Migrant rights in the Gulf

Link to Migrant Workers in the Gulf: A Historical Perspective (video and transcript)

What about unemployment?

The American radio program, Morning Edition, wonders:

With some projects facing delays or even cancellation because of the current credit crunch, new questions are being raised. Are Gulf states prepared, for instance, to deal with mass layoffs and huge numbers of unemployed expatriate workers?
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Analyst Mustapha Alani at the Gulf Research Center says he doesn't think people in the oil-producing states of the the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, are prepared for a sharp downturn in development activity — neither the developers, the investors nor the migrant workers who could be hit first and hardest.

"We're talking about 6 million Indian workers employed in the GCC," Alani says. "Possibly 50 percent of this workforce — they're going to lose their jobs in the region. And either they have to stay as illegal immigrants or they have to go back to their country to seek employment."
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Many economists argue that Gulf states have the cash and the incentive to soften the regional impact of the financial crisis, and they doubt that governments here would allow the streets to be flooded with unemployed South Asians if there is a sharp downturn.

But that raises another troubling question: Is Pakistan, already struggling with political unrest and terrorist attacks, ready to absorb millions of unemployed young men back into its population?

Listen or read it all.

From the UAE's point of view, the problem may not be as big as it seems; how much of any reduction in force would be achieved by simply letting contracts expire while slowing the stream of expat laborers into the country?

Laborers come to the UAE on a fixed term contract. I presume their expectation is that the contract is good for the full term. Whether they could enforce the contract is another matter. But it would not be good for the UAE's reputation to abrogate contracts.

It's worth noting the irony here: These workers are better off in the UAE, than back home. They would prefer to stay here. Yet the UAE takes criticism for the low pay and poor working conditions they receive.

The same is true in the US for the low wage workers (legal and otherwise) who come to the US, primarily from Mexico and southward. They are better off in the US even though they are doing jobs Americans will not do. The difference is they are not under contract, and as their jobs go away or pay falls, they are going back to their home countries voluntarily.

The pitfalls of ethnic selection

The UAE has a long way to go correct its "demographic imbalance" -- 50 percent of those living in the country are from India and Pakistan, more than 90 percent of the private sector workforce is foreign, more than 80 percent of the population is foreign, there is about one foreign household servant for every local living in the country, a disproportionate percentage of the foreign workforce is male. The demographic imbalance has bemoaned by locals, but most also are conscious that (1) the oil-fueled building boom in country would not be possible without the foreign workers, (2) few locals are willing to work menial jobs that predominate in the economy nor prepared for many of the few positions requiring specialized skills.

Gulf News today:

Advanced construction techniques that will call for a significantly fewer number of labourers and a scheme under which expatriate students are allowed to take up part-time jobs are among initiatives expected to better shape the demographic structure of the country, a top official said on Monday.

“His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, approved a number of policies submitted by the National Authority for Demographic Structure,” said Lieutenant General Shaikh Saif Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Interior.

Under the new policies, expatriate students will be allowed to take up part-time jobs and a committee will be formed to moot new construction techniques to replace traditional, labour-intensive systems, Shaikh Saif said in a statement issued yesterday.

Shaikh Saif said the government is making serious efforts to address demographic issues and to strike a balance between requirements of development and the national interest and "our right to a safe and promising future which embodies the vision of our leadership and ambitions of the Cabinet."

The Economist is on target in its analysis:

Governments in the booming Gulf Arab states are becoming increasingly anxious at the erosion of their national cultures, as their growing economies suck in ever-larger numbers of expatriate workers. They are now devising a range of measures to limit the growth of segments of the expatriate population—in particular those at the less skilled end of the spectrum—while not impinging on the continued expansion of their economies. The concerns call into question the entire basis of the Gulf development model, entailing ambitious targets for economic growth and diversification, which cannot feasibly be achieved without a substantial increase in the expatriate population.

The problem is most clearly evident in the United Arab Emirates, where expatriates account for more than 90% of the private-sector labour force, and where the population is thought to have grown by almost one-third over the past three-four years. According to the most recent census, whose results were published in 2005, the UAE's population was 4.3m; it is now generally estimated to be about 6m. The UAE government announced in early September that it is setting up a national demographic agency that will be tasked with finding ways to slow down the growth of expatriate labour imports. Among the initial measures that have been proposed is a scheme to allow students who are enrolled in UAE universities and who are the children of foreign residents to take up part-time jobs. This measure appears to be targeted at children of long-term residents from other Arab countries, who have more cultural affinities with Emiratis than do Asian and European residents, who predominate in the expatriate community. The students would be expected to gravitate towards semi-skilled jobs in the services sector that tend to be performed by Asians.

The government is also considering the establishment of ethnic and cultural diversity quotas within companies, so as to prevent certain national groups predominating. Other ideas include changing building codes so as to reduce reliance on foreign construction workers and introducing much more automation into the services sector, for example at petrol filling stations.

However, these measures will have only a marginal impact on the overall size and make-up of the expatriate population. There is no sign of any let-up in the construction activity associated with investment in infrastructure, real estate, tourism, financial services and industry, which suggests that the current total of some 1.5m expatriate building workers is only likely to increase. Once this wave of construction is completed, there will be growing demand for imported services and factory workers to operate and maintain the new hotels, offices, apartment buildings, leisure and cultural centres, transport facilities and industrial plants. The businesses importing the labour are likely to continue to insist on their freedom to recruit from whatever market suits their needs best.

Elsewhere in the Gulf, Bahrain and Kuwait provide examples of the pitfalls of trying to impose ethnic selection in structuring the labour force.

Thanks to The EclectEcon for the pointer to The Economist.

Sharjah tightens regulations on laborer housing

When workers at Dubai company rioted in Sharjah where they were housed by the company it was Sharjah whose name made the international headlines. It's not surprising that the result will be further Balkanization of the UAE economy. Sharjah is no longer willing to house workers on the cheap for companies that employ them in another emirate (read, Dubai). The National has the story:

Two senior members of the Sharjah Government confirmed that the law was in the final stages of approval and just weeks away from coming into effect.

They said they were pursuing the amendment to the current legislation to improve law and order following a series of protests and violent skirmishes over the rising cost of living.

“Most of the companies are in Dubai, but the workers live in Sharjah,” said Sheikh Sultan bin Ahmed, chairman of the Sharjah Commerce and Tourism Development Authority. “The companies will be forced to either register their workers in Sharjah or find new accommodation in Dubai or the other emirates.

“If anything happens, it is usually Sharjah to blame,” said Sheikh Sultan, who added that the number of workers living in the emirate greatly outweighed the number of police officers available to contain labour protests.

However, the move would be unpopular with workers who commuted from Sharjah to escape Dubai’s high rental rates, said Burhan Turkmani, the general manager of the Dubai-based Al Rabiah Trading company, a food importer.

“Sixty per cent of my employees live in Sharjah,” he said. “It’s far too expensive for certain employees to live in Dubai.

“These people, they live there, they spend much of their income in Sharjah, their children go to school in Sharjah, and they only go to Dubai to work. It may be a bit harsh. Food prices and the cost of living are going up, so people are suffering as it is.”

With a more affordable cost of living than Dubai and lower operating costs for worker compounds, Sharjah has attracted thousands of construction labourers. Many are employed in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, where construction is expanding rapidly.

In recent months, Sharjah has been rocked by violent protests.

In April, more than 600 Asian labourers were arrested after a protest in the Al Nahda district. Workers from the Tiger contracting company attacked police with stones and bricks from an upper storey of a building under construction, the emirates news agency WAM reported.

Weeks earlier, about 1,500 rioting workers set alight management offices in a labour camp, clashing with police and officials.

Shehab el Orabi, the senior development manager at the Waterfront real estate project in Dubai, said he understood Sharjah’s motive for amending its labour law.

“I fully agree with them. Why would I have to take care of problems arising from labour camps there if they [workers] were not even working in Sharjah or contributing to the local economy?”

Mr Orabi said implementation of the law would likely encourage companies to build more modern accommodation facilities in proximity to the places that the men worked, thereby cutting the travel time to work and reducing the number of vehicles on the road.

About 250,000 vehicles travelled through Sharjah every day to locations outside the emirate, 50,000 of which were trucks, Sharjah officials have reported.

According to The National's story Sharjah's new regulations apply both to (1) laborers who are housed in company provided compounds as well as (2) workers in higher salary categories who find their own housing and commute from Sharjah to Dubai. I am surprised that group (2) is the target of the legislation. [Although it is not beyond imagination that if not, then companies in category (1) would turn their workers lose to find housing in order fall under category (2).]

Thanks to the Kipp Report for the pointer.

Israeli migrant labor policy

IRIN - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

We were told by Yilmazlar [a Turkish manpower agency that supplies construction workers to a number of companies in Israel] that we could make up to $1,400 a month and more with overtime if we worked in Israel," he told IRIN.

"Yilmazlar assured us we would be well treated and be housed in good accommodation. However, when I arrived, my dream turned into a nightmare."

Yelmaz was sharing a room with eight others - furnished with bunk beds - that was so small that there was no space for their suitcases. They were fed a monotonous diet of rice and lentils and there were only three toilets with no running water for 130 workers.

"The conditions of the toilets were so disgusting, they were not fit even for an animal," said Yelmaz.

"We were forbidden from using mobile phones on pain of confiscation and fines and were forced to work an average of 11 hours a day, without being paid overtime. And in our half-hour lunch break we were expected to go home, eat and return to the construction site.

"In addition to our passports being taken away [by the employer], we needed special permission to leave the premises after work and on our day off. If people left without permission, they were fined and threatened with deportation by the management."

The final straw came when Yelmaz found out that he and the other workers would only receive their first payment after three months. He and a friend, 41-year-old father-of-three Hikmat Tekin, decided to challenge their boss.

"We were told by the management that if we didn't like it, we would be deported without payment and barred from employment elsewhere in Israel,"
Tekin said.

As he began his battle against his employer, Yelmaz became aware of the strict Israeli visa regulations governing conditions for migrant workers.

"The issuance of these visas is subject to the workers staying with the same employer stated on the visa and if this condition is broken then the migrant worker is deemed illegal and liable for deportation,” said Sigal Rosen, spokeswoman for Israeli human rights organisation Hotline for Migrant Workers.

There are two ironies:

1) These government policies and business practices towards migrant workers are just like those used in Arab Gulf countries. Israel and Arab Gulf states behave the same way towards migrant workers.

2) In the Arab Gulf workers Yelmaz might not be welcome at all. Since Saddam's invasion of Kuwait - and the support Saddam received from migrant Arab Muslims working in the Gulf - Arab Gulf countries have switched to a greater reliance are workers less likely to make political trouble. More generally, there is the view that Asian Muslims are less politically troublesome than Arab Muslims. Yelmaz is Turkish - not Arab - but he might also not be welcome here for similar reasons.

UAE workers riot

As reported in the Wall Street Journal:

SHARJAH, United Arab Emirates -- Protests and violent skirmishes over rising prices are hitting parts of the Middle East, a region already beset by strife but otherwise enjoying an unprecedented, oil-fueled economic boom.

On Tuesday, hundreds of workers demanding higher wages to counter soaring food costs rioted at an industrial park tucked amid this Persian Gulf emirate's desert scrub. They burned and battered dozens of cars and buses at an American-owned contracting company, then ransacked and set ablaze parts of the company's offices.
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Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have all been socked with soaring inflation. Because they peg their currencies to the U.S. dollar, those currencies have followed its sharp fall.
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The region is heavily dependent on expatriate labor, many from Southeast Asia, who send much of their earnings home. As the value of their remittances falls with the dollar, they are growing frustrated.

That anger is now increasingly turning into violence. On Tuesday, hundreds of workers for Drake & Scull, an electrical and mechanical engineering contractor owned by U.S.-based Emcor Group Inc., rioted. The government put the number of workers involved at 1,500, while a Drake spokeswoman in Dubai said the number was much lower.

Some other reporting:

- Sharjah workers' riot brought under control - Sify News, India:

The situation in the Al Sajaa district of Sharjah, where around 1,500 workers of a sewage and maintenance company went on the rampage demanding salary hikes, has been brought under control.

The workers burnt office documents, broke glass facades of the first floor of the labour accommodation building and burnt and damaged vehicles of the company on Tuesday, according to the WAM news agency.

Director General of Sharjah Police Brig. Humaid Mohammed Al Hudaidi, accompanied by the Assistant Undersecretary of the Ministry of Labour, Humaid bin Dimas, labour officials and directors of police departments and civil defence teams rushed to the riot scene.

The anti-riot team surrounded the labour accommodation while the civil defence team put out the fires that had engulfed offices and vehicles.
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[Al Hudaidi] called on the workers not to resort to violence and subversion, leading to destabilization in the United Arab Emirates.

- Police quell subversive acts by 1500 labourers in Sharjah -Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates:

Al Hudaidi noted that some even attempted to attack police and the labour officials at the riot site. He said that 15 days ago the workers had selected their representatives to submit their salary hike demands to the labour office. Based on those demands, the labour officials discussed the demands with the officials of the company, which is owned by a nearby emirate to Sharjah. It set up a labour accommodation site in Al Sajaa district.

“Even before the workers received reply, a group of workers incited them to go on rampage and burnt vehicles and properties of the company,” Al Hudaidi said....

- Emirati Police Break Labor Strike -The Associated Press: "Police said that at least 500 workers carried out "subversive acts" at a work camp in the emirate, or state, of Sharjah, according to the official state news agency, WAM."

- Violent uprising - 7DAYS, United Arab Emirates - Mar 18, 2008By Fareed Rahman A labour protest turned violent in Sharjah yesterday, with 3000 angry workers setting light to vehicles and a storeroom at their camp.

Recycling workers

UAE Minister of Labour Ali Abdulla Al Kaabi is defending the concept of a three-plus-three residency cap for unskilled foreign workers in the GCC.

ArabianBusiness.com reports

"The three-plus-three cap is only meant for unskilled workers. We want to make sure that we recycle labour, in and out. For example, we want to give as many people as possible a chance to come in and work in the country and not restrict it to the same workforce year-in, year out."
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The workers would leave the UAE with experience which will benefit them in their home country as well, he added.

"In any case we're still in the process of fine-tuning the length of the cap and we also want to get a GCC-wide approval to enable workers to travel within the region."

Other benefits of the policy: Undercutting unskilled-worker activism; meeting world standards to extend rights to immigrants based on length-of-stay.

Rights report 'ignores UAE steps to protect workers' :: Gulf News

Strike ends, 30,000 return to work :: Gulf News

Strikes threaten Dubai building boom

AP

While laborers have long complained about working conditions in this Gulf city known for its avant-garde skyscrapers, luxury dwellings and archipelagoes of artificial islands, their recent action comes as contractors are struggling to find workers to complete their ambitious projects.
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The boom has been possible due to plentiful investment from oil-rich neighbors and armies of non-unionized south Asian workers whose fear of deportation, until recently, kept them from voicing discontent over low wages.

"The cost of living here has increased so much in the past two years that I cannot survive with my salary," said Rajesh Kumar, a 24-year-old worker from the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh who earns $149 a month.
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A booming economy in India also means that many there no longer see the need to travel to Dubai and the Gulf, said Bernard Raj, managing director of the Dubai-based Keith International, which supplies Indian workers.

"In the past, when we go for recruitment of workers we were able to choose whomever we wanted. Now the turnout of candidates is very low," he said, estimating that at least 40 percent more workers were needed for the city's projects.

With the usual labor markets like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka drying up, labor companies are turning to less traditional places like Tibet and North Korea.

At the root of the problem is the Emirati Dirham's close connection to the U.S. dollar, which has seen it plummet in value, further decreasing laborers' already low salaries.

Kumar and his fellow workers said they asked their employer, Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises, for a pay increase several times, but management was not willing to address the issue.

New Sri Lankan law to affect migrant workers :: Khaleej Times

Khaleej Times opens its story with this paragraph (my emphasis):

Sri Lanka’s new legislation restricting mothers with children below five years from taking up low-end jobs overseas, will adversely affect migrant workers in the UAE where a large number of Sri Lankan women are employed as housemaids and in garment factories.

Then it further reports:

Sri Lankan Ambassador to the UAE Nabawi Junaid said the legislation approved by the cabinet early this month and to be enforced soon will restrict the number of women, particularly mothers of young children, from seeking overseas employment.
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Further, he noted that “The new legislation is undoubtedly in the interest of mothers with little children and will eliminate the social problems facing the Sri Lankan society with large numbers of women taking low-end jobs as domestic maids and tailors in garment factories in the Middle East compelled to leave their children in the custody of husbands, parents or relatives.”

Statistics released by the Sri Lankan government show that children of many mothers who take up overseas jobs to support their families have in fact become helpless and vulnerable to abuses, and suffer from malnutrition and lack of proper healthcare.

How could the introduction of the legislation adversely affect workers who are already in the UAE (as claimed in the first paragraph of the KT)? It can't. It can only benefit them by constricting the supply of labor inflow and thereby driving up wages or improving working conditions (at the end of your contract in the UAE can negotiate better terms for staying).

Will the law benefit the women and families whom the government of Sri Lanka will now compel to stay home? What is driving the women to leave their children is the lack of economic opportunity in Sri Lanka. The opportunities in the Middle East are not compelling them to leave. What the government is suggesting is that the families are consistently underestimating the cost of leaving in terms of the consequences for children. That's an empirical question that has not been answered. Indeed, the government may have the cause and effect reversed -- in which case the children will be made worse off.

There are other possible unintended consequences of the legislation which would be adverse. First, fertility may increase, not decrease. Second, there will develop a black market -- women will still want to take up positions overseas but they have to do so out of sight of the government, including the protections provided by the Sri Lankan consulates. As a result, they will be more vulnerable to unscrupulous recruiters and employers.

Life as a low-wage worker in the UAE

Secret Dubai has gathered together several recent news stories on life for low-wage workers in the UAE. I particularly recommend the first three on housing, and the last about the company that vanquished inflation - by not giving a pay raise in 18 years. The housing stories show how economizing on housing happens whomever foots the bill.

The case for infinite visas in the US case

Here it is.

Why not beat the US to the punch and adopt an infinite visa policy in the UAE for high-tech businesses?

What would be the objections?

Questioning U of Connecticut's Dubai plans

Human rights questioning. brn at UAE community blog has the story.