--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Noelle King: It's Today Explained, World Cup edition. I'm Noelle King.
--:-- Noelle King: In the host country, Qatar, leaders made a promise some years back. Today's show is about whether it was kept.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: And people died on World Cup construction sites. But no one, including us, can figure out how many, because Qatar is very secretive.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Noelle King: Did Qatar keep its promise? That's coming up.
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--:-- Noelle King: It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King.
--:-- 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.
--:-- Noelle King: They include every type of employee from CEOs to construction workers, two million people.
--:-- Noelle King: 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.
--:-- Geoffrey: My name is Geoffrey. I am 40 years old. Actually, next month I'm approaching 40.
--:-- Geoffrey: I'm a Kenyan. Of course, a family man of one wife and three boys.
--:-- Geoffrey: In Kenya, he works with a charity called Equitim as a labor violations investigator. Actually, I'm an investigator and research at the same time.
--:-- Geoffrey: That's basically me for you.
--:-- Geoffrey: So in the beginning, my story was not much different than the stories of any of the thousands of people who moved to Qatar for work every year.
--:-- Geoffrey: In 2018, things were not working well for me, and I lost the job which I was providing for my family.
--:-- Geoffrey: So after searching, I decided to go to Qatar.
--:-- Geoffrey: He paid a recruiter, $1,500 U.S. dollars, a lot more money than he had.
--:-- Geoffrey: He had to take out a loan.
--:-- Geoffrey: He showed his credentials, resume, passport.
--:-- Geoffrey: Eight days later, the deal was done.
--:-- Geoffrey: And I was airborne to Qatar.
--:-- Geoffrey: Joffrey really wanted a job in security, but there were no security jobs.
--:-- Geoffrey: So he ended up working as a technician's assistant in a petrochemical plant.
--:-- Geoffrey: It wasn't complicated work, but it was difficult.
--:-- Geoffrey: His job was to carry the technician's heavy tools.
--:-- Geoffrey: And his days were long.
--:-- Geoffrey: I was working for six days a week, one day rest.
--:-- Geoffrey: We usually wake up at 4 o'clock.
--:-- Geoffrey: At exactly 5 a.m., we are picked by the bus.
--:-- Geoffrey: The work site was one hour drive and work started at 6.30.
--:-- Geoffrey: Normal working hours were from 6.30 to 3.30.
--:-- Geoffrey: And of course, there was a standard mandatory overtime of two hours.
--:-- Geoffrey: So the normal duty day would end at 5.30.
--:-- Geoffrey: So we will arrive at the accommodation again at 7 in the night.
--:-- Geoffrey: And for this, he made the equivalent of $470 U.S. dollars a month.
--:-- Geoffrey: But there were a lot of unnecessary deductions of the wages.
--:-- Geoffrey: The weather was taking a toll on us.
--:-- Geoffrey: I feel like I'm running short of breath because of the humidity.
--:-- Geoffrey: If they report you, the entire day's wages is deducted from your monthly salary.
--:-- Geoffrey: So if a guy worked slowly, he'd lose that day's wages.
--:-- Geoffrey: But if he took a sick day...
--:-- Geoffrey: They went further even to deduct two days instead of the one day you stayed at home because you were feeling uncomfortable.
--:-- Geoffrey: So people would rather go to work so that at least only hours would be deducted than staying at home.
--:-- Geoffrey: They deducted double days.
--:-- Geoffrey: Joffrey did that job for almost two years, and then he got lucky.
--:-- Geoffrey: Because of scarcity of guys who could speak fluent English and who could write and read, I was reassigned and given responsibilities.
--:-- Geoffrey: and in that process I came into contact with a lot of procedures especially on process safety and worker safety.
--:-- Geoffrey: 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.
--:-- Geoffrey: So when I left that company, my immediate next job was as a safety officer.
--:-- Geoffrey: First, I worked in a construction site.
--:-- Geoffrey: Then secondly, I worked in Al-Janob Stadium.
--:-- Geoffrey: And finally, I worked in Lucille Stadium.
--:-- Geoffrey: The last job I was earning around 4,500 Qatar Reals. $1,500.
--:-- Geoffrey: That was pretty good money.
--:-- Geoffrey: It was a boom time.
--:-- Geoffrey: It was like the entire world had descended on Qatar.
--:-- Geoffrey: Asians from Bangladesh India Philippines Nepal Malaysia Indonesia Africans from West Africa like Nigeria Ghana Uganda Tanzania and Kenya of course
--:-- Geoffrey: And there was one very obvious problem for a safety inspector like him.
--:-- Geoffrey: The problem is that they didn't even know their rights.
--:-- Geoffrey: They didn't even know what is expected.
--:-- Geoffrey: So to convince someone that is being exploited was one of the biggest challenges.
--:-- Geoffrey: 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.
--:-- Geoffrey: So if I tell them, I tell them, stop, this is wrong.
--:-- Geoffrey: He tells me, no, no, no, no, the boss has said I should do it.
--:-- Geoffrey: So most of this was more of ignorance, though it was direct exploitation.
--:-- Geoffrey: Did you ever see anyone killed or injured on the job?
--:-- Geoffrey: Being killed, I have not witnessed, but I've heard of several.
--:-- Geoffrey: But injuries, I've seen so many, so many.
--:-- Geoffrey: I remember when people working at height, I'm telling these guys, this heat is too much.
--:-- Geoffrey: People are sweaty.
--:-- Geoffrey: The hands are sweaty.
--:-- Geoffrey: Most likely, people working at height are going to have slips or falls because of sweat, because even the gloves will not work anymore.
--:-- Geoffrey: I said this, and within minutes we had a guy falling from height.
--:-- Geoffrey: Luckily, it was not fatal, but he broke his leg.
--:-- Geoffrey: It was things like that.
--:-- Geoffrey: The fact that he'd said, this is dangerous.
--:-- Geoffrey: 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.
--:-- Geoffrey: I became sort of like a leader.
--:-- Geoffrey: and I started creating awareness on the basic minimum rights a worker should expect from the employer.
--:-- Geoffrey: And that is when I started getting into trouble with everybody because an enlightened citizenry is a threat to leadership.
--:-- Geoffrey: So even my one year, nine months working as a technician helper did not end because I got another job.
--:-- Geoffrey: Actually, they terminated me.
--:-- Geoffrey: because they thought I am a bad influence to people, because people were now standing up to exploitation.
--:-- Geoffrey: People were going even to the Ministry of Labor and getting their dues.
--:-- Geoffrey: Almost everybody was like, when they get in trouble with the company, they are going for the disciplinary hearing.
--:-- Geoffrey: I was like the pro bono lawyer.
--:-- Geoffrey: So in the long run, this came to the ears of the company, and they knew there's a lawyer within the employees.
--:-- Geoffrey: I had now become popular.
--:-- Geoffrey: When I started, I started with one WhatsApp group until they reached 15 WhatsApp groups.
--:-- Geoffrey: And those who had genuine cases which needed legal advice or legal intervention, I was referring them to relevant government agencies.
--:-- Geoffrey: Actually, I was arrested by the government of Qatar.
--:-- Geoffrey: Deported.
--:-- Geoffrey: Deported.
--:-- Geoffrey: So what are your feelings about Qatar now?
--:-- Geoffrey: Qatar is a good country.
--:-- Geoffrey: Qatar has provided a lot of employment opportunities to migrant workers from all over the world.
--:-- Geoffrey: My only concern is at what cost?
--:-- Geoffrey: Is it by exploitation?
--:-- Geoffrey: Are they maximizing on the poverty levels of these countries, especially Asia and Africa?
--:-- Geoffrey: If you compare Qatar with other Gulf nations, it is way better.
--:-- Geoffrey: But it's only better on paper.
--:-- Geoffrey: You're Kenyan, so I assume you like soccer.
--:-- Geoffrey: Are you going to watch the World Cup?
--:-- Geoffrey: Actually, my team is Brazil.
--:-- Geoffrey: But the fire in me is not there.
--:-- Geoffrey: Because every time I hear the word World Cup, I try and remember a few serious cases I had seen in Qatar.
--:-- Geoffrey: 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.
--:-- Geoffrey: 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.
--:-- Geoffrey: This makes me feel sad and this makes me feel like I can't watch the World Cup.
--:-- Noelle King: Support for today's show comes from Adio.
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--:-- Noelle King: Let's be honest. Are you happy with your job?
--:-- Noelle King: Like, really happy?
--:-- Noelle King: The unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people can't say yes to that.
--:-- Noelle King: Far too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown, or one we never wanted in the first place.
--:-- Noelle King: But still we stick it out and we give reasons like what if the next move is even worse I already put years into this place
--:-- Noelle King: And maybe the most common one everyone kind of miserable at work
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--:-- Noelle King: Today Explained, we're back.
--:-- Noelle King: Qatar's secrecy makes it impossible to know how many people died building World Cup facilities.
--:-- Noelle King: Their labor system, the one Joffrey got caught in, is very old.
--:-- Noelle King: And to explain how it came to be, we called Natasha Iskander, who, like Joffrey, moved to Qatar for work.
--:-- Noelle King: But she's a professor at NYU.
--:-- Noelle King: She wrote a book about her research in Qatar called Does Skill Make Us Human? Migrant Workers in 21st Century Qatar and Beyond.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Qatar is kind of this very special node in the world that has always been part of the globalized economy, really for centuries.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: And these global commodity booms have always been constrained by the availability of workers.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Let me just tell you about these global commodity booms and busts.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: The modern ones started with the pearling industry.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: The fruit of countless hours of dangerous and grueling exposure to sun and sea in cramped and difficult conditions.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Pearls were the luxury fashion item that all very wealthy families wanted to display at the turn of the 20th century.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: And Qatar was the center of pearl harvesting.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: This was a thoroughly international industry.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: It was shaped by merchants and middlemen from India and Iran.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: The captain holds the pearls until the visit of the Tawash, or pearl broker, from the mainland.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Financiers and commodity traders from Paris and New York.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: The pearls are handed over.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: from around 60,000 in 1920 to something close to 16,000 around 1940.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Now, as never before, the drive for new oil reserves in the Middle East is of vital importance to the great powers.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: And the oil company also faced those same labor constraints and imported workers from all over the world.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Okay, so in the U.S., we would call this a guest worker program.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: But Qatar has a word for their system, and it's called kafela.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Tell me why it's unique.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: In its bones, the kafela system is not that different from temporary labor regulation systems around the world.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: And kafela in Arabic literally translates to sponsor.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: It was tantamount to a formal system of bonded labor.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Workers who were in Qatar under the kafela system were bound to their sponsor who was generally their employer.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: That sponsor could deport the worker at any time for any reason.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: The worker could not withhold labor for any reason.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: So the worker could not stop working even in cases of wage theft, dangerous conditions, physical abuse.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: The worker was also not able to quit.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: They could also not change jobs.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: The worker required an exit visa to leave the country.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: And that exit visa had to be authorized by the sponsor in conjunction with the government.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: So even if you decided as a worker, I've had enough, I want to go home, you couldn't actually leave.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: You needed an exit visa.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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 a cent from your prior employer.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: How long was this system in place?
--:-- Natasha Iskander: In its modern iteration, it was in place starting in the early 2000s and actually became more restrictive as Qatar needed more labor.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: It started undergoing a series of reforms actually thanks to the global campaign against some of the worst aspects of this kafela system
--:-- Natasha Iskander: And then in 2017 there was a complaint filed with the International Labour Organization that Qatar was abetting modern slavery
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: What were they?
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Under those reforms, Qatar put in place a wage protection system to try and track who was not paying workers.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: It abolished the exit visa for most classes of workers.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: So now workers can leave the country at will.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: It established a minimum wage of $275 a month, still very low.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Workers now have the ability to quit their jobs and they have the ability to change jobs if they so desire.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: These reforms look very good on paper.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Even the ILO will concede this.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: The workers find it very difficult to change jobs, almost impossible.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: They face retaliation.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Employers will report them for absconding.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: They face potential detention.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: It's grim, it's isolated, and it is policed.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: And workers cannot actually travel through the city at will.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: They face the prospect of detention and deportation if they do so.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: So imagine trying to find another job on your one day off when you can't actually move through the city at will.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: So a migrant worker named Joffrey tells us he was deported for organizing.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Does that track with what you heard happens?
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Yes, absolutely.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: It's totally expected.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Any kind of labor organizing in Qatar is prohibited.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: And the surprising thing for me was that employers tolerated these strikes as long as they stayed within certain limits.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: So let me tell you what those limits are.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: They had to be short, you know, a day or two.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: And when workers struck, they had to do it in their labor camps.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: No protests or challenges were tolerated on site.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: And the protest had to be limited to one nationality.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Wait, why only one nationality?
--:-- Natasha Iskander: So like Bangladeshi workers could strike, but if a Kenyan like Joffrey slipped in there, we'd have a problem.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Yes, exactly.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Because if workers organized across nationality, it meant that workers were no longer blowing off steam as Bangladeshis or Nepalis or Egyptians who just needed a day to kind of get their heads back.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: But rather they were organizing as workers with a class consciousness.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: And those protests were immediately disappeared through deportation.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: That is absolutely wild.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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?
--:-- Natasha Iskander: What happens now?
--:-- Natasha Iskander: So if Qatar imagines itself as kind of hosting these games and then closing up shop, then you can imagine workers being sent home.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: But that is not Qatar's ambition.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: Qatar's ambition is to position itself as a global destination for sports and culture and as an important political node.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: And to do that, it will need to continue to build and continue to maintain the buildings it has built.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: So it will need a workforce possibly slightly smaller, but it will need a workforce in construction for the foreseeable future.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: It's not going to fly, right, over time?
--:-- Natasha Iskander: I think how much it continues to change will depend very much on how vital these global conversations remain.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: And I mean that with respect to Qatar, but also with respect to other places around the world.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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.
--:-- Natasha Iskander: 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-à-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.
--:-- Noelle King: Today's show was produced by Halima Shah and edited by Amina El-Sadi.
--:-- Noelle King: It was engineered by Afim Shapiro and fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Matthew Collette.
--:-- Noelle King: I'm Noelle King.
--:-- Noelle King: It's Today Explained.
--:-- Noelle King: Thank you.
