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Guest Workers Fired After Protesting Slave-Like Conditions |
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Photojournalist and trade unionist David Bacon is author of Communities Without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of Migration.
Hundreds of guest workers from India are protesting conditions in a Pascagoula shipyard that immigrant rights activists compare to slavery. Many gathered in a church on March 11 in this Gulf Coast port, after their employer, Signal International, threatened to send some of the workers home. Signal is a large corporation that repairs and services oil drilling platforms in the Gulf.
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 group to work in two yards in Texas. The workers are part of the H-2B visa program, in which the U.S. government allows companies to recruit workers outside the country and bring them here under contract. The visas are good for 10 months, but the company can renew them for those it wants to keep longer. The workers must remain employed. 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, Signal’s caterer. Workers also say they were promised their money would be refunded by Signal.
“I had to pay $14,000,” said 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 H-2B visa. That would give us 10 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 CEO Dick Marler said the company sent observers to oversee recruitment and testing in India, but that they were unaware of how much workers were paying for visas. “We weren’t in that part of the loop,” he said, “but the workers paid that money with their eyes wide open, and our recruiters tell us that’s perfectly normal for people in India.”
Signal put the Indian guest workers to work in the yard alongside U.S. 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. Marler explained some workers were reclassified from first to second class welders, and their wages reduced.
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 H-2B workers,” Jacob said bitterly. ”Twenty-four of us live in a small room in barracks that measure 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 United States and to protest the bad conditions. They organized a group, Signal H-2B 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.
Six were told they were completely incapable, and Signal announced it was sending them back to India immediately. Marler said he was willing to keep the unskilled workers on “fire watch,” but that his lawyers said the company had to send them back. ”The unskilled workers tried to game the system, and lied about their skills,” he alleged. Jacob was fired. ”I am now terminated because I attended the meeting,” he said. ”That’s what the company vice-president told me.”
Marler said the incident didn’t happen “to my knowledge.” Jacob, however, remains fired.
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,” Jacob explained. “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 co-workers 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 said. “There are thousands of guest workers who have been brought in since Katrina and subjected to this same treatment. Mexican guest workers in Amelia, La., were held in the same way. They also got organized and came to Pascagoula to support the workers here when they heard what happened.”
Chandler says the experience of these workers highlights the problems inherent in proposals introduced into Congress over the past 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 declared. ”The conditions that people work in here are so exploitative they’re worse than the conditions even for 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.
14 Comments
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As a proud union member I naturally am against employers being able to get by with these atrocities, however, until our government gets tough on employers like this nothing will happen to stop it. We need to 1. stop illegal immigration. 2. deport all the ones that have broken our laws. 3.Prosecute the employers that are hiring them. When wages have gotten back up to where they were before 12 million came here to take our jobs, then we should have a guest worker program with protections for these people.
a couple of days ago the n.y. times’ bob herbert ran an article about immigrant issues. maybe this one is more pertinent as to why the bush administrations guest worker program is such a sham. why pay perfectly good wages to americans when once again one can simply outsource it. this is why all republican candidates need to be put on notice that they cannot usurp the power of the unions and to bush that even though he threatens a veto of the free choice act awareness is growing rapidly amongst the people of just what lies ahead in their future if these people aren’t stopped.
I am a Union person that is not in favor of illigal immigration. I do not now or ever will accept that these people are doing work American’s will not do. We will do the work but not for slavery wages,and they will work for those wages. They have no legal recourse because they are here illigally. I do not support employer exploitation, but they come here knowing they will paid less them American workers.
You as I see it have an alterer motive for support these illigals and the reason is call membership/dues. I agree completely with by Patriot.
Any employer whom violates labor laws or human rights laws should see the inside of a cell. “Guest” workers whom have rights violated should be able to recover lost wages and see justice done.
With “illegials”, it is profitable for business to hire these folks. Take out the profit and watch the change. Jail the employers whom violate the law and sieze their assets, just as you would other criminals. Government also turns blind eye for they in fact make a profit far in excess of those pay outs in services. Whom are they kidding.
As a proud Union member, we must advocate for justice and fairness for all humans, including “these people”, whether they are Union members or not, whether they are citizens of my state or citizens of another state, whether they are black, grey, tan, brown, yellow or white; whether they are citizens of this nation or human beings without a country. Justice should be blind to whomever the injustice is projected upon. And remediation of an injustice should be lieved upon those guilty with the same blinders; whether they are rich or poor, a corporate enitity or individual, black or white. As far as I am concerned, companies operating outside the jurisdiction of the law should be barred from doing business within the country in which they are found guilty of the law. If you are found guilty of a DUI of that state, can you drive yourself to a place of employment to earn a living? Also, all officers of ANY coperation, whether incorporated or not, should personally be held liable for human rights’ violations of this nature, just as Ken Lay was prosecuted. But some would say the exploitation of financial capital weighs heavier than the exploitation of human capital. I cannot comprehend that callousness of such a cold, capitalist attitude.
What Patriot and yorkark completely MISS is that H1B Visa workers ARE legal. They are totally legal. They are not illegal workers. You guys need to realize that the whole H1B visa program is a guest worker program already in place–and legal. Those workers are here legally. In case you guys didn’t get that last statement, because you obviously missed the whole thing the entire article, is that H1B Visa workers are legal. What should not be legal is allowing workers to pay $20,000 to get one of these Visas. But that, too, is legal. So–I’ve talked to my Senators and Cogresspeople about how H1B Visas are being abused and used against workers in the US. HAVE YOU????
“These people” and such references reminds me of 1958 and the early 60’s when I heard people refer to “those people” as coloreds. In fact there were signs that allowed them to have their very own drinking fountains, their own bathrooms, own sections of the movie house to view the movies, and their very own schools so they wouldn’t be with us American white children. Prejudice and bigotry; regardless of the color of the skin or the origin of the person, exploitation is exploitation, and that is the name of the game with the pawns being the working people and the dice being the bigotry and prejudice with the prize at the end of the game is financial reward for the capitalist that are manipulating the laws and public opinion through talk radio to obtain thier goals.
I recently wrote to my Senator from California Diane Feinstein to have her NOT support an increase in the H1 and h2 visa authority she declined saying the U.S. A. needs these workers. I would suggest sending this story to her office for comment. I consider her to be a DINO thats Democrat in Name only. I hope none of My cope money goes to her. It is bad enough when we export jobs to offshore but when we do these things attorneys should sue the company into bankruptcy and criminal charges for violation of the 13th amendment should follow.
Like my union brethren above, I cannot support the premise of a “guest worker” program while there are American union members who are ready, willing, and very able to do the work required. So I cannot build up a great deal of sympathy for these “guest workers”, as it is obvious to me that they pre-planned to violate their contracts by overstaying their welcome. On the other hand, it is also obvious that they were sorely abused by the contractor who hired them. And the full weight of the American government should be brought to bear on the contractor for violating the basic human rights of these unfortunate people. It is criminal that American labor laws can be subverted by unscrupulous business owners who exploit alien workers who desperately wish to taste a piece of “the American dream”, by setting them against American labor. I look forward to seeing the upper management members of this company in “the perp walk”. With their Gucci topcoats over their heads.
This story is about a government that enables corporations to exploit and throw away the lives of people brought *legally* from half a world away.
How could any union member read about what these workers have gone through - defrauded of several thousands of dollars, forced to work and live like indentured servants, fired for forming a union to demand better - and have nothing but total empathy and solidarity with these H-2B workers?
Folks need to wake up. This story isn’t about illegal immigration. It’s about what happens to *people* who’ve fallen victim to the same corporate greed and broken policies that make unions and worker solidarity urgently necessary.
WOW… The conservative comments above I would expect out of lou dobbs or Rush Limbaugh, but not union members! Immigrant workers don’t work for less because they don’t like money, but because they have no other choise. It’s up to us workers to stand together and create a level playing feild. Politicians and bosses are sure not going to help us in this regard! The right to live and work peacefully without fear of the state kicking in your door and tearing your family apart is essential. At least if were serious about having a free and democratic society. Lets Support the only relevent labor movement in this country at the moment, and support the rights of immigrant workers, “documented” or otherwise.
P.S
The unemployment rate in the states continues to hover around 4.5%. If immigrants are taking so many jobs, where are the unemployed Americans?
Judging from the article on the strike at the defense contractor’s facility on the Gulf Coast, it appears that these guest workers are basically scabs. But they aren’t to blame - the companies that hire them are. Solidarity should extend across all boundaries, whether ethnic or national, in the same way global capitalism does. India has a strong labor movement. US unions should be working with them to make sure guest workers are unionized before they even arrive here.
The change in the way we hire immigrants was just another way to bust Unions. It is happening in Paradise too (The State if Hawaii). I think Gov Dean is right. The way we fight globalization is to export Unions. In Hawaii, we cannot even keep public jobs for U.S. Citizens only. Again, it’s Union busting.
The same thing was highlighted on TV the other night, bringing people in world-wide to work domestic level jobs inKey West, they were saying it’s because the can’t find the help here at home- the reality, they are abusing all workers, native, local or citizen employees have been drummed out by low warges, they can’t continue to work there and afford their homes… so in come the non citizens, or traveling workers, under PROMISES, then the bait and switch, and charges for their habitat/lodging, and they become imprisoned, economic prosioners with reduced warges and the threat of deportation- AIN’T this country great, all for profit, forget anyone else but the shareholders… The unions have to change this, somehow even for the non union industry… I work in Nursing, I moved to Florida to receive a 1/2 cut in pay, they say-LOOK OUTSIDE-SEE all the SUNSHINE, there’s the other half of your pay… yet we can’t get UNIONS the Nursing shortage is doubling each year- there are enough Nurses, they drive people out of service with horrible hygiene factors and shrinking benefits , yet the ACUITY of patients has increased from average to high risk and critical levels even on most routine floors…