|
|
Saudization and the Employment Issue
June 8, 2005
Saudization. It's a deep issue that's the cause of plenty of discussion, and as someone who was exposed to this issue during my middle school years there, I'm going to offer only the extent of what I've observed.
Saudization is a term used to refer to the government's attempt to replace a greater share of foreign workers with Saudi workers. It's an attempt to "Saudi-ize" the work force. To understand why Saudization is going on, you need to understand some of the background behind the job issues in the kingdom. There's a high unemployment rate in Saudi Arabia. We're talking about rough estimates ranging from 10% to 30%, any of which are high compared to even some of Europe's unemployment rates. Part of the reason for this problem is the large, expanding youth population. But the reason that seems to draw the most attention is the significant percentage of foreign workers in the country, ranging from Southeast and South Asian workers in retail shops, to engineers, largely from North America, in the petroleum industry.
Globalization requires a certain amount of foreign workers, even in the most developed of nations. It's a matter of how high a percentage of foreign workers the government wants to allow for the work force. And in the case of Saudi Arabia, the government feels that percentage of foreign workers is too high. Thus, they've recently attempted to cap the number of foreign workers and their families.
Some supporters of Saudization have argued that Westerners were taking high-level technical jobs that Saudi nationals would otherwise have, while counter arguments have involved pointing out that there aren't enough Saudi workers with the expertise required for certain jobs. And up until the last time I checked, employers were still filling most of these job positions with expatriates because there weren't enough Saudis in the workforce. But this may be changing. I'm not entirely clear on the changes that have occurred though, especially since I stopped living in Saudi Arabia all year-round since the second half of 2000.
Saudization can be a pretty sensitive issue. I can see that the government would want to head in this direction for economic and patriotic reasons, and it's entirely understandable. I just hope that they don't get carried away and actually cause economic damage. The U.S., to a certain extent, has had its own share of having to handle the issue of quotas and limits on foreign workers. Regardless of whether Saudi nationals or expats will benefit or lose out, we do know that as Saudization continues, we will increasingly see that the poorly paid migrant workers, most of them attracted by better salaries than what they can earn at home in Asia, will lose out the most from this policy.
-Gordon Mei
|
|
