UAE to Give Workers Right to Form Unions:

Posted By: Janine Delacroix

By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer

Labor Minister Ali al-Kaabi said the law, to be in place by year's end, was required by Washington before a free-trade pact could be completed with this Gulf state, a rising global power in trade, tourism and banking.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the frenzied building boom transforming Dubai and other Emirates cities was being conducted on the backs of hundreds of thousands of underpaid workers from India, Pakistan, China and other Asian countries.

Asian laborers who form 90 percent of Dubai's private work force have organized a rising number of strikes and protests over low wages, dangerous working conditions, squalid living quarters in desert camps and a lack of legal protection, the group said.

Last week, 2,500 laborers rioted on the construction site of a building meant to be the world's tallest.

Al-Kaabi disputed much of the rights group's report, and said a new labor law and other measures were already improving the lot of immigrant workers.

He said the country was creating a monitoring authority with 2,000 inspectors — up from the current 80 — that would enforce standards in working and living conditions.

"Yes, there are strikes and bad companies, but the government isn't closing its eyes to this," al-Kaabi told The Associated Press. "We're after these companies."

Al-Kaabi said a new labor law negotiated alongside the trade pact with the U.S. would resemble reforms in neighboring Oman and Bahrain, which also signed U.S. trade deals.

"We're going to have one union with separate representatives for construction, fishing, agriculture and other industries," al-Kaabi said. "The law will control how strikes will be conducted. It will make contact with the laborers much easier," he said.

In Cairo, Human Rights Watch researcher Fadi al-Qadi, who helped write the UAE report, called al-Kaabi's statement "a positive step."

"We'd like to see specific language protecting the rights of migrant workers, giving them free assembly and freedom to organize independent labor unions," al-Qadi said.

Government officials here believe the growing number of protests — including more than two dozen last year — are being triggered by a Labor Ministry drive to improve workers' lives and punish negligent companies.

A new government department set up to deal with labor grievances received nearly 20,000 complaints over unpaid salaries and labor camp conditions last year, Human Rights Watch said.

The rights group cited local media reports that found as many as 880 deaths occurred at construction sites in 2004. Government figures show only 34 construction deaths in 2004, the report said.

Laborers live and work in similar conditions elsewhere in the Gulf, but protests are less common outside the UAE, officials here say, because other governments crack down hard on labor unrest.

The Emirates has grown increasingly sensitive to criticism of its labor practices, and has worked to address abuses cited by the U.S. State Department and rights groups.

The Ministry of Labor issued new rules last year saying companies delaying salaries or shortchanging workers would be fined and named publicly — including firms with royal family connections. Al-Kaabi said 50 companies have been closed down and had assets seized for withholding wages.

The new rules spurred a flurry of largely successful street marches and strikes, with workers often winning back wages and concessions from employers. But protests turned violent last week, when construction workers smashed $1 million in cars and computers.

Labor officials here say they now detect radical tactics of Indian and Pakistani organized labor, and are moving to clamp down on the unrest. Al-Kaabi said those who rioted could be prosecuted.

"They will be deported if they are found guilty," he said. "That will be used as a lesson to others."

There is no minimum wage in the UAE. Salaries, which start at a few dollars a day, are determined by "the free market," Emirates officials say.

Laborers' tiny salaries are insufficient to pay off loans from recruiting agencies, leaving laborers falling into debt bondage, Human Rights Watch said.

Al-Kaabi agreed, saying some agencies were controlled by South Asian "mafias" that arranged travel and visas for rates as high as $3,000.

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