When NYU announced a plan to build a campus in Abu Dhabi, a city in the UAE with notoriously lax labor laws, the university pledged to respect the rights of workers. But former workers on the site said their jobs broke virtually every promise NYU made about wages, hours, working conditions, and living standards.

Amongst other complaints, former workers on the site of NYU’s future Abu Dhabi campus say they were beaten by police and deported for striking and that they were forced to live in squalor, work involuntary overtime, and pay huge recruiting fees to get their jobs. 

[Photo credit: Yuwen Memon, Creative Commons.]