Workers In Dubai's Expo 2020 Decry Low Pay, Long Working Hours

Intent on making a flawless impression as the first host of the world’s fair in the Middle East, Dubai sought to leave nothing to chance. It poured billions of dollars into its pristine fairgrounds and jubilant festivities that opened last month, aiming for 25 million visits to the pandemic-delayed Expo 2020, Isabel Debre and Malak Jarb reported for the Associated Press (AP).

Photo Insert: Dubai skyline reflection, Dubai, UAE

Propping up the world’s fair is the United Arab Emirates’ contentious labor system that long has drawn accusations of mistreating workers.

Highly sensitive to its image and aware that Expo attracts more attention to its labor practices, Dubai has held companies on the project to higher-than-normal standards of worker treatment. Contractors offer benefits and better wages to Expo workers, compared with elsewhere in the country, and many are grateful for the jobs.

Yet, according to human rights groups and interviews with over two dozen workers, violations have persisted, underpinned by the UAE’s labor sponsorship system. It relies on complicated chains of foreign subcontracts, ties workers’ residency to their jobs, and gives outsized power to employers.

Among the complaints are workers having to pay exorbitant and illegal fees to local recruiters in order to work at the world’s fair; employers confiscating their passports; broken promises on wages; crowded and unsanitary living conditions in dormitories; substandard or unaffordable food; and up to 70-hour workweeks in sometimes brutal heat.

“You can have the best standards in the world, but if you have this inherent power imbalance, workers are in a situation where they’re at risk of exploitation all the time,” said Mustafa Qadri, executive director of Equidem Research, a labor rights consultancy that recently reported on the mistreatment of Expo workers during the pandemic.

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