Balfour Beatty is engaged in the systematic abuse of workers.

The construction giant is cashing in on Qatar’s building boom ahead of the 2022 World Cup. But workers on Balfour Beatty’s building sites say they are being exploited under Qatar’s brutal labour system.

The workers say their passports are being confiscated, their wages are sometimes reduced or withheld, their pay is cut if they get ill, they are housed in squalid conditions and they are threatened with arrest or deportation if they speak out.

We can help them. If we can spread the world that Balfour Beatty is complicit in the systematic abuse of workers in Qatar, we’ll force the company to change its ways to protect its own reputation.

Sign the petition telling Balfour Beatty to end the worker abuses in its supply chain.

Balfour Beatty, which uses subcontractors to supply its workers in Qatar, says it is working within Qatari law. But Qatar’s labour laws are notoriously brutal and exploitative -- and have been widely condemned by human rights groups and UN bodies. Employers are allowed to prevent foreign workers from leaving the country, even if they fail to pay wages or mistreat workers.

This is the system Balfour Beatty is exploiting so it can cash in on Qatar’s World Cup building boom.

“They withhold the first two months of salary,” says one Balfour Beatty worker from Nepal. “They do this to everyone. When I came here I was told by the agent that I could earn around 1,700 rials [£330] a month. If I had known I would only get 800 rials, and 200 rials for food, I definitely wouldn’t have come.”

SumOfUs was created to support people’s struggles against corporate greed around the world. The only thing that can fight corporate power is people power. Let’s stand with Balfour Beatty’s workers in Qatar and tell the corporation: if it wants to profit from Qatar, it needs to stop the abuse of its workers -- right the way through the supply chain.

Join us in asking Balfour Beatty to stop the abuse of workers in its supply chain.