In November 1998 two Egyptian servants of Saudi Prince Turki bin Abd al-Aziz tied bedsheets together and lowered themselves from the rooms on the 29th floor of the Ramses Hilton where they had been imprisoned, unpaid, for months. The Prince, a full brother of King Fahd, has lived for 16 years on two floors of the five-star Cairo hotel since his expulsion from Saudi Arabia for "embarrassing behavior." The two servants, a butler and a cook, who were seriously injured when they crashed onto a 24th floor balcony, made familiar claims. They had been beaten, they had not been paid in months, and they had been held against their will along with many other servants who were still trapped inside. That these abuses were taking place outside Saudi Arabia was somewhat unusual. Although less publicized, similar occurrences are more common inside Saudi Arabia.

Workers in Saudi Arabia are prohibited from organizing, collective bargaining, or calling strikes; and the Saudi legal system is heavily biased in favor of the privileged elites who employ foreign workers. In Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf countries, foreign workers are employed under the sponsorship system. Human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Minnesota Lawyers International Human Rights Committee have offered pointed critiques of the sponsorship system as employed in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States. Under this system the control of a Saudi employer over his employee is almost absolute. Workers come to Saudi Arabia under the sponsorship of specific employers, and remain beholden to those employers throughout their stay in the country. Foreign workers cannot travel, change jobs or, most importantly, exit the country without the permission of their sponsor, who usually holds their passport. Female domestic workers are often forbidden to ever leave the house in which they work for the entire duration of their stay in Saudi Arabia.

But while the Saudi government argues that although there are restrictions on female domestic workers, and acknowledges that abuses have been reported, the government also maintains that there are similar cases of labor abuse around the world. "What is important," said a Saudi government official, "is that there is a system in place to help prevent these abuses, and address them accordingly." According to the Information Office of the Royal Saudi Embassy in Washington, "there have been major crackdowns on labor abuses in Saudi Arabia. There are huge fines imposed on employers who abuse their employees. Annual sweeps to round up illegal immigrants are held every year. Illegal immigrants without visas are the ones who are most likely to be abused." The spokesman added that the government deports most of these illegal immigrants, but does issue work visas for some.

Human rights groups maintain that employers routinely use the current labor system to maximum advantage. Workers may be compelled to do jobs other than the one for which they were hired, or to accept less money than agreed upon. Sometimes they may not be paid for weeks or months. Attempts to obtain redress through official channels can drag on for months, during which time the worker cannot leave the country and will not be paid. To obtain an exit visa, the foreign worker is at the mercy of his employer, and will often renounce all claims just to get out. In a 1995 document on the plight of Egyptian workers employed in the countries of the Persian Gulf, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) called the sponsorship system "a fraudulent way of avoiding the provisions" of the Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, which Saudi Arabia has ratified, and which commits signatories to end slavery and other "similar customs and practices."

Deputy Media Director of the Saudi Arabian Information Office in Washington, D.C., Nayel Al Jabbayr says that the government of Saudi Arabia is doing its best to improve the labor situation of the country. He argues that workers are free to leave the country as long as they have their sponsor’s permission. He adds that this system was put into place to protect both employee and employer rights. Many labor disputes emerge, and cannot be solved if workers flee the country, he says. So by stipulating that employers must get sponsor approval before leaving the country, an opportunity is provided to settle any disputes. If there are no outstanding labor issues, workers are free to travel in and out of Saudi Arabia, Al Jabbayr says.

However, he added, there are businesses that abuse the system. Employers are allowed to appeal any dispute to the National Labor Board, which according to Al Jabbayr, usually settles cases fairly, and if warranted, to the favor of the employee. But, not very many foreign workers in Saudi Arabia have the courage to use the system to defy their employers, he said. They fear losing their jobs, since if they are on a restricted work visa, they cannot work for anyone else in the country if fired by their current sponsor.

Al Jabbayr also pointed out that a similar labor regulation system is implemented in the United States. "For example, if you are in the US on a work visa - an H-1 - and you have a dispute, you can appeal. Also, your H-1 stipulates that you can’t work for anyone else besides the company that issued the visa. It’s essentially the same as our system."

What legal protection there is in Saudi Arabia for foreign workers is generally not used by domestic servants. In addition to being overworked, underpaid, and often held in complete isolation inside the household, female domestic workers are sometimes physically abused by their employers. In 1997 the Philippines Overseas Workers Welfare Administration issued a hand-out for those considering a job in Saudi Arabia. After a brief discussion of the benefits of earning better wages, the tribulations of domestic workers are explored in great detail. In addition to meager food, 18-hour days, and prolonged unprotected exposure to bleaches and detergents, the document warns that domestic workers may have to "ward off advances by your master, his brother, son, and other male members of the household. You may also have to bear pinching, slapping, and scratching from your mistress. Mistresses get jealous of their maids for no reason at all and punish them for it."

The situation of female domestic servants is such that there is a recognized problem with "runaway maids." The 1998 State Department Report on Human Rights Practices observes that "some embassies of countries with large domestic servant populations maintain safehouses to which their citizens may flee to escape work situations that include forced confinement, withholding of food, beating and other physical abuse, and rape." Despite these safehouses, it is common knowledge that runaways are almost always returned to their sponsors.

In December 1998, an Agence France Press (AFP) report quoted the Saudi newspaper Okaz as noting that "some 200 domestic workers flee their employers and are arrested every month in the western Saudi city of Jeddah." Providing ample evidence of the prevailing attitude, Okaz observed that this was "worrying employers who have to pay large commissions to the employment agencies who bring in the expatriate workers." An employment agency head, quoted in Okaz, then suggested that employers should "confiscate their workers’ address books to limit their chances of outside contact."

Perhaps even more than the physical abuse, the most psychologically damaging aspect of a domestic worker’s experience in Saudi Arabia can be the near total isolation. A sense of this combination of fear and overwhelming loneliness was captured in the diary of a Nepalese woman named Kamala Rai, whose story was highlighted in a July 20, 1998, article in Time. "If I were a bird I would fly away," she writes. "But I have no wings. They never let me leave the house." Kamala Rai returned from Saudi Arabia in psychological disarray, tied to a stretcher and unable to speak. Though clearly the most vulnerable, domestic workers are by no means the only victims of Saudi Arabia’s labor system. For those employed by large business concerns, after-hours life is generally restricted to segregated compounds.

As is the case with domestic workers, any sort of business dispute can be extremely dangerous. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have highlighted the case of Abd al-Karim al-Naqshabandi, a Syrian national who was convicted of witchcraft and possessing "polytheistic and superstitious" books after a dispute with his employer, Prince Salman bin Saud. In December 1996, he was beheaded. The Saudi Arabian Information Office said that they had not heard of this case, and a spokesman noted that, "executions are not carried out by employers. They are carried out by the state under strict Islamic law."

Citizens of Great Britain and the United States are not immune to these kinds of abuses, despite (or perhaps, ironically, because of) their countries close ties to the Saudi government. In his book Saudi Arabia: Outside Global Law and Order, Anders Jerichow describes the ordeal of Keith Carmichael, a Scottish businessman who was detained by the Saudis in October 1981 and held until March 1984. He had a business dispute with a member of the Royal family, but was never tried on any charges. After two and a half years of torture resulting in a permanently damaged back, efforts of the media and Amnesty International eventually generated the publicity necessary to secure his release. The British government remained indifferent to Carmichael’s plight throughout his ordeal. As a British consular representative told Carmichael 84 days after his arrest, "Remember, we need the Saudis more than they need us."

A similar attitude seems to exist in the U.S. State Department, which has consistently opposed legislative efforts that would allow American victims of Saudi torture to obtain redress in U.S. courts. This legislation, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Technical Corrections Act, was inspired by the cases of Scott Nelson, a hospital worker who was jailed and tortured for a month after blowing the whistle on maintenance problems, and James E. Smrkovski, an employee of Saudi Arabian Airlines who spent 15 months in prison (during which time his torturers pulled out six of his toenails) on charges of smuggling alcohol. But while the U.S. Congress has demonstrated some sympathy in cases like these (Senators Kennedy and Dole intervened to obtain the release of Nelson and Smrkovski respectively), the State Department has not. Leonard Garment, an experienced Washington insider and former special assistant to President Nixon who now represents both Nelson and Smrkovski, said in an October 28, 1996 Washington Post editorial that "for years [the] State [Department] has been known to harbor an institutional urge to maintain stable relations with its foreign ‘client’ states, including unappetizing ones, not infrequently at the expense of Americans at odds with these governments."

The situation has not remained entirely static. In 1995, according to the State Department’s Human Rights Reports, "Saudi Arabia was suspended from the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) insurance programs because of the [Saudi] Government’s lack of compliance with internationally recognized worker rights standards." In May 1997 three Filipino maids were allowed to sue Princess Latifa, a sister of King Fahd, in British courts. The legislative effort to afford Scott Nelson and James E. Smrkovski the same opportunity in U.S. courts continues.

But the real pressure on Saudi Arabia’s labor system is internal. According to U.S. government estimates, Saudi Arabia maintains a population growth rate of over 3.6%, and more than 58% of the population is under the age of 17. Over 100,000 Saudis are said to enter the job market every year, and unemployment among Saudi males is already estimated to be 20% or higher. Thus the watchword in recent years has been "Saudization," the goal of replacing foreign workers with Saudi nationals. So far, the Saudization project has concentrated primarily on illegal foreign workers, and, according to Saudi authorities, some 700,000 illegal workers have been deported since October of 1997.

But replacing these workers with Saudi nationals has proven more difficult. Employers are unwilling to pay higher wages and it is unclear whether Saudis, accustomed to relative wealth and comforts, will be willing to take the lower paying jobs in domestic service or construction that are currently held almost exclusively by foreign workers. "We have a large population of Saudis that are having a hard time finding jobs," said Al Jabbayr. "They need to be employed. We are trying to push the Saudization program as much as possible, but there are problems with it. Not all employers are willing to hire Saudis."

The steady decline of the Saudi economy should give Saudization efforts a new sense of urgency. The World Bank has estimated that the per-capita income in Saudi Arabia has declined 3.3% each year from 1980 to 1992. According to a recent New York Times story, the current per-capita income is $6300, compared to over $16,000 in 1980. In March 1999, the International Herald Tribune described previously unimaginable scenes of "poor Saudis knocking [on doors] in search of food" and "children . . . peddling tissues at traffic lights."

One way or another, the massive presence of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia is likely to diminish. But as long as foreign workers are cheap and unable or unwilling to complain, they will be in demand. Ironically, boosting foreign workers’ wages and guaranteeing their rights to the level of their Saudi counterparts might be the single most effective way of reducing the demand for foreign workers, thus helping to Saudize the workforce. However, for the time being, the status quo remains in place.