UAE Rejects Unions
Posted on December 11, 2008
You know things are bad in the United Arab Emirates when The Times publishes an article which condemns the exploitation of migrant workers, racism and lack of political freedoms.
Fans of Dubai often witter on about the lack of crime and the affordable luxury but this comes at a heavy price. The economy — which may turn out to have been literally and metaphorically built on sand — has been propped up by imported labourers who work six or six and a half days a week on 12-hour shifts, toiling in the desert sun for a daily wage that often amounts to no more than the cost of a pint of beer. The city also has no elections and no political parties. And in the UAE it is quite acceptable for employers to specify the preferred nationality or gender of applicants in job advertisements and for Europeans to be paid more than Filipinos or Indians who are doing the same work.
The migrant labourers who build Dubai’s shining towers, are kept out of sight and out of mind in employer-run labour camps well away from cash-cow tourists, and authorities routinely crack down on worker protests against non-paid and low wages and shoddy living conditions, deporting ‘trouble-makers’.
The UAE has just rejected calls to legalise trade unions for foreign workers. The goverment claims that it has already done enough to protect workers’ rights, with measures against people trafficking and to ensure faster payment of wages. The linked article points out the obvious corollary, that the Gulf ruling classes are afraid of the power of organised labour at the head of a large mass of exploited, dissatisfied, imported workers.
