DUBAI, 5 October 2005 — The Labor Ministry will begin publishing the names of employers who fail to pay their workers, the ministry’s undersecretary said yesterday, warning that protests by unpaid laborers was damaging the image of the United Arab Emirates.

“If they (employers) don’t care about our country’s reputation, we don’t care about their reputation,” Undersecretary Khalid Alkhazraji told the Associated Press in an interview.

Thousands of angry workers have taken to the streets, disrupting traffic, in the Emirates this year. Many of the laborers claim to have worked for months without pay.

Alkhazraji said the Labor Ministry has counted 18 strikes by unpaid workers since Jan. 1, involving more than 10,000 people. The largest strike involved 3,000 unpaid construction laborers.

The threat to name the defaulting employers is significant because they include companies owned by members of the royal family.

Alkhazraji said the failure to pay was usually the fault of the companies and their managers because they could not handle the projects they had taken on.

Migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China and elsewhere have poured into the Emirates in recent years as it experienced a building boom. Almost a million foreigners work as unskilled laborers on construction sites.

Last year alone, the government issued 500,000 visas for foreign workers — a 20 percent increase in the country’s work force, Alkhazraji said.

But working conditions are often poor. The US State Department and Human Rights Watch have accused the Emirates of exploitation of migrant workers, including women and children, and of permitting harsh conditions, such as laborers living in squalid camps and toiling in high temperatures.

The Labor Ministry has begun to recognize the plight of unskilled laborers. In a number of recent directives, Labor Minister Ali ibn Abdullah Al-Kaabi has demanded that salaries be kept up to date. Al-Kaabi has also fined companies for violations and prohibited them from hiring foreigners.

Asked about the mounting number of worker protests, Alkhazraji said: “We, as a government, encourage them to speak out if there is a problem. We support them.”

The government says it is keen to upgrade labor standards as they are an issue in negotiations for a free trade agreement with the United States.

Top sticking points include giving workers the right to form trade unions and bargain collectively.

Alkhazraji acknowledged that such rights could have huge consequences for the country, perhaps slowing down the building boom and causing prices to rise.

“We’re working toward it,” Alkhazraji said. “You need to look at the UAE as a new country, a developing country. You cannot ratify these things all at once. We need time to prepare the ground.”

The government also worries that the work force could be radicalized by “outside groups” such as foreign unions or political parties, Alkhazraji said.

Almost 98 percent of private-sector workers in the Emirates are foreigners. The foreign population vastly outnumbers the indigenous people. In Dubai, foreigners make up more than 80 percent of the city’s 1.5 million residents.