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Guest Workers Fired After Protesting 'Slave'
Conditions
Guest workers from India accuse a Mississippi shipyard of exploiting and
treating them like slaves
New America Media, News Feature, David Bacon,
Posted: Mar 13, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO - Hundreds of guest workers from India are protesting
conditions in a Pascagoula shipyard that immigrant rights activists
compare to slavery.
Many of the workers gathered in a church on March 11 in this Gulf Coast
port, after their employer, Signal International, threatened to send
some of them home. Signal is a large corporation that repairs and
services oil drilling platforms around the world.
According to Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi
Immigrant Rights Alliance, "they were hired in India by a labor
recruiter sent by Signal. They had to pay exorbitant amounts to the
company, to the recruiter and to the attorney who did the labor
certification for them."
Signal brought about 300 workers from India in December to work in its
Mississippi yard, and another 300 to work in two yards in Texas. The
workers are part of the H2B visa program, in which the US government
allows companies to recruit workers outside the country, and bring them
here under
contract. The visas are good for ten months, but the company can renew
them for those it wants to keep longer. The workers must remain
employed, and if they lose their jobs, they must go home.
Workers say they were promised jobs as welders and fitters, and had to
pay as much as $20,000 each to the recruiting contractor, Global
Industry. Workers also say they were promised that Signal would refund
the money.
"I had to pay $14,000," says one of those workers, Joseph Jacob. "I
worked for years in Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, and I spent all the
money I had to get the visa, which the recruiter promised would be a
permanent residence visa. But that visa never came, and finally he said
they could get us a H2B visa. That would give us ten months of work, and
if the company renewed it, we might get as much as 30 months. I thought
that was the only way I'd ever be able to get back the money they'd
taken."
Signal put the Indian guest workers to work in the yard alongside US
workers doing the same job -- welding and fitting. The company claims it
pays workers from India the same wages as domestic employees. The guest
workers say they were promised $18 an hour, but many were paid only half
that, after the company said they were unqualified. Chandler says the
company recruiter in India determined the workers knew their jobs during
the process of hiring them.
Out of their wages, workers pay an additional $35 per day to stay in a
labor camp Signal set up inside the yard. "The conditions are very bad
here for the H2B workers," Joseph says bitterly. "Twenty-four of us live
in a room in a barracks that measures 12 feet by 18 feet, sleeping on
bunk beds. There are two toilets for all of us and only four sinks. We
have to get up at 3:30 in the morning, just so all of us have time to
use the bathroom before going to work."
A month ago, the Indian guest workers began meeting in a local church to
discuss how they might get the company to refund the huge sums they paid
to come to the U.S., and to protest the bad conditions. They organized a
group, Signal H2B Workers United. It was after the company found out,
they say,
that it accused workers of being unqualified for their jobs and cut
their pay. Eight were told they were completely incapable, and Signal
announced it was sending them back to India immediately. Joseph was
fired. "I am now terminated because I attended the meeting," he says.
"That's what the company vice-president told me."
Signal International President Dick Marler told the Mississippi Press
that although workers had been employed since December, the company only
discovered recently that they had no skills. Federal law required the
company to fire them, he asserted.
Signal did not return calls for this story, but a statement on the
company website says: the workers "receive the same pay and are taxed
the same as all other Signal craft personnel Workers from India have a
reputation for being pleasant and hard-working." It quotes Signal CEO
Dick Marler, who says, "We are fortunate the US government has such a
program that allows us to supplement our workforce during a time of
emergency created by Hurricanes."
When the company announced the terminations, one worker disappeared.
Another, Sabu Lal, slashed his wrists and was taken to the Singing River
Hospital in Pascagoula. He told the Mississippi Press that dying would
be better than being sent home.
"Lal and I are from the same place in India," Joseph explains. "I knew
he had sold his home, and had no place to return to. He was only able to
make back a small part of the thousands of dollars he paid to the
recruiter, and he said he couldn't go home like that."
Company security guards locked the fired workers in what they call the
TV Room, and wouldn't let them leave. Their coworkers contacted the
Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, which went to the Pascagoula
Police Department. The police went out to the yard and eventually freed
the imprisoned workers. Outside the yard, dozens of workers and
activists denounced the firings and mistreatment.
"We've learned about case after case of workers in Mississippi,
Louisiana and all along the gulf in these conditions," Chandler says.
"There are thousands of guest workers who have been brought in since
Katrina, and subjected to this same treatment. Mexican guest workers in
Amelia, Louisiana, were held in the same way. They also got organized,
and came to Pascagoula to support the workers here when they heard what
happened."
According to Chandler, Signal imported hundreds of workers from Peru a
year ago, and after sending them home, brought the present group of
guest workers from India to replace them. He says the experience of
these workers highlights the problems inherent in proposals introduced
into Congress over the last two years, which would set up similar
schemes for the importation of as many as 400,000 guest workers per
year.
"Organizations that are fighting for the rights of workers and
advocating on behalf of workers should be totally opposed to these kind
of programs," he says. "The conditions that people work in here are so
exploitative they're worse than the conditions for even undocumented
workers."
The Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance and the Southern Poverty Law
Center plan to go to court to stop the deportations. Meanwhile, workers
say they are determined to continue challenging the company until the
money they paid the contractor is returned to them.
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David Bacon is an associate editor for New America
Media. |
