on laing o’rourke, elephant one, delancey and pods shared with new york university’s forced labour campus in abu dhabi, a glance

You recall Laing O’Rourke advertising that they were using pods to build out this development from their Dubai factory? Well, this is just to flag up that we have been doing some research which has merged with a very sustained amount of research available to us via GulfLabor. These pods are the same pods that LO’R used for the New York University campus on the notorious Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi. A site that even NYU’s own commissioned report on their previously failed monitors’ exclusion of 10,000 exploited workers on their site revealed were owed compensation: for working in conditions of forced labour and for brutal violence in relation to withdrawn labour…

Isn’t it nice to know that at the very heart of the Elephant and Castle regeneration -otherwise such a great benefit and scandal-free regeneration that involved the community in a project of life enhancement and visionary urban thinking- the same construction company that built Southwark Council’s head quarters on Tooley Street have added levels of profits almost certainly on the backs of migrant labourers working in conditions of forced labour? Doesn’t it seem far away and complicated? No, NO! exactly, it doesn’t! It’s as close to home and very simple as it can get…