I'm still working on Dubai things, so interesting stories still pop to my attention.
Was the Besix strike the tipping point for UAE labour relations?
Saturday, 27 May 2006
by Angela Giuffrida and Conrad Egbert
Just a few blocks away from the Besix labour camp in Al Quoz
is the flower-lined living quarters for staff of the Royal Meridien Hotel.
The seemingly serene conditions under which the hotel workers live couldn’t be more removed from the crowded, laundry-strewn courtyard of the construction labourers’ block.
This is home to some of the estimated 8,500 Besix workers who made history last week when they staged the largest organised strike ever witnessed in the UAE — a dispute that ended with around 50 men branded as the ‘ringleaders’ being deported to India.
It was the second day into their strike when Construction Week visited the camp.
Amid the midday chaos that revolves around preparing lunch for up to 200 people with just the one communal cooking pot, there was an air of staunch defiance among the several hundred strikers as they clambered to tell us their version of events.
“We will not go back to work until our demands are met,” said one Besix worker.
“We are being paid US $106 (AED390) per month and all we demand is that we are paid at least $163 per month.
...
Yet their determination failed to overcome UAE labour laws and by Saturday night, the solidarity of the previous day had dwindled away as violent clashes broke out between those who had decided to return to work and those who were determined to continue their strike.
The police were called to the camp, and arrested around 50 men, who were subsequently deported. That proved to be the turning point, and by the next morning, most of the men were back at work.
“We were pretty much told to go and stuff ourselves — no pay rise except for those who had been with the company for 10 years or more, and even that was only 5%,” said one labourer.
Despite the Besix strike being the biggest to have hit the UAE construction industry, and the effort that undoubtedly went into ensuring more than 8,500 workers mounted a coordinated strike, local labour laws prevented them from reaching any kind of favourable compromise with their employer, according to BS Mubarak, the Indian consul for labour and welfare.
Besix workers are paid around US $4 (AED15) a day in addition to a $2.30 food allowance. They receive nothing on a Friday, their official day off.
“Every country has its own rules and the labour law here says that striking is unjustified,” said Mubarak.
“We visited four camps after receiving the strike notice, and found that although there were genuine grievances, they were all outside the framework of the labour laws — which the company was adhering to.”
...
The protest hit 17 major projects across the UAE, including the Burj Dubai and Garhoud Bridge, causing huge losses to Besix, Belgium’s largest construction company.
“It did have a big impact on our activity in the UAE — we lost up to AED15 million,” said Bart Wuyts, the company’s communication manager.
“We don’t know who organised this. In future, we’d prefer to build better relations with workers about their issues, to avoid strikes.”
Yeah, classic management talk. "We're following the rules to the letter." RUles that they often helped set up, and lobby to never have changed. Also,
I wonder what Belgian electricians get paid. Because another story from the Al Quoz Labour Camp was in the news in the same time period.
Indian commits suicide in Dubai labour camp
Dubai: An Indian worker apparently suffering from stress has committed suicide in a labour camp here, reports said Sunday.
Iqbal Alam, a 29-year-old electrician from Uttar Pradesh, hanged himself in Al Quoz Saturday, Emirates Today reported.
"Everyone knew he was mentally ill. We have been petitioning the company (Powerpoint Electromechanical) to send him home," Mohammed Iqbal, a friend and colleague of Alam, was quoted as saying.
"Last week he walked all the way to Karama from the camp in Al Quoz to ask for his passport. But they sent him back to the camp. We do not have friends or family here. If we do not have faith in our employers who else can we count on?" Iqbal said.
Following the suicide, 200 of Alam's colleagues gathered outside the camp to complain about the company's alleged inaction.
Now, one of the countervailing arguments about these wages is that these workers get paid better than they would in, say, India. Fair enough. They also get paid better than a garment worker in a third world sweat shop. The thing, it seems fairly clear that these regions and companies are fighting like crazy the idea that they might ever HAVE to pay any better than that.
One of the things I heard a lot in Dubai is that they're taking ten years to recreate the kind of markets that the West took a hundred years to develop. Yet they're very specifically trying to leave out all the parts that involved a Samuel Gompers, or a Joe Hill, or a Sidney Hillman or Walter Reuther. Like most proto-Republican/Tory wannabes, they like the idea of Money, but not Lobour. Capital, but not Das Kapital.
