Guest Column
Guest Workers Fired After Protesting 'Slave' Conditions
Guest Workers Fired
After Protesting 'Slave' Conditions
By David Bacon
New America Media
Mar 13, 2007
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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