Reach for the Skies

As Alabbar was taking questions, a disheveled attendee with a long beard started running toward the podium, his hands waving. Alabbar told him he would have to wait and took a question from someone else. Finally, he turned to the man. “He said, ‘May God be with you and help you make the right decision.' He didn't want to ask a question. He wanted to offer his blessing.'”

Early on, the final height of the Burj Dubai was a closely held secret, partly because Emaar wanted to surround the project with mystery. But with completion expected next year, now Mohamed Ali Alabbar is willing to give away the secret.

Credit: Emaar Properties

“It will be 170 stories tall, 40 percent taller than anything else ever built,” he says, adding that he isn't sure how long the record will stand. “I'm sure that someone else in China or Dubai will [eventually] do something even bigger.”

The largely residential building, rising at an average of one floor every three days, already surpasses Europe's tallest building, Moscow's Naberezhnaya Tower. It was on pace to eclipse the world-record holder, the Taipei 101, this summer. In September, the Burj reached 150 stories, making it the world's tallest free-standing structure, surpassing the CN Tower in Toronto.

The tapering, three-winged tower is built primarily with concrete. The last several floors and spire, though, will be framed with structural steel.

An Armani Hotel, the first of its kind, will occupy the lower 37 floors. Floors 45 through 108 will have 700 private apartments. Corporate offices and suites will fill most of the remaining floors, except for a 123rd-floor lobby and 124th-floor indoor/outdoor observation deck. The spire will hold communications equipment, and an outdoor swimming pool will be located on the 78th floor.

Several times a year, working conditions in Dubai reach a boiling point that spills over into a full-blown protest picked up by the local newspapers and international labor organizations. In March, immigrant workers—who account for more than 90 percent of Dubai's laborers—picked the construction site of the Burj Dubai to protest low wages. In Dubai, non-skilled laborers make as little as $4 a day and skilled carpenters only $7.50.

The workers at the Burj Dubai were angry that they weren't paid for their commute time—they're transported an hour each way from work camps. A Gulf News report added that it also took as long as an hour to punch their time cards—there are only nine machines for 3,000 workers.

As the economy of Dubai has grown at a double-digit rate and attracted international attention, its labor practices—though not much different from other conservative Arab states—have come under fire. Dubai relies on an estimated 10 million foreign laborers, many from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, to construct its towers.

Protests erupted in recent years over unsanitary conditions in the temporary housing, unpaid wages, the withholding of employee passports, and non-payment to middlemen who arrange to bring foreign workers to the country. All these conditions are being monitored by the Human Rights Watch, an international organization that has called for a stop to them.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) government appears responsive at times, though it's hard to say whether much has changed. The government directed its labor minister to set up a special labor court to resolve disputes, increase the number of government inspectors, require employers to provide mandatory health insurance, and develop mechanisms for workers to collect unpaid wages.

But, in March, Human Rights Watch reported that nothing had really come of this. The organization could find no public record of an employer in the construction industry forced to pay a substantial fine or suffer any criminal liability even when found guilty of violating labor law.

The U.S. Department of State, which issues State in Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, says in its 2005 report that while the standard workday in the UAE is eight hours and the standard work-week is six days, the standards are not strictly enforced. It adds that the government doesn't impose minimum wage guidelines.

“Low-skilled employees were often provided with sub-standard living conditions, including overcrowded apartments or lodging in unsafe and unhygienic ‘labor camps,' lack of electricity, lack of potable water, and lack of adequate cooking and bathing facilities,” the report says.