Being a service worker in Dubai can be terrible
The rest of the world, too
For 20 years, I worked elbow-to-elbow with undocumented workers.
Mostly from Ecuador, but from Mexico too. During my era in the food business, undocumented Latinx workers, sort of affectionately referred to as “amigos” by the white chefs who hired them, were the backbone of the restaurant industry. They still are. More than half of New York’s dishwashers are undocumented workers, and about a third of that city’s cooks. It’s safe to say that without undocumented workers, America’s restaurant economy as we know it would crumble.
These people tended to be the most hard working of any of us, the most willing to take on an extra shift even though they were almost always working two full time jobs already, and the most willing to do their jobs with a positive attitude and enthusiasm. If they provided “papers” to the employer, they were most likely to be fraudulent, but as long as they had papers, the employers were willing to look the other way.
These employers were willing to to engage in this illegal behavior, one that all of the restaurants were engaging in, because these “illegal” employees were easy to exploit. They were willing to accept low pay, no health insurance, no paid time off or sick days, and very little in the way of pay raises or bonuses. This works out perfectly for the restaurant industry, with its infamously low profit margins, and everyone involved was, and is, complicit in this exploitation.
A couple of weeks ago, we traveled to Dubai, and more than one person asked me about the plight of service workers there. I responded that you do see lots of migrant service workers, that they are more than likely low paid, and that they are almost all people of color– the same as they are the world over. One observation that I have made almost everywhere we have traveled is that people of color are the servers, the porters, the cleaners, the cooks, the drivers, the doormen; and white people are the served.
But the questions did spur me on to do some digging. One of the first things I came across was this video, “Slaves of Dubai”, produced by VICE. The short film documents he indentured servitude of Bangladeshi and Pakistani men who are tasked with building Dubai’s massive hotels and skyscrapers. They’re recruited, promised one thing, and upon arrival the wages they were promised do not manifest, their passports are confiscated, and they are kept living in wretched conditions after seven-day-per-week and 12-hour-per-day shifts without even enough money to buy a proper daily meal. Against the glittering backdrop of Dubai’s obscene wealth, their plight hits especially hard.
With only a three hour plane ride between India and Dubai, combined with India’s extremely high rate of poverty— more than 200 million people living on about $2US per day— workers are unfortunately easy to recruit, exploit, and entrap. There is a moment in the video where one man cries, contemplating his predicament. He is trapped in Dubai without enough money to return home, without enough money to buy food to eat. It’s a scene that embeds itself into your heart and remains there.
But closer to home, in the past year and a half, 150,000 migrants arrived in New York City looking for shelter and work, most of them seeking asylum from racial and religious persecution; war, or gang warfare in their home countries. Most were in some kind of imminent danger at home. Though New York City is a sanctuary city, a federal law makes it illegal for these migrants to work in the US for six months post asylum claim in this country.
This naturally creates a huge pool of people who are easy to exploit. Many of them land in food delivery gigs because there is a black market for access accounts to become an Uber Eats driver, which does not require much documentation, earning a little more than a base pay of $2 per trip, or less than $10 for an hour of work.
When we start looking under the hood, exploitation is laced into most of what we eat and drink, regardless of what land space we happen to be standing on. In the US alone, the trucking industry that ferries food product from coast-to-coast is rife with modern day indentured servitude; Thai boats dealing in cheap shrimp– most of which destined for American plates– are staffed by slave labor, again typically migrants with few other options for safety, making them vulnerable to human trafficking and forced labor. These are not just numbers, and individual personal stories are sickening. I’d recommend the 2020 investigative book The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr for more context. According to the Environmental Justice Foundation, 59 percent of trafficked migrants have witnessed the murder of a fellow worker.
I think The Secret Life of Service Workers is a book that is waiting to be written, and within, it will reveal no fewer wonton violations of human rights. I’ve been struck, at certain moments, when I contemplate the fact that I’ve voluntarily chosen to work in an industry that many would only arrive at because they have no other choices. Yes, I was exploited, too. It makes me think about how tainted the entire service sector is; how tangled with remnants of slavery (see the US tipping structure– the practice of tipping allows a work force that is close to 70 percent female and disproportionately women of color to be paid a sub-minimum wage, according to the New York Times) and of coerced labor.
It doesn’t matter how much fair trade coffee we buy or grass fed beef, I think we are all complicit it exploitation when we eat and drink, whether we know it or not. This doesn’t even begin to touch the US structure of providing temporary agricultural visas to migrant workers for harvesting produce that lands on basically every American plate.
For their trouble, they are still “illegal,” yet “essential.”
So what do we do?
I think awareness goes a long way. Whenever I’m in an Uber, I wonder how many people know about the plight of the almost entirely African workforce who provides this now-crucial service to the American public. I include myself in this question. How much do I know? And by utilizing these services, how complicit am I, really, in exploitation?
I don’t have to go to Dubai to contribute to the horrifying plight of migrants of color. I can stay snugly in my bed and order up a taco from down the street.
The only conclusion I can draw is that if we want to exist in a service economy— and Western customers certainly do (I’m including Dubai in this equation because they cater largely to a Western audience) then someone within the chain of service is very likely being subjugated.
Whether we are the servers or the served, it’s something worth thinking about.
As promised, I’ll share Sean’s record picks for paid subscribers! First installment: what he picked up in a dusty Paris record shop, and why. You want this content! You need this content!
Serge Gainsbourg and Bridget Bardot “Bonnie & Clyde”
From Sean:
“Because we were in Paris and Mecca and I just kind of had that vibe of “Bonnie and Clyde.” It’s a time and place. I feel like Serge really had an edge on this bohemian lifestyle of Paris, like the music, the arts, the fashion, the culture, the sex. It really made up the swinging ‘60’s of Paris. Such a sexy one!”
Etta James Live
“There are obviously so many artists who have played in Paris but particularly jazz is so iconic. Etta James is just power and force. We landed in a smoky Jazz club in Berlin before moving on to Paris and that vibe was just so perfect. With a live album like this one, you can really feel the warmth, depth and energy.”