The stalemate between the employer, Arabtec, and the low-paid workers was finally broken on Wednesday however, when the police were called in to arrest 70 ringleaders of the strike.
In recession-hit Dubai, labor protests like the one this week are becoming increasing common. The problem has become more pronounced as smaller construction firms become unable to pay their workers for months.
Since many workers are forced to submit their passports to their employers, when an executive flees the country to escape the prison sentence that typically accompanies a debt default, tens of thousands are left stranded.
“These cases are far too common,” said one South Asian consulate employee, who declined to be named. “Protection for them is limited, but it’s improving.”
The men who built the majority of the gleaming skyscrapers and ultra-modern residences in Dubai often themselves live in makeshift camps in the choking industrial areas of the city.
The accommodations, informally known as labor camps, are often rudimentary dorms where men sleep eight to a room.
During the winter, it is common for rains to cause septic tanks to overflow and the camps become a squalid health hazard. During the summer, when temperatures soar to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, they can become death traps if they are not properly air-conditioned.
Workers typically earn as little as Dh 800 a month (US$220), yet the money they send to their families back home contributes 24 percent to the $50 billion a year India receives in remittances.
Human Rights Watch has long raised concern about the treatment of workers in the United Arab Emirates and the attention has spurred authorities here into action.
In a newly released report, announced at a press conference in Dubai on Wednesday, HRW highlighted the improvements that have been made, but said that more needed to be done.
The newly formed Dubai Police short-term labor inspection section was recently established to deal with the problem. On Tuesday, they announced that they had been able to repatriate 850 workers who had been unable to leave the country because their company had not given them return airfares. In the end, the company was ordered to come up with the Dh 850,000 (US$231,000) required.
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This week’s protest was the second in as many months. In December, almost a thousand workers used their buses to block a busy roundabout in an industrial area of the city and sat on the road in a silent protest.
Four riot vehicles arrived within two hours and scores of black-clad men in ski masks and clubs poured out. However, there were no clashes between the two groups, and police were able to ensure that the demands of the group of unpaid workers were met.
Other protests can be more violent. In 2008, over 3,000 workers were arrested in the neighboring emirate of Ras al Khaimah following a protest where they had attacked security staff.
Part of the problem is that workers brought to the Gulf are often duped by unscrupulous recruitment agents in India.
The contracts they signed before leaving the country are often swapped upon arriving in the Emirates with another, far less appealing version.
On Wednesday, the Indian Minister for Overseas Affairs Vayalar Ravi said at a press conference in Dubai that an online contract registration system would be introduced to ensure that workers were no longer being cheated.
At the initial stage of signing the contract, it would have to be registered online, and the system would be available to authorities in both India and the United Arab Emirates labor ministry, he said.
HRW has previously criticized Indian officials for neglecting their own countrymen in the United Arab Emirates because of a vested interest in the remittances they send home.
“For too long, the Indian government has simply treated these workers as sources of remittance income, with little attention to the abuse and exploitation they endure,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW, in an open letter in Nov. 1.
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