India Steps Up Pressure for Minimum Wage for Its Workers in the Gulf

The Labor Market in Gulf Countries

This section of the report is about the labor market in the Gulf countries and how it is affected with changes in the labor policies by the governments of GCC countries. The GCC consists of six Arab countries including all Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The labor market is growing with the rapid growth of the economies of GCC countries. The governments of GCC countries prefer their national to be part of their organizations because of their higher education, and the nationals are also attracted towards the government sector of GCC countries because of the higher wages and generous benefits, job security, early retirement with pension and many other benefits associated with the government jobs. However, the labor market of GCC countries also contains a significant portion of expatriate workers, therefore the private sector heavily rely on the working on expatriate workers and the expatriate labor work also attracted towards the private sector because of the jobs that are available on fixed terms, the contracts of the jobs are specific and they are under the sponsorship of nationals.

The labor migration to Gulf countries is considered to be of vast importance. The factors related to its importance are the relatively larger size of the Gulf countries and better economic conditions prevailing there. According to the recent reports, foreign workers especially from South Asia and Philippines make up around 90 percent or more of the private sector in all GCC countries except Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the rate of increasing population and the birth rate of foreign citizens in the Gulf countries also among other factors of increasing labor migration in Gulf countries.

An individual labor law for every country in GCC is designed in accordance with international labor laws and standards, conventions and recommendations of International Labor Organization that aim to eliminate unfair labor practices and equal treatment of laborers regarding to the nationality, social status or religious belief. This is also because of the Global Economic Crises which cause the working class of South Asian countries to be affected badly, as a result many of the workers were not paid and most of the foreigner laborers had to leave the country and they put Gulf countries on the priority because of the high economic level and better wages rates than the European countries. Gulf countries recent policies and regulations on the protection of rights emphasize on the regulation on the labor market and boost national man power in private sector, by keeping the balance in working relationships at work place, increasing the labor protection and safeguarding the employees’ interests at all.