The dark side of Dubai
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
In my opinion all those people that enjoy it and knowingly ignore are just as guilty. They contribute to the slavery and condone the policies.
UPDATE: after reading the entire article, I'd have to say this comment sums it up: "All the people who couldn't succeed in their own countries end up here, and suddenly they're rich and promoted way above their abilities and bragging about how great they are. I've never met so many incompetent people in such senior positions anywhere in the world." She adds: "It's absolutely racist. I had Filipino girls working for me doing the same job as a European girl, and she's paid a quarter of the wages. The people who do the real work are paid next to nothing, while these incompetent managers pay themselves £40,000 a month."
If this is true, then I'd accuse these people for truly building what we see as Dubai.
And the point about globalization makes all of us in first-world countries just as guilty.
The people who have least to worry from the state paranoia are the privileged classes, races, and ethnicities (ie. wealthy whites). But if you're part of the non-white underclass (nevermind Muslim), you can bet the post-9/11 paranoia and increased vigor of the police state is going to be of some concern (sometimes to the degree of fleeing the country if you're able).
Something similar is probably the case in Dubai. If you're wealthy enough, and/or have enough connections, you're probably not going to have to worry too much (except maybe about the polluted beaches, if you insist on taking a dip in the sea outside your hotel room) as long as you don't try to interfere in their politics. But the worry of running afoul of their draconian laws and of being exploited by their oppressive system increases and becomes more legitimate the lower on the totem pole you get.
Edit: Not sure why I'm being downmodded; all I did was answer the parent's question.
Its real hard to not be a part of the system. I do understand your point and it does feel better to be further removed from the bad behavior. But most of us are participants.
Dubai had (and maybe still has) widespread problems with slavery and indentured servitude - both are problems not widespread in any of the major manufacturing centers in East Asia. Where the worker in Dubai is hit with a litany of hidden fees upon arrival, the worker in China is not. Where the worker in Dubai has his passport held until false debts are repaid, the Chinese worker does not. Working in a Chinese factory is almost utopian compared to the conditions that have apparently been exposed in Dubai.
My original post was simply finding examples of how people use their spending power to participate in various forms of oppression. Widespread marginal participation is possibly the worst as its hardest to solve. One billion people marginally participating racks up more power than a few hundred thousand oil-rich do.
It's one thing to be forced to pay taxes, some of which may go towards a war you're against, and quite another to go and get rich off the slaves of Dubai (especially if you do it knowingly), or go to Dubai specifically to exploit the slaves (as some of the people interviewed in this article admitted to doing).
Ultimately, it is left to the each individual I guess. If only each one of us decide not to buy products of slave labor, not to support war etc, world would be a better place in an instant.
Would you be okay with "making out great" and becoming rich if it meant that other people had to work in 130 degree heat for 18 hours a day in order to build the buildings you live and work in, and had their wages withheld and passport confiscated by their employer?
Would you think that you had made a bad choice?
To answer this question regarding myself, I don't know. For example, I wear clothes and shoes that are obviously made using horrible labour in third-world countries. Also, what are the people who already live there supposed to do? Halt their lives and livelihoods and move out?
All I'm calling for with my comments is more restraint when it comes to the 'holier than thou' comments. It's too easy to express casual outrage and condemnation on the internet.
If you lose your job, the employer has to notify the bank. The bank freezes your accounts and you are prevented from leaving the country. Thus, you are left with absolutely zero way to ever pay off your debt.
What's the proper economics term for this? Something along the lines of a self-fulfilling negative spiral.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankrupcy#In_individual_countri...
I've heard about the abuses - there are some and it's horrible - but it's not indicative of the way most people are running their businesses in Dubai.
A mentor of mine from England headed up a project management firm there. The workers under him made 20-40 times what they could make back home in South Asia, in places where the malnourishment/literally-starving-to-death rate is sometimes 30%.
An acquaintance of mine who worked in Dubai had a Chinese girlfriend who was a stewardess on Emirates Airlines. Emirates is pretty incredible in that they pay the same amounts to their staff regardless of country of origin - almost all airlines and cruiselines pay much less to people from China, the Philippines, etc, than they would to someone from France or Australia. Emirates pays everyone the same. The acquaintence's Chinese girlfriend bought one house every couple months back in her home province in China on her wages. Her family was becoming incredibly wealthy.
A company taking someone's passport and changing their contract is really horrible fraud, a horrific crime. But that's an indictment of the whole society - this kind of nonsense happens in the West too. Take South Korea and the United States - a common story is a girl gets promised high paid waitressing/hostessing job, gets sold into slavery. This is a terrible thing, and should be stopped - but does that mean that United States is running on slave labor? No. A few bad people is not an indictment of an entire society.
For a lot of very poor people, Dubai helped pull their families out of poverty. The did some amazing things there. Those things won't be mentioned in a piece like this. People who would be living on subsistence farming in China build houses and manage property after working in Dubai. People from Sri Lanka, India, and Eastern Europe can support their whole families and save money after working there for a couple years, in places where there is no opportunity and everyone is literally starving to death.
The author doesn't care about the good. The opinion piece was written before doing any research or interviews, the research and interviews were set to tell the story. There's some bad stuff there? Oh yeah, absolutely. There's bad stuff in the USA too. And England. And everywhere. There's also a hell of a lot of good that's happening there, that wasn't mentioned.
Have you even gone to interview the workers slaving away to do construction on Dubai's skyscrapers as the author of this article did? Have you seen where they live? Did you interview any of the people who had their passports taken away?
This was a throughly researched article, while your experience amounts to just your friend's project management firm and an acquaintance's girlfriend. Maybe project managers have it good in Dubai, but how does their experience compare to the rest of Dubai's workforce?
And what about the water quality problems they're having after dumping their sewage in the sea? What about the lack of freedom of speech addressed in the article? Or the fact that being gay in Dubai is illegal? Or the threats of Islamic radicalism? Or the impact of the falling oil prices and Dubai's debt economy?
There's so much in this article you seem to dismiss with a wave of the hand by saying other countries have their problems too. They certainly do, but that doesn't excuse or explain what's going on in Dubai.
I want to put this down in a way to further the conversation. "But after reading that article, I just don't believe..." - that statement. You read a news article - I've read many too - and you feel educated enough to make a judgment on my personal experiences including very upper class people, Western skilled workers, and some poor people who were maids, sanitation people, etc. After reading a news article, you feel confident to make a judgment that someone else's firsthand experiences are not indicative of how things actually are, and that the person is out of touch.
> There's so much in this article you seem to dismiss with a wave of the hand by saying other countries have their problems too.
No. That's not it at all.
I don't think people realize how bad poverty is. So when you read that someone worked 12 hours in terrible conditions for $800/month, that sounds incredibly horrible. But people don't realize that when a meal at a cafe costs 22 cents, a bus ride costs 11 cents, a giant bag of rice costs less than a dollar - well, then $800 goes a long way. I've spent time in third world countries. Most people who get righteous when a story likes this comes out, haven't. $800 goes a long way in the third world.
Some people pulled themselves out of poverty by working in Dubai. I'm not talking about the up and up people. Some poor people pulled themselves out of poverty in Dubai. Bad things also happened there, but good things happened too. That doesn't dismiss some terrible things, but the article ignores some people who literally turned their lives around there.
> > Sorry. But after reading that article, I just don't believe your
> > personal experience is indicative of what's going on in Dubai.
> > You're the one who sounds out of touch.
>
> I want to put this down in a way to further the conversation. "But
> after reading that article, I just don't believe..." - that
> statement. You read a news article - I've read many too - and you
> feel educated enough to make a judgment on my personal experiences
> including very upper class people, Western skilled workers, and
> some poor people who were maids, sanitation people, etc. After
> reading a news article, you feel confident to make a judgment that
> someone else's firsthand experiences are not indicative of how
> things actually are, and that the person is out of touch.
> > Have you even gone to interview the workers slaving away to do
> > construction on Dubai's skyscrapers as the author of this article
> > did?
>
> Yes.
>
> > Have you seen where they live?
>
> Yes.
> I don't think people realize how bad poverty is. So when you
> read that someone worked 12 hours in terrible conditions for
> $800/month, that sounds incredibly horrible. But people don't
> realize that when a meal at a cafe costs 11 cents, $800 goes a
> long way. I've spent time in third world countries. Most people
> who get righteous when a story likes this comes out, haven't. $800
> goes a long way in the third world.
"An individual expatriate will spend around 500 euro on food and other grocery items every month. Costs of food products are especially high... Water is generally expensive all across the country... Dubai relies mostly on imported food and drinks, which explains why they are also more expensive."
The monthly cost of food of 500 Euro is about $750, more than 5 times the monthly wage mentioned in the article. Of course, the typical slave worker probably isn't going to be eating food that's as expensive as that of your typical Western expat, but I doubt they'd survive on $10 of food a month, which is what three 11 cent meals a day totaled over a month would amount to.
Then there's the debt that the slave workers get in to to just have the opportunity to work in Dubai. The article quotes it as £2,300 ($3,772), which would take 25 months to work off at the $147 per month salary, if we don't count the cost of living in Dubai (which would make repaying the debt even harder).
Finally, there are the dangerous work conditions, physical violence, and the non-payment and delay of salaries that the article mentions, which would literally put the workers' lives in jeopardy. That doesn't exactly sound like the opportunity of a lifetime, even for someone coming from the third world.
> Some people pulled themselves out of poverty by working in Dubai.
> I'm not talking about the up and up people. Some poor people
> pulled themselves out of poverty in Dubai. Bad things also
> happened there, but good things happened too. That doesn't dismiss
> some terrible things, but the article ignores some people who
> literally turned their lives around there.
So why do I write it? Well, after traveling a lot of the world, I don't think it's so simple and black and white. Some horrific stuff happened in Dubai? Yes. Mark it down. Don't forget it. Work to change it. But does that make the place completely morally bankrupt? I don't believe so. A lot of lives have been saved and aided greatly there. This is of course not simple, black and white, with us or against us, good or evil type thinking. Bad stuff happened there. Good stuff happened there. The article didn't mention any good stuff and made it seem like it was all really bad stuff. So I offered my own experiences.
But is there bad stuff there? Oh yeah. And let's not forget that. Someone gets promised a 500 euro salary, then gets paid only 90 euros? Wow, that's criminal and sickening. The people that did that should have very bad things happen to them. But yet, I'll still write in that I know firsthand people who had their lives changed their, including unskilled laborers that made a hell of a lot of money. I've done a bit of blue collar manual labor in my life. It's not enjoyable, it's hard, but it pays very well for unskilled labor. There was some of that happening in Dubai, and it offered a lot of opportunities that helped a lot of people.
I knew a girl and her sister who were Sri Lanka, whose parents came to Dubai as basically house servants. I'm not sure what the father did - maybe landscaping? - the mother was a maid. But their daughters were able to go to decent schools and were on their way out of poverty. There's stories like that too. The article paints Dubai as a hell hole filled with callous people, blinded to human suffering by their own greed. Yes there were bad things there, that ought to be changed. But the world is not simple, black and white, good and evil, with us or against us. A lot of good happened there too.
You seem like a nice and considerate person, and I think you and I are fundamentally on the same page. I came in to voice an opinion that seemed like it would be unpopular, because it seemed worth it for people to think about. Cheers and thanks for having a conversation with me.
A friend is working there now. He loves Dubai because it rewards hard work. He finds the pace faster than in the US. More buildings going up, more vision, more investment, and less red tape.
I hope that whatever economic problems Dubai has will soon be resolved. And I trust that over time Dubai will solve some of the problems which annoyed this author.
The government seems to be complicit in these abuses, so it's a good idea to support the government just because there are some people not committing abuses?
> A mentor of mine from England headed up a project management firm there. The workers under him made 20-40 times what they could make back home in South Asia, in places where the malnourishment/literally-starving-to-death rate is sometimes 30%.
So... because some people are making a lot of money it's ok for others to suffer... ? Does what your mentor does/did in Dubai somehow negate what is happening to these other workers?
> An acquaintance of mine who worked in Dubai had a Chinese girlfriend who was a stewardess on Emirates Airlines. Emirates is pretty incredible in that they pay the same amounts to their staff regardless of country of origin - almost all airlines and cruiselines pay much less to people from China, the Philippines, etc, than they would to someone from France or Australia. Emirates pays everyone the same. The acquaintence's Chinese girlfriend bought one house every couple months back in her home province in China on her wages. Her family was becoming incredibly wealthy.
If the wealth of Dubai is build upon the backs of slave-labor, then she is raising her family out of poverty with 'blood money.' She is knocking others down in an attempt to lift herself up, though indirectly.
> A company taking someone's passport and changing their contract is really horrible fraud, a horrific crime. But that's an indictment of the whole society - this kind of nonsense happens in the West too.
It is if the society decides to ignore it. It's not necessarily what happens in a society that should define it, but how a society reacts to these events. If this 'nonesense' is happening, and the people in Dubai are happy to turn the other way and pretend it doesn't exist, is this somehow acceptable behavior? I'm sure there are plenty of people there that are willing to ignore such abuses because they are making so much money.
> Take South Korea and the United States - a common story is a girl gets promised high paid waitressing/hostessing job, gets sold into slavery. This is a terrible thing, and should be stopped - but does that mean that United States is running on slave labor? No. A few bad people is not an indictment of an entire society.
How common is this though? Point me to data/articles/etc on this practice. I somehow think that these South Korean slaves are being sent into the 'sex trade' or becoming 'slave maids.' While this is nothing that should be ignored you would have a hard time making the case the a society is 'built' or 'based on' sex workers or maids (as opposed to maintenance/construction workers).
> For a lot of very poor people, Dubai helped pull their families out of poverty. The did some amazing things there. Those things won't be mentioned in a piece like this. People who would be living on subsistence farming in China build houses and manage property after working in Dubai. People from Sri Lanka, India, and Eastern Europe can support their whole families and save money after working there for a couple years, in places where there is no opportunity and everyone is literally starving to death.
I've already mentioned it, but it bears mentioning again. If this wealth is built on the backs of slaves, these people are (indirectly) throwing others under the bus in an attempt to improve their lot in life.
> The author doesn't care about the good.
I think that the point is that the good needs to out-weigh the bad. If 1 in 5 people coming from poverty in a 3rd world country 'hit it big' in Dubai while 4 in 5 people end up in deplorable working conditions with no chance of escape, is there really a point to mentioning that there is 'some good' happening?
> The opinion piece was written before doing any research or interviews, the research and interviews were set to tell the story.
You have no evidence for this, and at this point you're just making baseless accusations as a way to somehow bolster the point that you're trying to drive home. Please don't try to back up your argument by making unfounded statements.
No offense, but you're also failing to realize that you're railing on an 'opinion' piece while offering in return nothing but your own opinion based on anecdotal evidence. You can't use your own anecdotal evidence to disprove someone else's anecdotal evidence except in specific cases (i.e. you went to the same 'slave worker' camp at around the same time but the conditions were vastly different).
> There's some bad stuff there? Oh yeah, absolutely. There's bad stuff in the USA too
No offense, but from the description of the working/living conditions of these people, illegal Mexican immigration workers in th USA that are held 'captive' by their employers have it good.
I'm not sure how you can make this claim. Do you have knowledge of the chronology of the author's events as to when she wrote the article and when she performed the numerous interviews - with both sides - in the article?
The author doesn't care about the good.
I think that the author's point is that there is no good if the country/economy/system is built on the back of what amounts to slavery and fraud. That it doesn't matter how much "good" has been done if these abuses took place as a part of manufacturing the "good".
I don't mean the big buildings - I mean the author doesn't mention all the good that happened for a lot of workers that came to Dubai with no other options, were treated relatively did well, did hard work but were paid extremely well for it, and went from being poor to being upper middle class in their home countries after their tenure was over.
> That it doesn't matter how much "good" has been done if these abuses took place as a part of manufacturing the "good".
The author didn't make an attempt to get the average wages, or how the process works on average, or how widespread any abuses are. She didn't publish anyone's account who came out well in Dubai, and there's many. She didn't write about the people who, by working in Dubai for a couple years, made enough to live very well in their home countries, buy property, send their kids to good schools, and get their families out of poverty. That happened too. That's the good I was referring to.
From the description of the conditions that those workers are in, I would rather be homeless and dumpster diving for food in a Western country.
That surprises me. That isn't how it works for any of the airlines flying out of Canada, that is illegal here. The US has much more relaxed laws than we do, and a number of issues with respect to African Americans, but I'd be more than a little surprised if that was standard practice there.
What about European airlines like those flying out of England or Germany. Do they pay less to Chinese flight attendants? My guess would be that if they were legally able to work they would receive the same pay in countries like Germany and England. Am I mistaken?
I'm curious.
AU based airline flies route between SYD and BKK.
Airline reduces capacity of SYD crew base.
Airline declares BKK a crew base.
Airline pays BKK cabin crew local rates.
BKK cabin crew staff SYD->BKK->SYD flights.
Profit.The exact nature of "good" is also worth considering. People getting boned over in the name of curing cancer is different than people getting boned over in the name of acquiring real estate or building luxury homes on artificial islands that will collapse into the sea in two decades.
Edit: Wikipedia shows that sheikh can be an honorific Arab term and I meant a royal or monarch.
No social investments, no technology, just plain luxury and housing. Have you seen that artificial palm drawn on the sea? For me, that symbolizes how artificial things were in Dubai, and good old karma gave them what they deserved.
More proof that no country can survive without producing any of tangible value.
I hate it when people who don't know what they are doing have a lot of power, and worse when they start telling people who do know what they're doing how to do it.
In fact for every horrible story you read about in this article there is a politician in the US trying to bring that story to America. If you enact tort reform, reform the bankruptcy laws, remove worker protections and minimum wage laws, and remove environmental regulations, you will get exactly the same type of outcome as you are getting in Dubai.
"...Madam made me work from 6am to 1am every day, with no day off. I was exhausted and pleaded for a break, but they just shouted: 'You came here to work, not sleep!' Then one day I just couldn't go on, and Madam beat me. She beat me with her fists and kicked me. "