Takeover of Ports by UAE does not bode well for US workers

[PA Democrat]

For those who are asking what is the difference between a British-owned company and a UAE-owned company running our ports, here's one answer to that question.

The UAE has a total disdain for the rights of workers. PLease read the description of the state of workers' rights in Dubai below. Ask yourself how comfortable you feel about the immense lobbying effort that will more than likely be undertaken by the UAE to change OUR labor laws so they can maximize their profits.

However, South Asian contract laborers, legally bound to a single employer and subject to totalitarian social controls, make up the great mass of the population. Dubai lifestyles are attended by vast numbers of Filipina, Sri Lankan, and Indian maids, while the building boom is carried on the shoulders of an army of poorly paid Pakistanis and Indians working twelve-hour shifts, six and half days a week, in the blast-furnace desert heat.

Dubai, like its neighbors, flouts ILO labor regulations and refuses to adopt the international Migrant Workers Convention. Human Rights Watch in 2003 accused the Emirates of building prosperity on "forced labor." Indeed, as the British Independent recently emphasized in an exposé on Dubai, "The labour market closely resembles the old indentured labour system brought to Dubai by its former colonial master, the British."

"Like their impoverished forefathers," the paper continued, "today's Asian workers are forced to sign themselves into virtual slavery for years when they arrive in the United Arab Emirates. Their rights disappear at the airport where recruitment agents confiscate their passports and visas to control them"

In addition to being super-exploited, Dubai's helots are also expected to be generally invisible. The bleak work camps on the city's outskirts, where laborers are crowded six, eight, even twelve to a room, are not part of the official tourist image of a city of luxury without slums or poverty. In a recent visit, even the United Arab Emirate's Minister of Labor was reported to be profoundly shocked by the squalid, almost unbearable conditions in a remote work camp maintained by a large construction contractor. Yet when the laborers attempted to form a union to win back pay and improve living conditions, they were promptly arrested.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/07/sinister_paradise.html

Thanks to NVMojo for bringing this article from Mother jones to my attention.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x497910

[slor]

1. No wonder bush likes them so much n/t

[PA Democrat]

2. Yes, the UAE is a neo-con's wet dream

Just imagine all that UAE money flowing into K Street to further undermine workers' rights and the middle class.

[LynneSin]

3. Rendell already has a great plan

because the contract expires in May so the state just won't renew the lease

http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/13935291.htm

[madrchsod]

4. the teamsters , dockworkers

and the longshoreman unions will have a say in this matter....the boys will have to call in the mercenaries

[PA Democrat]

6. Australia's conservative government tried to break up dockworkers' unions

and they contracted with UAE to train mercenaries as strike breakers.

In a striking demonstration of the effectiveness of global trade union co-ordination, action by the London based International Transport Workers Federation has succeeded in stopping a secret plan, backed by the right-wing Australian government, to train Australian soldiers as strike breakers in the Gulf state of Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Following threats made by the ITF last week to target shipping services to Dubai for industrial action in ports around the world and an urgent meeting on Friday afternoon between officials of the ITF and the Maritime Union of Australia at the Kensington Embassy of the United Arab Emirates, visas for the 70 strong mercenary force which arrived in Dubai earlier in the week were cancelled along with their contract with the Dubai port authority.

Clearly believing that the U.A.E., a country in which trade unionism is illegal, was beyond the reach of the ITF which had already proved effective in defusing a government organised confrontation with the dockers union in the port of Cairns in September this year, the Australian government was clearly behind the scheme to give cargo handling training to its soldiers during their long service leave prior to their being used to break the power of the MUA on Australia s waterfront.

http://www.labournet.net/docks2/9712/dubai.htm

[Coastie for Truth]

5. Just like Coal and Steel before the New Deal and the Unions.

(Do you remember the good old days of unions? I do - USWA)

[Neil Lisst]

7. this really is part of the New World Order, or so it seems

I've never really put a lot of energy into considering the whole NWO thing. But things like this make me really wonder. It's as if Bush considers the whole TERROR thing to be a big marketing scam, one he milks, but one he knows is less than he makes it.

[earth mom]

8. Union busting....

why am I not surprised? :grr: