...Or Does It Explode?

Tell the UAE regime what you think of their proposed new labor law

In response to growing international protest over the total lack of labor rights in the UAE, the Emirates regime is proposing an amended labor law - and asking for public feedback. Check out the site here - and lodge your own complaint.

Needless to say, the proposed law doesn't have much bite (e.g., no right to organize or strike), all the more tragic in a country where an estimated 95% of the workers are non-citizens. Yes, do a double-take. 95% of workers in the UAE are not citizens and thus denied any basic rights under UAE law. For a complete take-down of the weak legislation, see Human Rights Watch recent press release.

Sad Photo: Indonesian Maids Returning Home from Saudi

This Flickr photo has a caption that - while it cannot be verified - describes a phenomenon that is all to real:

This was quite sad... We were waiting for our plane to Dubai and there was a lone Indonesian woman sat behind us. She was obviously waiting for a plane to take her back home after a stint in Saudi Arabia. I didn't notice her until airport security escorted the one on the right in and sat her next to the other one. They immediately recognized each other and started crying, wailing and hugging each other. I know I don't speak Indonesian but I could tell that the one on the right was telling the other one about what was obviously a traumatic experience. It was an intensely emotional reunion of sorts. I realized that they must have known each other before Saudi and hadn't seen each other in what was probably years.

These women are imported to Saudi as housemaids to look after Saudi families. They are treated like slaves and face daily abuse on varying levels. Many are beaten up or raped by the men in the family. They have no interaction with anyone outside the family, cannot report crimes to the police, and don't even get to see anyone in their own community.

They are essentially slave-labour. Human rights do not exist for them.

I had to take this picture.

80,000 Sri Lankans Stranded in Lebanon

The US media has been vividly chronicling the evacuation of American citizens from Lebanon. But far outstripping the Western nationals in Lebanon are Sri Lankans, according to a BBC report. In fact, 80,000 Sri Lankans - mostly domestic workers - are trapped in Lebanon (plus an additional 30,000 Filipino migrant workers).

During the Cedar Revolution protests there were photos going around that showed a few Lebanese women attending the rallies with their Sri Lankan maids, who dutifully held protest signs on behalf of their employers. Indeed, the substantial South Asian population providing menial labor to thousands of households in Lebanon has been a sort of invisible group, a sad fact compounded amidst the ongoing bombing.

Padma, 22, described her terror to the BBC News website. "We tried to go away, but the employers won't let us. We have been so very scared," she said.

"They won't give us our passports. They want me to continue working here and they won't pay me the rest of my salary if I go now. I have been working for one-and-a-half years but I have only got three months' pay."

...Fellow domestic helper Menika, 21, said that her employers were withholding her passport because they didn't want her to make her own way to Beirut, fearing for her safety.

...Sri Lanka's ambassador to Lebanon, Amanul Farooq, said: "Unfortunately, this story is not uncommon. Many employers are very good and have brought their charges to safety. But some refuse to give people their passports and pay their salaries. We have had domestic helpers run away and come to us leaving all their documentation behind. Others are in a terrible plight because their employers have left them at home and escaped."

The Sri Lankan embassy has already evacuated 300 nationals and is processing about 1,000 more. But Mr Farooq says it is proving very difficult to get access to the tens of thousands across the country. There are estimated to be 80,000 Sri Lankan nationals in Lebanon, the vast majority of these employed as domestic helpers typically earning $100 a month.

...Hemalatha, 30, a domestic helper left at the refuge by her employers had only bitterness. "I have been dumped here. My husband is blind and I have to support my children. There is no work for me back home," she said.

Worker Discontent in Dubai

Labor unrest in the UAE is continuing to attract international attention. Recall that this is a country where only one third of the residents are citizens, and where the two-thirds majority depend on a "citizen" sponsor to retain their jobs. Most of that rights-less majority work for little pay and in poor conditions to construct the gleaming skyscrapers of the magic kingdom:

On the outskirts of the city, where the desert begins, are the concrete barracks where the workers live, thousand upon thousand of them.

Dubai is being built virtually from scratch - 20 years ago few of these gleaming towers existed - and the men building it are migrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. They work for about $5 a day, sleep four or five to a room, and see their families once every two or three years because it's hard to raise the money to pay for a trip home...

"Many of the workers suffer great stress and depression," says KV Shamsudeen, an Indian businessman, who has set up a charitable trust on their behalf. He says many of the workers have to take out loans in order to pay an agent in their home country to find them a job, even though this type of commission is illegal...

There's little that workers in the United Arab Emirates can do to improve their lot. Strikes are illegal, although there have been several recently. And because there is no right of association, there are no trade unions. So when, for example, pay is late, there is little the men can do about it. The lack of redress also means that smaller grievances - like having to wait an hour at the end of the day to clock off - can suddenly boil over into violence.

However things look as though they might be about to change. The UAE government is sensitive to criticism. In 2004, for example, it ordered a magazine to withdraw from circulation an edition in which it had published information on the number of men killed on construction sites...

The government has now responded by saying that a new labour law being drawn up will allow workers to organise. Current plans, according to the minister of labour, envisage a single union with separate representatives for different industries. The minister has said he expects the proposed law to be in place by the end of the year.

Let's see if the labor minister remains true to his word.

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Rumblings on Labor Abuse in the Gulf

Interesting posts by a "nobody" at Aqoul and by Chan'ad advance discussion on the factors behind the growing labor rights protests in the Gulf. A poster under the handle "nobody" provides some background:

Since the 1960s, each decade has seen a large rise in the numbers of expatriates in the Gulf. Proportions vary between the various countries, but the numbers are highest in the UAE, where non-citizens account for some 85% of the population and over 90% of the workforce (including 98% of the private sector).

...All expatriates working in the Gulf require local sponsors in order to obtain work visas. Changing sponsors is a difficult and expensive task, when it is permitted at all. This practice has ensured that workers remain tied to one company, come what may. Employers have often abused the law (and the very weak labour inspection regime) by not paying workers their meager wages – just $150 per month in some cases – for months on end. Workers, who usually support families in their home countries, are then put into a desperate situation.

...Since many construction companies are owned by powerful people, including members of the royal families, the names of delinquent companies are often not printed in the press, if protests are reported at all. The government is often in cahoots with these companies... The owners are never personally punished for their crimes.

...It has thus far been illegal for workers to organize or employ collective bargaining in order to improve their conditions, and this is at the heart of the problem... Workers have no other means of voicing discontent, and the government  prefers not to be embarassed by public protests.

...Workers throughout the Gulf are still largely confined to squalid labour camps on the outskirts of cities, where they are invisible to the general populace. Some categories of low-paid workers live in houses where as many as 12 people share a room in order to save on rent, but they risk being caught by the police and deported for overcrowding... Municipalities have designated these areas as being exclusively for ‘families’ - anyone but single men earning low wages. Much of this discrimination seems unlikely to vanish soon, as seen in a recent decision in Sharjah to prevent members of the working class from using public parks.

Chan'ad, meanwhile, looks into reports that the recent spate of protests has been the result of "behind-the-scenes organisation and coordination taking place among workers, rather than just spontaneous outbreaks of protest." A recent article in the Guardian sheds some light:

The construction workers, packed together inside the tiny hut in one of Dubai’s harsh desert labour camps, are breaking the most fundamental of all the draconian laws governing immigrants within the United Arab Emirates - they are holding a union meeting, a practice that is banned in all but one of the Gulf States. They are also plotting their next move in protest at their treatment by their Arab employers who, they claim, exploit them for cheap labour. It’s a move that will, for the first time, involve direct confrontation with the millions of tourists who visit the city every year. They plan to shame foreigners into taking notice of their plight...

According to 36-year-old Kamal (not his real name), who spearheaded the Burj Dubai protest, more needs to be done. ‘These protests received attention in the press and were forgotten about, we need to do more. I was involved in a sit-down protest on the motorway last month, but the police came along with sticks and beat us on the backs and head. Many of my friends were hospitalised and deported. The riot got a lot of attention, but things haven’t improved for us. We already know what we have to do next, we take our protests into the malls and to the beaches. Our situation needs international attention and only by unsettling tourists can we achieve this. They need to see how desperate we really are.’

Chan'ad then makes a great point about the growing international stature of Gulf states being a potential asset to civil rights organizers:

As Dubai and the other Gulf countries try to raise their international profiles, the migrant workers too indavertently gain some leverage. And if the Guardian article is accurate, then the workers (or some of them at least) are already very much aware of this international leverage and intend to make use of it. I hope Dubai and the Gulf governments do the smart thing before things really get out of hand.

In lands where workers are barred by law from living in certain areas, where they lack the basic right to organize, and where they remain at the mercy of local sponsors - there is at last hope for significant change. Civil rights activists have an unprecedented window to organize and pressure regime's eager for international embrace. It's inspiring to hear labor organizers on the ground are already at work. They deserve our support.

More Labor Protests in Dubai

While massive strikes in France garner international headlines, Chan'ad points out that workers continue to strike in the UAE - a country where labor unions are outright banned (imagine the outrage if Chirac banned labor unions in France!). Just yesterday the Gulf News reported on the latest strike:

Hundreds of workers from the Dubai Contracting Company (DCC) refused to work yesterday after their colleague, Sayed Murad Ali Shah, 35, died of an electric shock on Thursday night at the Millennium Tower site on Shaikh Zayed Road. They said Khan did not receive any medical attention for at least an hour.

The article also includes a timeline of protests from the past two weeks in Dubai:

March 28: 300 workers protest at Al Jaddaf Port for two months' wages.

March 27: About 600 labourers illegally hired to work on a Palm Jumeirah site refuse to work after their company deducted Dh150 from their monthly salary of Dh750 to pay for meals.

March 21 to 22: Thousands of workers from Al Naboudah Laing O'Rourke smash cars and windows of company offices to demand better wages.

Across the Persian/Arabian Gulf straits, bus drivers are striking in Tehran - in another context where labor unions are banned. By regional standards, this is a "workers unite" explosion. Is a spectre haunting the Gulf? Karl Marx, call your agent.

Tehran Bus Boycott - and Solidarity Rallies for Striking Drivers

It's a fascinating new grassroots campaign that's quietly gathering steam and picking up international support: the Tehran Bus Boycott.

The essence of the story is a strike by Iranian bus drivers and the subsequent crackdown on them by the Iranian regime. The 17,000-strong Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (the "Sherkat-e Vahed," which is not recognized by the government) called a strike on January 28 to protest the arrest of the union's President, Mansour Osanloo, who was arrested in late 2005 during a union meeting. At the strike rally, Iranian authorities arrested hundreds of the striking bus drivers. (See background here and here.)

Now the international labor unions are picking up their cause. For example, the US Teamsters Union is getting involved, joining a protest rally last week outside the Iranian Interest Section in Washington, DC:

Dozens of Teamsters participated in an International Day of Action at the Iranian Interest Section to demand the release of hundreds of imprisoned Iranian bus drivers. The drivers were arrested after police brutally cracked down on a planned January 28 strike.

“We call on the Iranian government to recognize the bus drivers’ right to form a union,” said Jim Hoffa, Teamsters General President. “We demand that the Iranian government release imprisoned union members and return all fired drivers to work immediately and unconditionally."

So in Damascus it's the poultry workers protesting, in Benghazi it's rioting youth fed up with Libya's "Pharaoh," and in Tehran it's the bus drivers. Behind the headlines, the region is bubbling in all sorts of unlikely places. Now it would be good to see more solidarity rallies like last week's labor protest in DC.

"Mafi Wasta" Takes on the UAE Gov't

"In a country of untold wealth, where many live an Arabian dream, many more live an Arabian nightmare."

It's quite an opening line - and it's reflects the in-your-face but clever attitude of the hippest Middle East civil rights initiatives: Mafi Wasta (loosely translated, as the site indicates, as "zero influence").

The site leads a grassroots campaign to get the UAE regime to sign onto the International Labor Organization's conventions 87 and 98, which guarantee freedom of association. That basic right is denied in the UAE (and many other Gulf states) today and thus prevents workers in the UAE from forming unions. And given that a good 66+% of the UAE are non-citizen workers, it means depriving most of the people living in the country a basic right.

Aside from being a worthy cause, the site - which features a petition you can sign - is also a fun read with its snarky tone. Here's a taste of the FAQ from the "About Us" section:

...That’s not very radical?

Maybe not, but we don’t think smashing up a Starbucks outlet in Dubai is going to do anyone, least of all the people we intend to help, any favours. 

Plus you’d probably get thrown in jail for smashing up a nice coffee shop.

Exactly.

Did I not read somewhere that they were considering ratifying some international labour laws anyway?

Well spotted. They are said to be considering it under pressure from the US and the WTO (who have allowed them to be members since 1996 despite their appalling labour laws and dodgy human rights record).

So what's the point of this site then?

Well a) they haven't done it yet and b) even if they finally do, that doesn't excuse what has gone on here for over 30 years. If nothing else this site serves to highlight the abuses that go on. We also think it important that the companies who operate here, far from the gaze of a critical media, are exposed for their complicity in allowing hundreds of south Asians to be trampled underfoot in this oil-funded free-market stampede. Their fancy codes of ethical conduct aren't much in evidence out here.

What's your mission statement?

Excuse me? We’re not planning to orbit Venus.

Yes but you need a mission statement. Everyone’s got one these days. 

Well we don’t. Don’t believe in them.

But if you had to do one what would it be?

Well if it'll shut you up...

What are you waiting for? Click the link and go check out Mafi Wasta already.

First Official Strike in Qatar

Chan'ad Bahraini is back in Bahrain blogging again - and highlights the first ever official strike in Qatar. Strikes are flat-out illegal in most Persian Gulf states, and workers have few legal protections. But Qatar recently amended its law to allow strikes, and now 600 construction workers (apparently all foreign workers) are striking to protest non-payment of wages.

Though it has received limited press coverage, it's a breakthrough for labor rights in the Gulf. Given that an overwhelming percentage of workers (and residents!) in the Gulf are foreign nationals with few if any legal rights, the growing organizing abilities of the disenfranchised majority could have profound implications.

MORE: For a vivid take on the rampant disenfranchisement of workers in the Gulf, see this Slate article by an NPR reporter: "Thanks for Your Hard Work. Now Get Out!"

I remember arriving in Kuwait for the first time, eager to meet average Kuwaitis. Only one problem—I couldn't find any Kuwaitis, average or otherwise. My taxi driver was Indian, my hotel clerk Filipino, and my bellhop Bangladeshi. Undeterred, I ventured to an outdoor market. It was teeming with people but, again, no Kuwaitis. How, I wondered, could there be no Kuwaitis in Kuwait?

...In several gulf states, including Kuwait, the locals are a minority—a tiny minority—in their own country. Only 17 percent of the population of Dubai, for instance, is local. The rest are foreign workers. You won't find gulf Arabs waiting on tables or, for that matter, managing restaurants. You will find precious few working for travel agents or hotels or anywhere other than the cushiest of government positions.

...The worker can stay in the country only for as long as the sponsor supports him. In some cases, sponsors confiscate the worker's passport, raising valid concerns about indentured servitude. Workers can switch sponsors but not easily and sometimes at great cost. In some gulf countries, foreign workers need exit visas to leave the country. Ostensibly, this is to ensure that they don't leave behind a pile of debt. But in practice it often means that employers can hold workers hostage.

...What happens to a country when most of its workforce is foreign? Many things, it turns out, and none of them good. Arab culture and language are being swamped by the flood of foreigners. In Dubai, for instance, a Moroccan woman I learned about couldn't find a job because she did not speak English. She was, of course, fluent in Arabic, the official language of the United Arab Emirates. More ominously, a bored, underemployed citizenry is ideal fodder for radical Islamic groups.