Labor Cruelty Inside Dubai, the City of Gold

February 17, 2022

Ninety percent of Dubai's residents are migrant workers, many of whom are experiencing abuse from their employers.

Construction Workers on the Promenade of Dubai. Paul Keller. CC BY 2.0

Dubai is known as the city of gold due to its rapid growth, from a global gulf port to a busy business city center. Migrant workers arrive from Asia, Africa and different parts of the Middle East through the sponsorship program kafala. The program gives employers the permits necessary to hire foreign labor workers and gives employers complete control over the legal status of whom they’ve hired. In some cases, this causes a power imbalance among the employer and employee relationship. In addition to being exploited through the sponsorship program, migrant workers have accused employers of various forms of abuse.

Migrant workers often arrive in Dubai in hopes of making a steady income to provide for their families back home. Dubai has a high demand for labor workers and provides better opportunities to migrant workers. Therefore, they take on jobs in construction or domestic work, such as nannying, housekeeping or other household services. At times, they’re promised a higher wage or a different job description; however, after arriving, that promise was broken. Migrant workers receive their wages on a monthly basis and are required to work weekends, with an average of 16-21 hour days. Overworked migrants cannot leave the job until their contract is terminated, as those are the conditions under the kafala sponsorship. If one decides to leave, the employer can have the worker sent to prison for six months, deported and/or fined $27,225 for not abiding by the contract.

Migrant Worker Cleaning a Mall in Dubai. Iwona Rege. BY-ND 2.0

This very strict rule under the kafala sponsorship forces employees to continue working under very stressful conditions. Fear of what could happen to them binds them to their employer until the contract is completed. Due to these conditions, migrant workers have complained that employers have not paid them their wages, delayed the wages or have had their passports taken from them; preventing them from leaving. At Dubai’s Expo 2020, migrant workers claimed their employers violated UAE labor laws, with one interviewee saying, “the way they treat the staff is like slaves, I mean modern day slavery.” Women have reported being raped by their employer as well as family members for the home they work in. However, there has been no action taken against these accused employers.

With the pandemic, cases got worse as most employers did not pay the migrant workers their wages. The lack of income left workers stranded in Dubai with no money to fly back home or provide themselves with basic needs. A Sri Lankan embassy source based in Dubai said, “the two most common complaints from the worker are that employers don’t give them salaries and that they are harassed either physically, sexually or verbally.” The UAE has settled requirements that help protect migrant workers rights, yet there has been non-compliance and no way to ensure workers are not being abused and/or taken advantage of.

To Get Involved: The organization Migrant-Rights advocates the rights of migrant workers affected by the kafala sponsorship program. They also assist migrant workers who need assistance.

To learn more click here.

To support Migrant-Rights’ organization click here.

Amid COVID-19, Garment Workers Are Asking Employers to #PayUp

December 3, 2020

While the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed down many sectors of the economy, online sales have spiked—as well as the vulnerability of many laborers working with little to no safety net.

Sweatshop workers mass producing fabrics for below average wages. Marissa Orton. CC BY-SA 2.0.

Since the beginning of COVID-19 lockdowns, e-commerce has reaped significant monetary benefits. In the United States alone, online sales rose 43% in September, totaling $60.4 billion. Though online shops gained countless new customers, not all in the industry were celebrating.

Since March, many frontline workers have been laid off. For example, the American startup company Everlane, a clothing line that promises “radical transparency,” came under fire for terminating workers who attempted to start a labor union amid the pandemic. Despite founder Michael Preysman’s statement that the layoffs were “the hardest decision we’ve ever had to make,” non-management employees called them out. Those who held leadership positions in the company retained most of their salaries.

Across the globe, COVID-19 has weakened both the bargaining power and socioeconomic mobility of garment workers. Its consequences have been especially devastating for those in developing nations. In India, the closure of schools has led around 80,000 children to begin working as laborers. If unaddressed, the pandemic could set the country back decades on child exploitation. With limited options, families are often strong-armed by traffickers into believing their children will lead better lives in the big city. Many never see their families again.

As a European Trade Union Institute article reported, COVID-19 did not break labor rights; it only revealed how broken the system already was. In Leicester, England, predominantly female and migrant sweatshop workers from Eastern Europe, Bangladesh and Pakistan faced wages as low as $4.50 an hour, received threats and humiliation, and were even denied bathroom breaks.. A June report from Labour Behind the Label found that online fashion retailer Boohoo’s Leicester factory was operating at 100% capacity despite lockdown orders. In the same month, the company projected that its shares had increased by 22%.Some feel that fast-fashion workers are stuck in a lose-lose situation. A Bloomberg report found that the closure of roughly 1,090 garment factories in Bangladesh amounted to an economic loss of $1.5 billion. Workers were not entitled to unemployment benefits, rendering them even more vulnerable in the face of pandemic uncertainties. A Solidarity Center article found that because of social distancing measures, workers’ ability to unionize and collectively bargain for their rights was severely limited.

Not all hope is lost, however. COVID-19 has created opportunities for critical change. As online sales have gone up, so has social media usage. In March, after notable labels such as Nike, Gap and Levi’s had canceled billions of orders, the nonprofit organization Remake revealed the plight of garment workers through the #PayUp movement. Stores like H&M and Zara were pressured into compensating their suppliers for orders that had already been produced, passing that money on to workers. While the fight is far from over, garment workers’ future may become brighter as consumers take a longer glance at the fast-fashion industry

How To Get Involved:

The Awaj Foundation is a woman-led organization based on addressing gender-based violence in the garment industry. It supports workers from Bangladesh. For more information on ways to support it, click here.
Based in Los Angeles, the Garment Worker Center aims to restore agency and dignity back to workers currently strong-armed by sweatshop conditions. To learn more, visit its website here.

Ethiopian Migrant Workers Left More Vulnerable After Devastating Explosion in Beirut

August 13, 2020

On Aug. 4, two massive explosions in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, sent a shock wave that destroyed many neighborhoods, killed more than 200 people, injured 6,000 and left approximately 250,000 homeless. The tragedy struck a country that is already suffering from a major economic crisis, an increase in COVID-19 cases, and the corruption and negligence of the Lebanese government—corruption which led to the deadly explosion. Reports emerged that the government knew about the over 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate, which is used to build bombs, and left it unattended and unsecured for six years.

As the Lebanese people’s anger boiled over, protests calling for an end to the political elite erupted, leading to the resignation of the majority of the Lebanese government. According to The Wall Street Journal, on Aug. 10 Prime Minister Hassan Diab addressed the nation in a televised address: “I set out to combat corruption, but I discovered that corruption is bigger than the state. I declare today the resignation of this government. God bless Lebanon.”

But according to Foreign Policy, “the public is unlikely to be appeased by the resignation of Diab’s government” as “the rest of the country’s political elites, the sectarian warlords of the civil war era and their descendants, clinging to positions of privilege, are still busy looking for scapegoats.” As the public continues to fight for the fall of the regime, it is hoped that not only will the Lebanese benefit, but so too will the migrant workers whose plight worsens as crises continue to befall the country.

According to The New Arab, “around 250,000 migrants work as housekeepers, nannies and carers in Lebanese homes.” Most of the workers are women, many of whom immigrated from Ethiopia and the Philippines, according to The Associated Press. The migrant workers do not have labor law protections as they were brought in through the kafala system, an exploitative and abusive sponsorship system used in Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The migrant workers are vulnerable to exploitation as the countries that practice the kafala system offer little to no protection for migrant workers—their right to work and legal presence is entirely dependent on their employer. The migration sponsorship system “increases their risk of suffering labor exploitation, forced labor and trafficking, and leaves them with little prospect of obtaining redress,” according to Amnesty International.

The ongoing economic crisis in Lebanon, along with the spike in COVID-19 cases, has made an already dire situation worse for migrant workers. According to Amnesty International, “many have reported that the value of their salaries has decreased by around a third because of the currency crash.” Their salaries were already as little as $150 per month before the severe economic crisis and pandemic, according to France 24. In June, BBC reported that more than 100 Ethiopian migrant domestic workers were fired and left homeless outside their country’s consulate in Beirut after their employers claimed they could no longer afford to pay their maids.

Now, the explosions have left the domestic workers even more vulnerable. CNN reported, “In the aftermath, rights groups are warning that this vulnerable group is facing dire situations as many of them are stranded in the country and unable to go home.” Activists like Farah Salka of Lebanon’s Anti-Racism Movement are fighting for the migrant workers’ rights. Salka told CNN, “They are running from one escalating situation to the other and it is an endless stream of trauma. They have faced COVID, economic crisis, airport closure, quarantine restrictions in often hostile conditions and they want to go home.”

Finding a way home is proving difficult for the Ethiopian migrants. According to Middle East Eye, “Ethiopia has tripled the price of repatriation for its citizens in Lebanon to $1,450, including flights and mandatory quarantine, further prohibiting the return of dozens of women stranded and destitute outside its Beirut consulate.” This is approximately a $900 increase from a May 21 article from Quartz Africa which reported, “Ethiopia’s consulate had collected $550 registration fees for the repatriation flights.”

People on social media are calling for better treatment of migrant workers in Lebanon after footage showed an Ethiopian migrant worker saving a young child from shattered glass as the second explosion erupted in the capital. Lebanese journalist Luna Safwan tweeted, “Migrant worker grabs toddler and saves her from shattered glass and windows as the second big explosion erupted in Beirut earlier today. She did not even think. Migrant workers deserve better in #Lebanon – this woman is a hero.”

Asiya Haouchine

is an Algerian-American writer who graduated from the University of Connecticut in May 2016, earning a BA in journalism and English. She was an editorial intern and contributing writer for Warscapes magazine and the online/blog editor for Long River Review. She is currently studying for her Master’s in Library and Information Science. @AsiyaHaou

CHINA: The Human Cost of Electronics

April 25, 2017

This short documentary reveals the hazards of the electronics industry in China profiling workers poisoned by chemicals and their struggle for compensation.

Thousands of young people in China enter export factories to make the West's favorite electronic gadgets, only to find they have contracted occupational diseases or worse, leukemia, by the age of 25.