No, thats not Dubai. Your thinking Saudi..Dubai is fairly liberal in THAT regard.
Dubai has next to no oil at this point. They were pretty smart to transition their economy to tourism and business like they have. Also, the majority of investment money is coming from foreign sources at this point..
That article is pretty sensationalist but not very far from the truth, at least from what Ive seen (I was only in Dubai for 3 days, but I spent 5 months in Qatar, which is pretty similar with respect to worker treatment)
What pisses me off even more is that these same papers were just months ago talking about how Dubai is the world's next big thing. But, at soon as the economy tanks and Dubai loses its luster, they go after all the worker-treatment stories they were all too happy to ignore for years (yea, im mad at both the media and the goverment). Dubai is a big mirage IMO...the demand for their ridiculous projects has never really existed.