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Migrant Workers on International Projects Still Face Bad Conditions

Linda Gradstein/The Media Line

Thousands of migrant workers are building large international projects in Abu Dhabi – a new campus for NYU, a branch of the Louvre and an outpost of the Guggenheim museum, which are all being built on Saadiyat Island. A new report found that despite promises by the institutions involved, the workers still face recruitment fees, passport confiscation, unpaid wages, and in some cases, poor housing.

“The most disturbing thing is the mass deportation of workers who went on strike to protest low pay,” Nicholas McGeehan, a Gulf researcher for Human Rights Watch told The Media Line. “These workers had a legitimate grievance. They expressed it legally and masked police came in and deported them. That’s unacceptable.”

He said at least a thousand workers have been deported or “helped to return home” as the government puts it. There are somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 migrant workers on these projects, a fraction of the three million workers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Africa. Most have contracts for two or three years and are hired through the kefala system, meaning they are tied to a specific employer, who often confiscates their passport for the duration of their contract.

Yet all three institutions have signed “codes of conduct” that are meant to improve the conditions of the foreign workers on their projects. In the case of housing, McGeehan says, the situation has improved and most workers are no longer housed in sub-standard conditions.

The issue is not new. In 2009, Human Rights Watch documented similar violations. In response NYU appointed the firm Mott MacDonald to do an independent audit in 2010. In their compliance reports from 2011 and 2012, the firm found that NYU was complying with its workers code of conduct.

But Kristina Bogos, a journalism student at NYU who spent five months in Abu Dhabi at the NYU campus there, found a different picture. Bogos said she was concerned about reports of the conditions of the migrant workers who were building the NYU campus there. She went to the Al-Dar camp where many of the migrants are housed, on a Friday in 2013, which was supposed to be their one day a week off.

She said that she was not allowed to access the workers living quarters, but a medical clinic was dirty, and she saw workers rooting through the trash, looking for food. Several workers told her, they received only $4.60 a day, far below the minimum wage that is guaranteed in the Code of Conduct.

“The workers also told me that if they tried to access medical care more than twice a month, their salaries were penalized,” Bogos told The Media Line. “I also saw a bus of workers coming back from a construction site on what was supposed to be their day off.”

Most of the workers pay recruitment fees which can add up to almost a year of their salary. Bogos said she repeatedly approached NYU for their response to a series of questions, but received only a stock answer from the NYU Public Affairs Office in Abu Dhabi.

“Since the earliest days of NYU Abu Dhabi, we have committed to ensuring the health and safety of those building, maintaining and operating our campus. Our strict charter and associated publicly reported compliance regime are a direct result of the importance we place on the welfare of those building our new campus. We take seriously any incident that appears to be in violation of these commitments. Any and all such claims are investigated immediately, and where appropriate, are addressed promptly.”

Along with several faculty members, Bogos founded the Coalition for Fair Labor, a faculty-student alliance that advocates high labor standards for employees on NYU projects. The group is also calling for an independent labor compliance monitor. The Coalition is also calling for research into the kefala system which leaves the workers without any way to protest.