Today, Explained - World Cup: They built this city

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

The people who built Qatar’s stadiums, hotels, and transit systems were employed under the country’s exploitative migrant worker system. Officials promised things would change before the World Cup, but a one-time worker says it’s only better on paper. This episode was produced by Haleema Shah, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard with help from Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's Today Explained, World Cup edition. I'm Noelle King. In the host country, Qatar, leaders made a promise some years back. Today's show is about whether it was kept. A frenzy of construction accompanies any World Cup. And after winning the right to host, Qatar vowed to reform a very old and very exploitative system that keeps foreign workers bonded to their employers, virtually without rights, including the right to say, no, that's dangerous, that's unhealthy, that could kill me. And people died on World Cup construction sites. But no one, including us, can figure out how many

because Qatar is very secretive. Today, we're going to hear from two people who moved to Qatar for work. One, a Kenyan man who tried to scrape together a living there. And one, an American researcher with a PhD who was looking into this very question. Did Qatar keep its promise? That's coming up. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level

this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk, an authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns

about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Most of the people who work, who do any type of job in Qatar, are not Qatari. They're foreigners who come to the country to earn money. They include every type of employee, from CEOs to construction workers. Two million people.

So when Qatar won the right to host the World Cup and had to build a staggering amount of infrastructure, there was an understanding that migrant workers would do the actual work. My name is Geoffrey. I am 40 years old. Actually, next month I'm approaching 40. I'm a Kenyan. Of course, a family man of one wife and three boys. In Kenya, he works with a charity called Equidim as a labor violations investigator.

Actually, I'm an investigator and a researcher at the same time. That's basically Joffrey for you. So in the beginning, Joffrey's story was not much different than the stories of any of the thousands of people who moved to Qatar for work every year. In 2018, things were not working well for me, and I lost the job which I was providing for my family. So after thorough soul-searching, I decided to go to Qatar. He paid a recruiter $1,500, a lot more money than he had. He had to take out a loan.

He showed his credentials, resume, passport. Eight days later, the deal was done. And I was able to Qatar. Joffrey really wanted a job in security, but there were no security jobs. So he ended up working as a technician's assistant in a petrochemical plant. It wasn't complicated work, but it was difficult. His job was to carry the technician's heavy tools, and his days were long. I was working for six days a week, one day rest. We usually wake up at four o'clock. At exactly 5 a.m., we are picked by the bus. The work site was one hour drive and work started at 6.30. Normal working hours were from 6.30 to 3.30. And of course, there was a standard mandatory overtime of two hours. So the normal duty day would end at 5.30. So we would arrive at the accommodation again at 7 in the night. And for this, he made the equivalent of $470 a month.

But there were a lot of unnecessary deductions of the wages. The weather was taking a toll on us. I feel like I'm running short of breath because of the humidity. If they report you, the entire day's wages is deducted from your monthly salary. So if a guy worked slowly, he'd lose that day's wages. But if he took a sick day... They went further even to deduct two days instead of the one day you stayed at home because you were feeling uncomfortable. So people would rather go to work so that at least only hours would be deducted. Than staying at home, they deducted

double days. Joffrey did that job for almost two years, and then he got lucky. Because of scarcity of guys who could speak fluent English and who could write and read, I was reassigned and given responsibilities. And in that process, I came into contact with a lot of procedures, especially on process safety and worker safety. Unfortunately, one of the Arabic guys, a friend of mine, an engineer, saw the competence in me. And he actually paid full school fees for me to go and study the occupational and safety and health. So when I left that company, my immediate next job was as a safety officer. First, I worked in a construction site. Then, secondly, I worked in Al Janoub Stadium.

And finally, I worked in Lusail Stadium. The last job I was earning around 4,500 Qatar rials. $1,500. That was pretty good money. It was a boom time. It was like the entire world had descended on Qatar. Asians from Bangladesh, India, Philippines, Nepal, Malaysia, Indonesia, Africans from West Africa like Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya, of course. And there was one very obvious problem for a safety inspector like him.

The problem is that they didn't even know their rights. They didn't even know what is expected. So to convince someone that is being exploited was one of the biggest challenges. For example, it is common knowledge that one person cannot carry a load of over 25 kg, but you find a supervisor forcing someone to carry a 50 kg load alone with the wrong posture, which might even lead to severe back injury or even permanent injuries. So when I tell them, I tell them, stop, this is wrong. He tells me, no, no, no, no, the boss has said I should do it. So most of this was more of ignorance, though it was direct exploitation. Did you ever see anyone killed or injured on the job?

Killed, I have not witnessed, but I've heard of several. But injuries, I've seen so many, so many. I remember one, people working at height. I'm telling these guys, this heat is too much. People are sweaty. Their hands are sweaty. Most likely, people walking at height are going to have slips or falls because of sweat, because even the gloves would not work anymore.

I said this, and within minutes, we had a guy falling from height. Luckily, it was not fatal, but he broke his leg. It was things like that. The fact that he'd said, this is dangerous. And then minutes later, a guy pitches off of a building that made Joffrey increasingly, but very quietly, take up the job of organizing workers. I became sort of like a leader. And I started creating awareness on the basic minimum rights a worker should expect from the employer.

And that is when I started getting into trouble with everybody because an enlightened citizenry is a threat to leadership. So even my one year, nine months working as a technician helper did not end because I got another job. Actually, they terminated me because they thought I am a bad influence to people because people were now standing up to exploitation. People were going even to the Ministry of Labour and getting their dues. Almost everybody was like, when they get in trouble with the company,

they are going for the disciplinary hearing. I was like the pro bono lawyer. So in the long run, this came to the ears of the company and they knew, ah, there's a lawyer within the employees. I had now become popular. When I started, I started with one WhatsApp group

until they reached 15 WhatsApp groups. And those who had genuine cases which needed legal advice or legal intervention, I was referring them to relevant government agencies. Actually, I was arrested by the government of Qatar. Oh. Deported. Deported. So what are your feelings about Qatar now?

Qatar is a good country. Qatar has provided a lot of employment opportunities to migrant workers from all over the world. My only concern is at what cost? Is it by exploitation? Are they maximizing on the poverty levels of these countries, especially Asia and Africa? If you compare Qatar with other Gulf nations, it is way better. But it's only better on paper. You're Kenyan, so I assume you like soccer. Are you going to watch the World Cup?

Actually, my team is Brazil, but the fire in me is not there. Because every time I hear the word World Cup, I try and remember a few serious cases I had seen in Qatar. And I feel like it will be an insult for me to enjoy while there's somebody somewhere

who has suffered a permanent injury or there's a family somewhere mourning their lost one, yet there's nothing for them. I'm trying to imagine my favorite team, Brazil, lifting the World Cup trophy, but workers who have toiled day and night

getting zero compensation. This makes me feel sad, and this makes me feel like I can't watch the World Cup. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family. And Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an

Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an Aura frame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday. And she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together

and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. Today Explained, we're back. Qatar's secrecy makes it impossible to know

how many people died building World Cup facilities. Their labor system, the one Joffrey got caught in, is very old. And to explain how it came to be, we called Natasha Iskander, who, like Joffrey, moved to Qatar for work. But she's a professor at NYU. She wrote a book about her research in Qatar called Does Skill Make Us Human?

Migrant Workers in 21st Century Qatar and Beyond. Qatar is kind of this very special node in the world that has always been part of the globalized economy, really for centuries. Long before Qatar became a leader in oil and natural gas production for export, the region has always been the site of global commodity booms. And these global commodity booms have always been constrained by the availability of workers. And so in order to support these workers, people were brought in as workers under many different systems, from enslaved workers in forms of debt bondage and others.

Let me just tell you about these global commodity booms and busts. The modern ones started with the pearling industry. The fruit of countless hours of dangerous and grueling exposure to sun and sea in cramped and difficult conditions. Pearls were the luxury fashion item that all very wealthy families wanted to display at the turn of the 20th century. And Qatar was the center of pearl harvesting. This was a thoroughly international industry. And labor was brought in from all over the region, primarily as enslaved and debt-bonded workers.

From East Africa, from what is today Afghanistan and Iran. It was shaped by merchants and middlemen from India and Iran. The captain holds the pearls until the visit of the tawash, or pearl broker, from the mainland. Financiers and commodity traders from Paris and New York. The pearls are handed over. And that was a massive pearling boom that went bust just a few decades later

when artificial pearl production was developed and Qatar's population collapsed. From around 60,000 in 1920 to something close to 16,000 around 1940. Now, as never before, the drive for new oil reserves in the Middle East is of vital importance to the great powers. But then, shortly after World War II, the British who had been prospecting for oil in the region negotiated with Qatar for a concession to exploit oil in Qatar. Up from the desert wells, along the pipelines, and down to the coast, the precious flow of oil brings new benefits to be shared by the peoples of East and

West. And the oil company also faced those same labor constraints and imported workers from all over the world. Okay, so in the U.S., we would call this a guest worker program. But Qatar has a word for their system, and it's called kafela. Tell me why it's unique. In its bones, the kafela system is not that different from temporary labor regulation systems around the world. And kafil in Arabic literally translates to sponsor. What distinguished Qatar's kafela system on the day that Qatar won the World Cup hosting rights is that at that time, it was one of the most

restrictive systems in the world. It was tantamount to a formal system of bonded labor. Workers who were in Qatar under the kafela system were bound to their sponsor who was generally their employer. That sponsor could deport the worker at any time for any reason. The worker could not withhold labor for any reason. So the worker could not stop working even in cases of wage theft, dangerous conditions, physical abuse. The worker was also not able to quit. They could also not change jobs. There were no minimum wage protections, no right to organize, no worker voice or representation.

And the worker also could not leave the country at will. The worker required an exit visa to leave the country. And that exit visa had to be authorized by the sponsor in conjunction with the government. So even if you decided as a worker, I've had enough, I want to go home, you couldn't actually leave. You needed an exit visa. And once you went home, you couldn't return to Qatar to take another job, if you so desired, unless you got the permission and assent from your prior employer. How long was this system in place? In its modern iteration, it was in place starting in the early 2000s and actually became more restrictive as Qatar needed more labor.

It started undergoing a series of reforms, actually thanks to the global campaign against some of the worst aspects of this kafela system. And then in 2017, there was a complaint filed with the International Labour Organization that Qatar was abetting modern slavery. And so Qatar very quickly formed a partnership with the ILO and under the tutelage of the ILO, instituted a series of reforms that were quite remarkable and quite fast. What were they? Under those reforms, Qatar put in place a wage protection system to try and track who was not paying workers. It abolished the exit visa for most classes of workers, so now workers

can leave the country at will. It established a minimum wage of $275 a month, still very low. Workers now have the ability to quit their jobs, and they have the ability to change jobs jobs if they so desire. These reforms look very good on paper, but what I will say is that in practice, the labor relations in Qatar have not changed that meaningfully from when the kafela system existed under its previous iteration. Even the ILO will concede this. Workers find it very difficult to change jobs, almost impossible. They face retaliation. Employers will report them for absconding. They face potential detention. The additional feature here is that it exists in a universe of other regulations. And the most stringent of these is a system of physical segregation. So most of the construction workers in Qatar, for example, live in an area outside of Doha called the industrial

area, which is a place for labor camps, cement factories, equipment storage. it's grim, it's isolated, and it is policed. And workers cannot actually travel through the city at will. They face the prospect of detention and deportation if they do so. So imagine trying to find another job on your one day off when you can't actually move through the city at will. So a migrant worker named Joffrey tells us he was deported for organizing. Does that track with what you heard happens? Yes, absolutely. It's totally expected.

Any kind of labor organizing in Qatar is prohibited. But one of the things that I found really striking, Noelle, was that I saw strikes, wildcat spontaneous strikes, at every single site I was on. And the surprising thing for me was that employers tolerated these strikes as long as they stayed within certain limits. So let me tell you what those limits are. They had to be short, you know, a day or two. And when workers struck, they had to do it in their labor camps. No protests or challenges were tolerated on site. And the protest had to be limited to one nationality. Wait, why only one nationality? So like Bangladeshi workers could strike,

but if a Kenyan like Joffrey slipped in there, we'd have a problem. Yes, exactly. Because if workers organized across nationality, it meant that workers were not, were no longer blowing off steam as Bangladeshis or Nepalis or Egyptians who just needed a day to kind of get their heads back. But rather they were organizing as workers with a class consciousness. And those protests were immediately disappeared through deportation. That is absolutely wild. And so what's going to happen to all of those workers who moved to Qatar to build the stadiums and the metro and the new buildings? What happens now? So if Qatar imagines itself as kind of hosting these games and then closing up shop, then you can imagine workers being sent home. But that is not Qatar's ambition. Qatar's ambition is to position itself as a global destination for sports and culture

and as an important political node. And to do that, it will need to continue to build and continue to maintain the buildings it has built. So it will need a workforce, possibly slightly smaller, but it will need a workforce in construction for the foreseeable future. Everything you've told me to this point suggests that if Qatar does want to become a global destination, a London or a Tokyo or a Delhi, some of this stuff is just going to have to change. It's not going to fly, right, over time? I think how much it continues to change will depend very much on how vital these global conversations remain. And I mean that with respect to Qatar, but also with respect to other places around the world.

I mean, one of the most encouraging things about this cup to me as someone who has cared about working conditions for migrant and immigrant workers for a very long time is that we are finally having really high profile conversations about what is fair, what is just. If we could continue to have those conversations in relation, for example, to the World Cup that will be held in North America in 2026, it would be a powerful political move and statement by the global community if we could say, just like we asked Qatar to reform its regulatory system vis-a-vis migrant

workers, we are going to ask the U.S. and Canada or anywhere else we hold a global event to do the same. Today's show was produced by Halima Shah and edited by Amina El-Sadi. It was engineered by Afim Shapiro and fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Matthew Collette. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.