Based on extensive interviews with workers,
government officials and business representatives,
the 71-page report,
"Building
Towers, Cheating Workers" documents
serious abuses of construction workers by employers
in the UAE. These abuses include unpaid or extremely
low wages, several years of indebtedness to
recruitment agencies for fees that UAE law says only
employers should pay, the withholding of employees’
passports, and hazardous working conditions that
result in apparently high rates of death and injury.
After a string of highly publicized strikes and
labor demonstrations earlier this year, the UAE
government promised to respect workers’ rights by
legalizing trade unions and vigorously enforcing the
country’s labor laws, which are relatively good on
paper. But the Human Rights Watch report
demonstrates that the government has still failed to
do so. Human Rights Watch found no public record of
an employer in the construction industry forced to
pay a substantial fine or suffer any criminal
liability even when found guilty of violating labor
law.
The UAE is currently undergoing a dramatic
construction boom, and nearly all of the more than
500,000 construction workers in the country are
migrants, mostly from South Asian countries such as
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The country’s
2,738,000 migrant workers make up 95% of the
country’s workforce.
“Hundreds of gleaming towers have risen on the backs
of migrants working in highly exploitative
conditions,” said Whitson.
On October 27, Human Rights Watch communicated its
findings and recommendations to the UAE government
in a letter. Shortly thereafter, on November 7, the
prime minister ordered the labor minister to
immediately institute reforms based on Human Rights
Watch’s recommendations. Specifically, the prime
minister’s decree directed the labor minister to set
up a special labor court to resolve labor disputes,
increase the number of government inspectors,
require employers to provide health insurance for
low-skilled workers, and develop mandatory
mechanisms enabling workers to collect unpaid wages.
Human Rights Watch welcomed this swift response and
inherent acknowledgement of the problem of abuse.
Employers based in the UAE import foreign
construction workers through recruiting agencies
located both inside and outside of the UAE.
Recruiting agencies unlawfully force workers, rather
than their employers, to pay US$2,000-3,000 for
travel, visas, government fees and the recruiters’
own services. To pay these fees, all of the 60
workers interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported
that they had accepted loans from their recruiting
agents at steep monthly interest rates as high as
10%. As a result, workers start out burdened with
huge debts and use the most of their meager wages to
repay these loans during the first two to three
years of their employment.
While UAE law explicitly prohibits domestic
recruiting agents from charging workers for such
expenses, both recruiting agents and employers
openly flout this law. Recruiters in the UAE told
Human Rights Watch that they act as conduits between
the workers and employers by extracting fees from
the workers and handing them over to employers, who
in turn submit them to the government as their own
payment for official licenses.
“The government says that workers are free to leave
the UAE if they’re unhappy,” said Whitson. “But with
thousands of dollars of debt hanging over their
heads and no options for a new job, the reality is
these workers don’t have much choice.”
Human Rights Watch found that employers routinely
withhold construction workers’ wages for a minimum
of two months along with their passports, as
“security” to keep them from quitting. The report
also documented cases where employers have withheld
wages for even more extended periods. Workers are
desperate for their wages, but are trapped due to
their debts; and UAE law prohibits a worker from
obtaining a new job without their old employer’s
consent. While the government in many cases has
forced companies to pay back wages, there is no
public record of a single case where it has
penalized an employer with fines or imprisonment for
failing to pay wages, or any other breaches of the
labor law.
The wages of construction workers, which range from
$106 to $250 per month, contrast starkly with the
national average wage of $2,106 per month. Many
recent workers’ protests have centered on demands
for better wages. Although the UAE Labor Law of 1980
requires the government to implement a minimum wage,
it has failed to do so for the past 26 years.
“The UAE government needs to implement criminal and
financial penalties against employers and recruiting
agents who continue to charge workers recruiting and
travel fees and withhold their wages and passports,”
said Whitson.
Hundreds of migrant construction workers die each
year in the UAE under unexplained circumstances. The
government can account only for a few of these
deaths, primarily because it appears not to enforce
its own laws requiring employers to report worksite
deaths and injuries. In 2004 alone, the embassies of
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh returned the bodies
of 880 construction workers back to their home
countries. Yet the Dubai emirate, the only emirate
to keep a count of migrant worker deaths, recorded
only 34 construction deaths that year, based on
reports from only six companies.
The government does not allow workers to form
organizations or trade unions. As a result, there
are no institutional mechanisms for advocating on
behalf of workers’ rights. During the past two
years, thousands of migrant construction workers
have resorted to public demonstrations. In March,
the government promised to legalize trade unions by
the end of the year, but instead, in September it
passed a new law banning labor strikes and
announcing that it would deport striking workers.
“We hope that the government’s new promise to
enforce its labor laws does not share the same fate
as its broken promise to legalize trade unions,”
said Whitson
Human Rights Watch called on the UAE, as a member of
the International Labor Organization, to implement
and respect fundamental workers’ rights, including
the right to freedom of association and collective
bargaining and the right to strike. Human Rights
Watch urged the government to implement its existing
laws to protect and promote workers’ rights.
In addition, Human Rights Watch urged the
governments of the United States, European Union
countries and Australia, which are currently engaged
in free trade negotiations with the UAE, to ensure
that respect for workers’ fundamental rights is a
cornerstone of any forthcoming
agreements. (Source: HRW)
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The prime minister’s decree to protect worker’s rights is a welcome step in the right direction. But unless the government starts to hold employers accountable for breaking the law, the UAE’s colossal new skyscrapers will be known for monumental labor violations. 
