Workers Riot at Site of Dubai Skyscraper

• IBTimes RSS
• Print
• E-Mail
• digg
• Del.icio.us

The stoppage triggered a sympathy strike at Dubai International Airport, with thousands of laborers building a new terminal also laying down their tools, officials said.

Some 2,500 workers who are building the Burj Dubai tower and surrounding housing developments chased and beat security officers Tuesday night, smashed computers and files in offices, and destroyed about two dozen cars and construction machines, witnesses said.

The workers were angered because buses to their residential camp were delayed after their shifts, witnesses at the site said.

An Interior Ministry official who investigates labor issues, Lt. Col. Rashid Bakhit Al Jumairi, said the rioters caused almost $1 million in damage.

The workers, employed by Dubai-based construction firm Al Naboodah Laing O'Rourke, returned to the vast site Wednesday but refused to work.

Crowds of blue-garbed workers milled in the shadow of the concrete tower, now 36 stories tall, while leaders negotiated with officials from the company and the Ministry of Labor.

"Everyone is angry here. No one will work," said Khalid Farouk, 39, a laborer with Al Naboodah. Other workers said their leaders were asking for pay raises: skilled carpenters on the site earned $7.60 per day, with laborers getting $4 per day.

A reporter inquiring about the riots was ordered to leave the site by an Al Naboodah manager who refused to give his name. The firm's business development manager, Jonathan Eveleigh, declined to comment when reached by telephone.

Al Jumairi said the laborers were also asking Al Naboodah, one of the Emirates' biggest construction conglomerates, for overtime pay, better medical care and humane treatment by foremen.

• 1
• 2
• 3