Dive Brief:

• Human Rights Watch has confirmed that migrant workers building a New York University campus in the United Arab Emirates were arrested and deported after they protested substandard pay of about $200 per month.
• About 3,000 construction workers on the project went on strike about 16 months ago — some hadn’t received a raise in eight years — and 200 were deported, the New York Times reported.
• The campus was built for New York University for free by the United Arab Emirates, and the university is under fire for not monitoring labor protections.

Dive Insight:

Obviously, this is a public relations nightmare for NYU, with the lavish lifestyle of the area in development around the campus juxtaposed with the deplorable conditions and wages that the workers faced. Some reported that they were slapped, held in jail for nine days, and forced to sign documents in Arabic before being sent back to Bangladesh. The university has apologized and commissioned an investigative firm to examine what happened. That firm’s report is expected this spring.

When construction began, NYU had a written agreement with the Executive Affairs Authority of Abu Dhabi that workers would be treated fairly, but the agreement wasn’t enforced.