By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 7, 2007; D01

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The foreign workers building the Burj Dubai skyscraper average up to a new floor every three days as developers race to raise the tallest structure mankind has ever built.

In the four years that it has taken laborers to climb more than 150 floors over Dubai's congested freeways and skyline, the U.S. dollar has fallen with equal steadiness. Its decline has helped trigger unprecedented wage strikes and a rock-throwing protest this fall by the foreign construction workers, who are paid in local currencies pegged to the dollar.

For the Arab builders and business leaders rushing to convert the temporary boon of Dubai's oil reserves into lasting prosperity, U.S. policymakers and consumers have committed one of the few unforgivable sins in this desert boom town: They've slowed the building down.

"We don't want the United States to fail, but we don't want to go under with them," said Yasar Narrar, a strategy adviser to the executive office of the ruler of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktum. Dubai is one of seven states in the United Arab Emirates.

Last month, the Emirates became one of the first Arab countries in the Persian Gulf to declare the dollar's fall a crisis. Local currencies' peg to the dollar was hindering growth and squandering the opportunities presented by $99-a-barrel oil, said Sultan Nasser al-Suweidi, the governor of the Emirates' central bank. He urged that the rest of the Gulf states follow the example of Kuwait, which switched its peg from the dollar to various currencies in May.

Saudi Arabia, the Gulf's wealthiest kingdom and its strongest supporter of the dollar, squelched calls for a change in currency policy at a summit of Gulf leaders this week. But pressure continues on Gulf governments to lessen the region's link to the dollar.

The Emirates is in the midst of a $60 billion frenzy of construction projects, according to government figures. Projects include not only buildings and roads but manmade islands in the Gulf that are shaped like palm trees and the globe and are dotted with villas, beaches and golf courses for the world's wealthy.

To build and tend their kingdom, the Emirates' 800,000 citizens imported millions of foreign workers, including 700,000 construction workers. Nearly one in five people in the kingdom is a construction worker; most are from India.

As recently as last month, some construction workers on the Burj Dubai and other projects made the equivalent of as little as $109 a month. Back home in India, where the dollar has fallen 14 percent against the rupee in the past 18 months, remittances that workers here sent to their families steadily lost value.

"I work here, and I can't save anything. I'll ruin my family," said Ram Chandra, 33, a mason from the north Indian state of Rajasthan.

Chandra spoke in Sonapur, outside Dubai. Though its name means "City of Gold" in Hindi, Sonapur is a bleak, sand-blown labor camp housing 50,000 construction workers. Men sleep 10 to 12 to a room in tightly packed rows of concrete barracks. Chandra sat with four other workers perched on cots or squatting on the concrete floor. They wore sleeveless T-shirts and shorts or faded towels worn like the wraparound dhoti skirts commonly found in India.

Other barracks had laundry strung from bare beams. A sewage tanker made its evening rounds of the camp's septic tanks, filling the air with a gurgle and reek.

In economic terms, the teeming barracks with their Indian and Pakistani workers stand on the fault line of shifting global fortunes.

The world's "economic epicenter is shifting," said Nasser Saidi, chief economist with the Dubai International Finance Center. Asia now accounts for more than 40 percent of world output, Saidi said.

On the other side of the world, the United States is trying to stave off a recession in the face of a failing housing market, high debt and a long-running trade deficit. The U.S. dollar fell for five of the last six years, sinking to record lows against the euro this year.

The surge of oil profits and the fall of the dollar have brought record inflation to the Emirates. Workers say they pay twice as much for cooking gas, vegetables and the other bare necessities. K.V. Shamsudheen, an Indian businessman who runs a group aiding Indian laborers, said the financial crisis has caused a one-third increase in suicides among the workers since 2004.

"Every time I telephone my family, they say, 'Cancel your visa and come home,' " Chandra said. All the workers in the room said they planned to do so.

But, Chandra asked, "If all the Indians leave, how are they going to keep working?"

This summer, the Emirates offered a one-way plane ticket home to workers in the country illegally. More than 280,000 laborers accepted, according to local media. Government labor officials declined to give their own numbers.

"It's far more attractive for them . . . to be living in their home country and making the same wages and living far more cheaply," said Tom Barry, general manager for Arabtec, one of the lead construction contractors for the Burj Dubai.

Tens of thousands of workers at the Burj Dubai and other work sites stopped work in October and November, demanding more money. Arabtec and other contractors promised 20 percent increases after the last strike.

Stephen Jen, chief currency economist with Morgan Stanley in London, said the Gulf's surging oil wealth rather than the falling dollar was the prime cause of inflation here.

Jen suggested an easy way to stop the strikes by construction workers: "Pay them more."

Meanwhile, the Burj -- the word means "tower" in Arabic -- continues to grow. It passed a skyscraper in Taipei in July to claim the title of world's tallest building. It is closing in on a 2,063-foot-high TV antenna held up by guy wires outside Fargo, N.D. When the Burj overtakes it, at a planned height of more than 2,300 feet, it will be the tallest structure on Earth.

"Technology and engineering-wise, you can build it as tall as you want," said Greg Sang, a New Zealander who is project manager for the Burj.

The height has, however, forced engineers to come up with a new way to measure its straightness. Satellites have been used to ensure that elevator shafts run true on the building's half-mile stretch between earth and sky, Sang said.