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Workers riot at Dubai skyscraper project
Luxury building will be world's tallest skyscraper
Workers complain of low wages, miserable conditions
Mar. 22, 2006. 02:51 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Asian workers angered by low salaries and mistreatment smashed cars and offices in a riot that interrupted construction Wednesday of what is meant to be the world's tallest skyscraper — part of which will be a luxury hotel run by fashion designer Giorgio Armani.
The violence, causing damage estimated at almost $1.2 million Cdn, illustrated the growing unrest among foreign workers who are the linchpin of Dubai's building boom.
The rampage took place Tuesday night when some 2,500 workers on the emerging Burj Dubai tower and surrounding housing developments chased and beat security officers, then broke into temporary offices and smashed computers and files and destroyed about two dozen cars and construction machines, witnesses said.
When the labourers, who work for the Dubai-based firm Al Naboodah Laing O'Rourke, returned to the vast construction site Wednesday, they issued demands for better pay and employment conditions and refused to return to work. In a sympathy strike, thousands of labourers building a new terminal at Dubai International Airport also lay down their tools.
"Everyone is angry here. No one will work," said Khalid Farouk, 39, a labourer with Al Naboodah. Others said their leaders were asking for pay raises.
Skilled carpenters on the site earn just $8.86 Cdn per day, with labourers getting $4.66.
The riot was a rare outbreak of violence — but not the first sign of discontent among the foreign workers who form the overwhelming majority of private sector workers in most of the oil-rich countries of the Gulf. There have been strikes in recent months in Qatar and Oman. In April, Bangladeshi workers stormed their own embassy in Kuwait, protesting working conditions that human rights activists have denounced as "slave-like."
Millions of foreign workers have flooded into the Gulf countries, outweighing the population of citizens in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In Saudi Arabia, foreign workers make up about 21 per cent of the population of more than 26 million, but labour unrest among the workers is rare in the tightly controlled country.
In all the countries, the foreigners include professionals — doctors, scientists, oil workers and businessmen — skilled labourers such as electricians, and unskilled workers such as restaurant staff, maids and servants. Human rights groups have often decried abuse of low-paid foreign workers by their employers, particularly of women in domestic labour.
In the Emirates, where some estimates say more than three-quarters of the population of around five million people are foreigners, migrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China and elsewhere have provided the low-wage muscle behind one of the world's great building booms.
Dubai, one of seven Emirates making up the country, hosts some 300,000 South Asians working on temporary contracts in the construction field alone, helping propel it from a primitive town of 20,000 five decades ago to a gridlocked metropolis of 1.5 million — only 12 per cent of whom are citizens.
But the workers complain that their employers often withhold pay. They enjoy few legal protections and no minimum wage, work in the extreme Gulf heat, and many of them live in military-style desert camps, with too few government inspectors to ensure proper living conditions.
Angry workers in the Emirates held more than two dozen strikes over unpaid salaries last year, mainly in Dubai. The Labour Ministry responded with a crackdown on companies, helping win back pay and other benefits for workers in some cases.
Labour officials said contract-breaching firms were embarrassing the image-conscious Emirates by attracting condemnation from the United Nations, the United States and Human Rights Watch.
On Wednesday, crowds of blue-garbed workers milled in the shadow of the grey concrete Burj Dubai, now 36 stories tall, while leaders negotiated with officials from the company and the Ministry of Labour.
An Interior Ministry official who investigates labour issues, Lt.-Col. Rashid Bakhit Al Jumairi, said the workers were petitioning Al Naboodah, one of the Emirates' biggest construction conglomerates, for overtime pay, better medical care and humane treatment by foremen.
"They are asking for small things," Al Jumairi said. "I promised them I would sit with them until everything is settled."
Later Wednesday, a spokesman for Al Naboodah Laing O'Rourke blamed the violence on "misinformation and misunderstanding with some of our workforce."
The spokesman, Mark Way, said in a statement that the "issues have now been addressed and resolved" with the workers. He said the employees were returning to work. He gave no details on how the workers' complaints were addressed, and workers' representatives could not be immediately reached to confirm they were returning to the job.
The unrest marred what otherwise appears to be smooth construction of the Burj Dubai, which is to be a spire-shaped, stainless-steel-skinned tower expected to soar far beyond 100 storeys. A section of the tower is to hold a 172-room luxury hotel operated by Armani, the Italian fashion designer. The $900 million Burj is due to be completed by 2008.
Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Distribution, transmission or republication of any material from www.thestar.com is strictly prohibited without the prior written permission of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. For information please contact us using our webmaster form. www.thestar.com online since 1996.
Luxury building will be world's tallest skyscraper
Workers complain of low wages, miserable conditions
Mar. 22, 2006. 02:51 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Asian workers angered by low salaries and mistreatment smashed cars and offices in a riot that interrupted construction Wednesday of what is meant to be the world's tallest skyscraper — part of which will be a luxury hotel run by fashion designer Giorgio Armani.
The violence, causing damage estimated at almost $1.2 million Cdn, illustrated the growing unrest among foreign workers who are the linchpin of Dubai's building boom.
The rampage took place Tuesday night when some 2,500 workers on the emerging Burj Dubai tower and surrounding housing developments chased and beat security officers, then broke into temporary offices and smashed computers and files and destroyed about two dozen cars and construction machines, witnesses said.
When the labourers, who work for the Dubai-based firm Al Naboodah Laing O'Rourke, returned to the vast construction site Wednesday, they issued demands for better pay and employment conditions and refused to return to work. In a sympathy strike, thousands of labourers building a new terminal at Dubai International Airport also lay down their tools.
"Everyone is angry here. No one will work," said Khalid Farouk, 39, a labourer with Al Naboodah. Others said their leaders were asking for pay raises.
Skilled carpenters on the site earn just $8.86 Cdn per day, with labourers getting $4.66.
The riot was a rare outbreak of violence — but not the first sign of discontent among the foreign workers who form the overwhelming majority of private sector workers in most of the oil-rich countries of the Gulf. There have been strikes in recent months in Qatar and Oman. In April, Bangladeshi workers stormed their own embassy in Kuwait, protesting working conditions that human rights activists have denounced as "slave-like."
Millions of foreign workers have flooded into the Gulf countries, outweighing the population of citizens in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In Saudi Arabia, foreign workers make up about 21 per cent of the population of more than 26 million, but labour unrest among the workers is rare in the tightly controlled country.
In all the countries, the foreigners include professionals — doctors, scientists, oil workers and businessmen — skilled labourers such as electricians, and unskilled workers such as restaurant staff, maids and servants. Human rights groups have often decried abuse of low-paid foreign workers by their employers, particularly of women in domestic labour.
In the Emirates, where some estimates say more than three-quarters of the population of around five million people are foreigners, migrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China and elsewhere have provided the low-wage muscle behind one of the world's great building booms.
Dubai, one of seven Emirates making up the country, hosts some 300,000 South Asians working on temporary contracts in the construction field alone, helping propel it from a primitive town of 20,000 five decades ago to a gridlocked metropolis of 1.5 million — only 12 per cent of whom are citizens.
But the workers complain that their employers often withhold pay. They enjoy few legal protections and no minimum wage, work in the extreme Gulf heat, and many of them live in military-style desert camps, with too few government inspectors to ensure proper living conditions.
Angry workers in the Emirates held more than two dozen strikes over unpaid salaries last year, mainly in Dubai. The Labour Ministry responded with a crackdown on companies, helping win back pay and other benefits for workers in some cases.
Labour officials said contract-breaching firms were embarrassing the image-conscious Emirates by attracting condemnation from the United Nations, the United States and Human Rights Watch.
On Wednesday, crowds of blue-garbed workers milled in the shadow of the grey concrete Burj Dubai, now 36 stories tall, while leaders negotiated with officials from the company and the Ministry of Labour.
An Interior Ministry official who investigates labour issues, Lt.-Col. Rashid Bakhit Al Jumairi, said the workers were petitioning Al Naboodah, one of the Emirates' biggest construction conglomerates, for overtime pay, better medical care and humane treatment by foremen.
"They are asking for small things," Al Jumairi said. "I promised them I would sit with them until everything is settled."
Later Wednesday, a spokesman for Al Naboodah Laing O'Rourke blamed the violence on "misinformation and misunderstanding with some of our workforce."
The spokesman, Mark Way, said in a statement that the "issues have now been addressed and resolved" with the workers. He said the employees were returning to work. He gave no details on how the workers' complaints were addressed, and workers' representatives could not be immediately reached to confirm they were returning to the job.
The unrest marred what otherwise appears to be smooth construction of the Burj Dubai, which is to be a spire-shaped, stainless-steel-skinned tower expected to soar far beyond 100 storeys. A section of the tower is to hold a 172-room luxury hotel operated by Armani, the Italian fashion designer. The $900 million Burj is due to be completed by 2008.
Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Distribution, transmission or republication of any material from www.thestar.com is strictly prohibited without the prior written permission of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. For information please contact us using our webmaster form. www.thestar.com online since 1996.
