Codger's Post #32
Codger's post just about sums it up really.
The original article could so easily have been written substituting UK for Dubai. Talking of exploited workers from across the sea arriving with bright eyes and expectations of fairly lavish wages and sublime working conditions, having paid 'agents' for the trip, fit equally as well to Poles, Latvians, Portugese, Rumanians and so on. Whether they work as cheap, indentured labour in construction, (65% of the Olympic Village) or as fruit and veg planters, pickers, cleaners, packers, (90% in East Anglia) or sex slaves to 'gang-masters' in every city in UK (80%) they are not so different to the men and women mentioned in the original article.
The UK Gov't is powerless, in spite of UK and EU LAWS to prevent such things. Money changes hands and the laws are sidestepped. If they all went back home tomorrow the economy of the UK would collapse, as would the economy in the Gulf States. Even if the Gulf States passed humanitarian and begnign laws to protect the rights of workers, the same exploitation would flourish. They would simply look to the way the system flourishes in the UK and copy that.
I do not condone the exploitation of any man or woman in any industry and like most of us, wish things were different. To change such things requires determination, sympathy, patience and charity, all of which are sadly lacking in modern society.
Just as an aside, I am living in Thailand where the daytime temps are around 34-38C at the moment. I watch men and woman working on construction sites and road building projects and am astounded that they can work in such heat. I drip if I walk around the garden and pull up a weed! To be working in the Gulf when the temp is over 50C just seems inhuman. Then again, picking sugar beet at minus 5C in wind blasted Norfolk for less than the minimum wage seems equally inhuman.
**** happens, all over the place; the question is, what are you prepared to do about it?