"When you have a city where 85 percent of the population is expatriate," Masri said, "that comes with its set of challenges. And when it's seen the growth it has seen over the past few years, those challenges grow very rapidly."
The underlying problem, says Nicholas McGeehan, who began advocating for the rights of migrant workers when he worked for two state-owned oil companies in Abu Dhabi from 2002 to 2006, is that there is no benefit to contractors for treating workers well.
"The way the labor system is set up, there's no requirement for companies to do that," McGeehan said. "In fact, you're just driving your cost up."
When asked why the workers endure the conditions in the UAE, Whitson said they are "very desperate, very vulnerable people who don't really have any options."
"For them, it's a matter of survival," Whitson said of the estimated half a million migrant workers are estimated to be in the nation. "The problem is people who know better – people who are in a position to not exploit people just because they can and to not take advantage of the most vulnerable people on this earth."
This post has been revised as of 8:30pm Nov. 7, 2008.
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