groom which is ultimately, we think it's skilled, but honestly it's not skilled as far as it's not a doctor or a nurse, or that role is very, very much frowned upon by parents.
Speaker 1:They're aware of the poor employment and they go. I don't want you to do that role. I want you to become educated and do something that is better than that. So that is a very general statement, but the result is and there are those about the trends, of course but the result is that, in general, your pool of people that are coming forward to work with horses is a completely different demographic to 10 or 15 years ago. And the other thing is that those that buck that trend and I was one of them because I was very well educated, but I was a doer and not an academic style person but those that do buck the trending and come through it, they also are not prepared to put up with the poor employment number one. So they then leave and they go and do something different. So you've got a mass exodus of this type of people.
Speaker 2:At about what age is that mass exodus?
Speaker 1:I would say around about between 25 and 30.
Speaker 4:So old enough to know a little bit better. They know that this is not the way that it should be brought.
Speaker 1:And they've kind of got their horse fixed and they're kind of like right, I'm not going to do this anymore, but there, is another really important part of this and this is a. Really I could get shot down for this one, but this is a really important.
Speaker 2:Go for it.
Speaker 1:And this is a generalization and I'm really sorry. I don't want to offend anyone, but in general, because of the things that we said at the beginning of this about affluence, in general and this isn't everyone, but a lot of them don't have to work. If it goes wrong they can go back to mum and or dad, right? If it goes wrong, they're not working Because somebody said to me, young people, they don't want to work nowadays I'm like that's bullshit, that's rubbish.
Speaker 1:Just walk down the high street, you see young people working everywhere. In my other life I work on major events. We have hundreds of young girls and boys that come and work for us as parking attendants. You know the guys that park the car when you go to a party or an event and it's the most awful job. They stand in all weathers but they do it. And I ask them why do you do this? They're uni students, a lot of them. Why do you do this? I have to work, I have to earn money. I have to send money back to my parents, in whichever country they've come from, or I have to use this to pay for my rent. I have to earn money.
Speaker 1:How many grooms actually say that? Very few, very, very few. Because certainly of the younger crop, I think, once they get a bit older and they stand on their own two feet once if they survive, so to speak but of the younger ones, you'll find that a lot of them don't actually have to work. And that's where, if you get someone in on that, that is fitting that portfolio and you don't treat them right, they're just going to be gone. They're going to be gone. They don't have to do it.
Speaker 4:It's just another example of how all come in sense. When it comes to the modern world, it just goes out the window when it comes to the equestrian industry.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, coming back to the reason you created the equestrian employers association, because of everything you just said, right, like, if we just zoom out and look at what that means, that means that if you're an employer, you've got a shrinking employment base of people you can hire from.
Speaker 2:The people you can hire from need the job less and therefore don't really care about the consequences of screwing up their career, even if they see it as a career right. So your employment base is becoming smaller, it's becoming less committed and it cares less. In the equestrian industry, you are trusting these people a lot One to turn up, to be fully committed, to travel the world, to get paid shit but of all that, they're the ones who manage your very, very, very expensive asset who, if they do it badly and they don't care about doing it poorly could really screw up your business and your livelihood. So it's amazing, when you consider those two realities, that employers can still have such a cavalier attitude towards it all, when a bad hire could really screw up your operation. And by persisting with this mindset of treating grooms like second class citizens and not professionalizing the career, you're only exacerbating the labor issues that, ultimately, is going to lead to the demise of your industry and your business.
Speaker 4:It's obviously not a perfect comparison, but I wonder if there's an issue with babysitters, because it's a little bit similar You're trusting your child with someone else and it's a lot of manual work, I imagine. I mean, at least in the early days I don't have kids so loose. You can speak more to this, but I mean I would think you would never treat a babysitter the way that the grooms have been treated, considering that you do have your precious animal asset, however way you look at your horse.
Speaker 2:Being managed by them.
Speaker 4:Exactly yeah, so okay.
Speaker 1:So yeah. So as far as childcare, yeah, it's kind of the same, and what's interesting is that childcare is also actually quite poorly paid, which is quite interesting. People don't want to spend a lot of money on children being learned after, which is interesting. So as far as the grooms go, why did they do it? The good grooms? Let's talk about competition circuit grooms. They love their job. Okay, I actually loved it. There's no greater buzz than getting your accreditation, being the people behind the scenes being there. If you love horses, you're being around horses, and there's no greater job Okay.
Speaker 1:As far as the money earning, I honestly think that there's good money to be earned working with horses. I think there's great wages out there. I think the hours it's a hard job. It's a job where there's many hours full stop, end of. Okay, it is a hard job, but the result is, if you are paid at least the national minimum wage which in the UK has just been announced, it's going up to 11 pounds 44 per hour. So if you want to take that as just as a calculation sorry, I'm doing this in pounds you can perhaps add some whizzy things for dollars or something, but 11 pound 44 minimum wage, right, yeah, so that's a good thing. By, let's just say, an eight hour sorry, a nine hour day, okay, multiplied by six days a week, multiplied by 52 weeks of the year, that's a 32 K salary. That's not a bad salary. And the thing is that so many horse jobs come with accommodation. So if you then take your accommodation and that your accommodation is included, what are you spending your 32,000 pounds salary on? Be a horse.
Speaker 2:So for our American listeners that's about 40,000 USA.
Speaker 4:Yes 11 44 pounds is $14.27. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you see. So when people tell me you can't earn money now I add accommodation. I mean I don't know about you, but every bill that goes up my house is for the accommodation. So what comes in goes out. So actually, if you're earning 32 K $40,000, and you haven't got accommodation to pay for, actually you're earning pretty well Where's it's.
Speaker 1:Grooms don't earn. I don't buy that. I think grooms actually can earn really well and I think some of the grooms on the top rooms on the circuit will agree with that. You can earn well, there's good money to be earned. But when you're not paid correctly, that's when it all goes wrong. So you've got to be paid by the law. You've got to be paid correctly and for the employer, even if you do get one of these generations or whatever we're going to call them grooms who we've very poorly labeled, which is so very. I'm so sorry because I know you guys are that listening, are amazing, and I don't say that you are all cuts from the same, from same background. It's not fair to say that. But for what I would say is that there will be some that will listen to this and that will go oh, that is me, because that was me. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm going to need to admit that. But if you are treated right, you don't care, because you're going to have a great time. You're going to go to a games Olympic games, fei top shows and make all the friends in the universe and learn to work with a hangover. And you know and see Putin at the Barnes and Russia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I've, but as soon as you. What is that? 40k ago, I was like I know exactly what that 40K is.
Speaker 1:But do you see what I mean? So again, this massive spiders web comes back right to the thing in the middle, which is good employment. If the employers can get good employment throughout, get the paperwork sorted. Just get it done. It's boring. Just get it right Like any other business in the world. Get it and be kind and be listening and caring to your staff. Give staff opportunities. So if they want to develop their career, whatever that may be, give them the opportunity to do it. If they pipe up and just treat your staff right and give them time off, that they need to have to recuperate and I can't guarantee the staff will stay, but I can guarantee that the industry will be a nicer place.
Speaker 2:So the one thing I just keep coming back to on all this is there's so many incentives for the employers to get their shit squared away in this right, whether it's one maintaining their staff so to keep rehiring and retraining people, which is a pain in the ass, whether it's to protect themselves legally so their insurance actually pays out if something goes wrong, through to not being investigated by the tax department, if it is just being able to find staff because there's less staff around and therefore you want to keep the good ones you have. There are so many reasons, but they don't seem to do it.
Speaker 4:Or God forbid if something were to happen in those rooms when it was a bunch of just random people sleeping in a place in a land far away.
Speaker 2:So your legal protections, et cetera, exactly. So my question for you is is it possible that collectively, as an industry, this conversation hasn't risen above the detection threshold to the point that it's just not being had? Or is it above the detection threshold and they're having it, but they're ultimately deciding the short term ease and gains is worth all the long term risk.
Speaker 1:I think it depends. I mean, you've got we're talking spanning from the top yards, top show jumping yards from you guys, springsteen's and whatever else. Steve Girat, who's groom has just won the FBI Caval or Groom Awards. This is a great promise to her and very well deserved, and he put her forward saying this is the best groom in the world. She's been with me for 10 years. She's the best mum to my horses. So you have progressive people out there. But if you're taking it from that to small little yards in the UK that are really family businesses employing one person.
Speaker 1:I think that there's two things. I think the culture. Some riders don't want their grooms near them. Some riders will have this attitude of groom as a groom and they should know they do their work and then they disappear. That culture has to be completely bashed away and that's where all these awards and the things the FBI are doing are very, very important and the work of the IGA is very important. I think that from it, certainly within the UK and I suspect that this is worldwide, I'm afraid and the cost of living crisis has not helped at all I think that a lot of yards are not viable. I don't think they're viable and that's a great podcast for you. Viability of an equestrian yard, because I tell you, forget the really big ones, forget the big wealthy owners, get out of that and start to look at that next level down and I'll tell you those yards are not viable.
Speaker 4:I think they're all going toward these random side businesses to be able to help do add-ons and whatnot at their boarding barns for the. Americans, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's okay, you know, that's right. I mean, you've got an indoor arena and you want to hire out in the winter to the local football team or whatever. Many people do that and that's good, right, and you know, should diversify your business. But they're not runners businesses so often, and they're not viable. They're not charging enough and I think that is part of the massive problem. So the yard owner is going well, how do I afford this? Well, I can't charge my owners more and that is the only answer actually pass the cost onto the client. But they're not doing their sums, they're not doing their maths, they're not running it as a business, they're running it as. Honestly, here's a little venture. This is what I do. I jump horses, I dress, arch, I vent and I need some people to look after the horses. And it's all about me, me, me, me, me winning a medal, winning a rosette, winning a. You know, it's all for my own personal gain and I'm just going to use some people to make that happen.
Speaker 2:I do want to come back to the FEI and your involvement with them and their proactive efforts, but just quickly, before we do. If an industry at this scale is running employment so shortly, have there been any successful investigations and people being charged, and has that not rippled through the industry to get people to be like, oh, should I better like square out my operation?
Speaker 1:Yes, there have been lots, lots and lots. And we, the BGA and the EA, we actually work with the HMRC, who are the government department who are responsible for this. We work with their education team because we don't set the law. The law is set and we need to help people to understand and adhere to. So we're not shy about that. We don't have the prosecutable right to enforce. That's not our job. And we don't report anyone. It's not our job either. But we do guide rooms who have been poorly, have been employed, not by the remit of the law. We do advise how they could report if they so wish. Yes, there have been multiple prosecutions. We had a groom the other day who discovered that they had been underpaid and etc. Etc. They reported them to the HMRC. They had a settlement of about £21,000.
Speaker 1:Okay, we've heard so many stories about this. But and hereby lies the problem the groom where they could report it. We do report it. The groom rarely puts their name to it unless they're completely gone out of the industry, which is often. But they still don't like to put their name to the story. So the groom reporting the story, us reporting the story. We can only do it if the groom tells us the likes of the equestrian media reporting the story. It can only happen if we are independently told of the result of the story. Okay, the result of the case, basically, and unfortunately. Where in the UK they took a view of it's called a name and shameless, so they add companies to it and there have been equestrian people on there and the moment there is an equestrian person on there we are right on it. But unfortunately that name and shameless is about seven years behind all prosecutions which really doesn't help, and during COVID they stopped it.
Speaker 1:So yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean, it's not just a simple case where? So why is it that you guys can't get in with the reporting? Is it just one of those things where, when you have an open case, you're not allowed to essentially have an opinion until it's a fact?
Speaker 1:Well, we can't, really we can't. It's all hearsay at the end of the day, so we can't say I could tell you three riders of calls over the past two weeks, one of whom is a pretty not a household name, but pretty well known on the British eventing circuit. The story is horrendous of what she's done. Can't tell you her name. I'm bound by confidence to the RBGA member, but I also can't report anything regarding this rider, because how do I know any of it's true?
Speaker 2:I don't know everything, and then you're liable for defamation.
Speaker 1:So we can't do anything Until that person's name appears on an HMRC name in Shameless. There's nothing we can do. So, if I'm honest, I think that many of these riders have kind of got away with it as in publicly right, then they haven't been splashed on the front of horse and how. However, they haven't got away with the big fines, and usually when they get a big fine, that's usually a sign of they're going to do it right or better in the future, because the fines are massive, but we need the grooms to report.
Speaker 2:When you say massive is 21,000 pounds massive.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the amount that the groom had to be paid back. The fine is 100% of the amount to pay back, so the total cost to the employer would have been in the region of 40,000 pounds.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 4:And for then? I mean, they're probably exiting the industry anyway. So this is just getting back what they wanted. I mean because, on the flip, side.
Speaker 1:It's getting back what they earned.
Speaker 4:It's getting back what they earned.
Speaker 1:You know it's not. This is not free money. This is the thing where I do really put my social entrepreneur hat on, get quite angry because it's an abuse of power over a keen young person who wants to come and work with horses. Oh, it's going to be great. I'm just going to take some money off you so that you can come and work for me. I mean, where else would you do that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, nowhere. But in that instance too, because they did have to go through, I imagine, some kind of settlement is it when there's a tainting to their name because they did go through that process when in America if you were to sue an employer, even if you have all the right to there's just something about They've done that and so other employers are a little bit more hesitant to hire them.
Speaker 1:They don't know it. Yeah, no, they don't know it. It's always kept quiet, yeah that's the only. Yeah, yeah, because the groom says, oh, my career's over, for I report them Absolute rubbish, complete rubbish. Why? Because that employer is never going to put their hand up and say, oh, I've just been investigated.
Speaker 2:It's like yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, I've done something really naughty. Everyone I'm going to, because the employer very rarely wins. I mean, it's not a settlement, it's a prosecutable offense. Let's be clear, it's fraud. It has to be walked out in, only that way. So if you pay, you're supposed to pay somebody. Let's just say 10 pound, 42 an hour, right, and you pay them basically six pounds an hour. You're taking money from that person. It's the law.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You have a minimum wage in the US. You do right. Yeah, we do.
Speaker 2:It's famously low, but it's creeping up and it's changes state to state. It used to be like $6. I think now it's like $8 or something like that. It's pretty bad, but like America's compared to Australia and the UK and stuff it's In a lot of states in America. The power is with the employer.
Speaker 4:There are a lot of states that are right to work, states meaning that you, as an employee, can be terminated for basically no reason.
Speaker 2:You can be terminated on the spot without cause, at any point, with no documentation, just because you're just lucky to have a job.
Speaker 1:The same is actually within the UK as in the contract of employment Only if, within your first two years of employment, your contract can be terminated for no reason Unless Two years. Wow, yeah, two years. People don't realise that Australia is only three months. Yeah, no, two years. So you could be working somewhere for one year and nine months and the employer could go and say I just don't really want you anymore or I don't like you anymore, and they can terminate your employment, as long as they're not being discriminatory.
Speaker 2:Right Gotcha.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's another aspect of it too. If an employer did terminate someone from discrimination, then yeah, they absolutely are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a whole different kettle of fish.
Speaker 4:Because we do have. I just did a quick Google. It's the federal minimum wage in the States is $7.25 an hour, but apparently there are certain states that have a $15 per hour minimum wage, yeah, so we can jump to FEI?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because we've got to finish up here. So the FEI, so the International Groups Association, just to give them a shout out because it sounds like they're doing some great stuff.
Speaker 1:So you said they approached you originally to set up the IGA, yeah, so how it happened was that the new president of the FEI after Princess Hire stepped down in Mardavos. He was actually groomed himself many years ago and he wrote a manifesto when he came in and within his manifesto, the things he was going to do. One of them was that he wanted to give the grooms a voice. These were his idea, his words give the grooms a voice and help them to form that own organisation. So he started off by giving the grooms a voice and he held a couple of what he called grooms meetings, where he got a small gaggle of grooms into the room and he met and gave them all a baseball cap and off they went. He didn't invite me and that was fine. I heard about it and I was like, okay, cool, yeah, fine. I had already a mother back in my mind decided that it was time that the FEI level grooms had their own voice, and I had approached someone at the FEI and said listen, what do you think about this? And I was told the FEI will never fund the formation of any organisation. All right, fine. This was before I met Ingla, anyhow. So then there was another meeting and Tim had away. Who is within the FEI team is an old friend of mine. We worked together at London 2012 and Tim said to Ingla de Vos I think you should invite Lucy along. She's the world leader in groups. Invite her along. So I got invited along and that was a very nice meeting and lots of people talked a lot. There was a lot of talk that I used to work for so, and so I used to work for this one.
Speaker 1:I did this when I did that back in Bankam you know all of that kind of business and I'm just so sad. I go to my chair just going like this, thinking, oh my God, I've come all the way to Switzerland for this. And Ingla swung around in his chair and he said, ok, lucy, what do you think? And I said, well, I've got a little presentation, can I do it? And he was like, yeah, sure, and I just went, because I prepped it up and I went this is what you should be doing.
Speaker 1:He spun his chair around and he looked at me and he's like, ok, well, we need to do this. Then and he said, ok, you've got to give me some money. You've got to give me a lot of money, because this takes time, my time, and I'm not a volunteer anymore, done that and years of volunteering and you've got to give me some money to make this happen. And he went I'll give you the money. So it was not that simple, because I then had to present to the sports forum, to the board and to others. It was a bit like Dragonstone. I don't know if you have the same thing like crowdfunding not really crowdfunding. I was pitching for the Dosh to do it yeah that's our line I haven't heard the
Speaker 4:word.
Speaker 2:Dosh, since I moved to America it's been like eight years.
Speaker 4:I don't know. I've never heard that word, dosh is slaying for cash.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:But you know what, listen, I'm going to be honest with you, he is an absolute star. I saved his butt because he wanted it done and I came in and I did it. And then it was kind of COVID and that screwed everything up and that was like, ok, covid, right. And then I kind of was working with I mean, I must say, the people I work with at the FBI. I have a lot of high regard for them. I really do. I enjoy a lot working with them. They're a great gang, very supportive of grooms, very supportive of me and my team at the IGA. And then I got this kind of message I was working on major events, because I do that in my spare time. I was working on the G7 and COP26 and I was very busy COVID, post COVID, summer. And then I got this kind of call saying, oh, you are going to launch the IGA at the sports forum, aren't you? And I'm like, yeah when is that?
Speaker 1:Oh, april, this was like November. Oh, ok, go faster. And anyway, I understood why they wanted me to launch it then because it was the FBI's 100 year anniversary, remember, and they really wanted to make it a really big deal that the FBI had supported the grooms to launch the grooms association. But there was one other thing that was really important was that we signed a memorandum of understanding, an MOU, between the FBI and between the IGA, which was really significant, a real moment of history a bit massive to say, but it really was between the grooms and the FBI, and what it basically meant was that the grooms now had a voice within the FBI and were now a stakeholder within the group. So that was massive.
Speaker 2:Which makes sense right, Because the grooms are the grace that make the Axles turn.
Speaker 1:Of course, yeah. And then we had this really beautiful party. It was so well done, this 100 party, and it was really the first party anybody had been to post COVID. So there were lots of drinks, I'm not going to lie, and it was wonderful. It was a wonderful party and a complete surprise because none of us knew it. But Thomas Bach was there, president of the IOC, and as a full time gamer, me, I like anything Olympics.
Speaker 1:So I have this amazing picture of me being introduced to Thomas Bach with him wearing a face mask. Can you tell a tip? It says my designer. Can you get rid of the mask? He's like no yeah.
Speaker 2:I wanted to chat to you but he was like remove the mask.
Speaker 1:One moment in time and he's wearing a flipping heavy duty COVID mask. But what actually happened was that, within his speech, he said in his words I am so pleased that the grooms now have a voice. But he challenged him. He said but why did they take the FBI 100 years to achieve this? Yeah, and everybody in the room cheered. And it was absolutely true, because it was so overdue, because of me having the experience to do it. We done it and now we have to get those international grooms to join their association for just $10. It's nothing, whatever it is $15.
Speaker 1:It's so cheap. But it's about and that really is about a voice and that they must join.
Speaker 2:Did you ever see the movie too big to fail?
Speaker 1:No, I haven't.
Speaker 2:There's a scene at the end. It's about the financial crisis 2008. That's like all the episodes isn't it?
Speaker 2:No, no, it's another one. But essentially, the very last scene of the movie is when the Federal Reserve has basically said we're going to handle this money out to the banks. And they're like, oh my God. We're like, thank God, we've saved the economy. And one of the staffers goes they will lend the money out, right? And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, of course they'll lend the money out. I feel like that's with you. It's like you've done it all. You've got the association, You've got the NRU, You've got the funding. It's like, but the grooms will sign off, right? It's like, yeah, of course they'll sign off. So that's the next challenge, right?
Speaker 1:And you've got to get them to lend out the money.
Speaker 4:That's the challenge.
Speaker 1:That's the challenge.
Speaker 4:So the challenge is just getting the word, continuing to get the word out, and not only that, but getting people to just sign, just sign up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, we're in the early stages, it's cool, it's cool. So I think we're done, because I'm on the time scale, so absolutely.
Speaker 2:That was amazing. Thank you so much for your time this morning, lucy, it was great.
Speaker 4:And everyone finds you in your organizations.
Speaker 1:Oh, just Google. British Grooms Association, the Equestrian Employers Association and International Grooms Association.
Speaker 2:All that money's spent on SEO. There we go, yeah.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for listening to the latest episode of the Pegasus Podcast. As you heard from our mid-roll, we are also releasing an equestrian event management software platform and now it's easier than ever to host, sign up and sponsor for any equestrian event in the world, thanks to all the features of the Pegasus app. To sign up, go to our homepage at wwwthepegasusapp. That is wwwthepegasusapp. See you next time.
