For several months I've been seeing mention of a job opening for a Malayalam-and-Hindi speaking paralegal at the Southern Poverty Law Center, in Alabama. I couldn't imagine what the exact need was, but much as I tried, I couldn't get a full answer from the people at SPLC. Clearly, there was some sort of litigation in the works and they didn't want to tip their hand. All they could say was that there an "increasing number of Indian guestworkers seeking assistance from our office with labor trafficking and exploitation as part of a larger trend that involves recruiting workers from farther away and charging increased recruitment fees."
Today, we appear to have our answer. Over a hundred Indian H2B workers at a shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi staged a walkout this morning. The shipyard is run by Signal International, and the workers contend they've been lured into a human trafficking ring created by the company in the aftermath of Katrina, which resulted in a severe worker shortage. They plan to "report themselves to the Department of Justice as victims of trafficking, and demand federal prosecution of Signal."
The walkout was covered by WLOX-TV (click to see a small image of the walkout), and describes workers symbolically throwing their hardhats over a fence (picture from flickr) and then singing "We Shall Overcome" in their "native language." It quotes Saket Soni of the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice, who served as an interpreter for the workers:
They talk of living "like pigs in a cage" in a company-run "work camp."
"I've been a guest worker all my life. I've never seen these kinds of conditions," said the interpreter, "We lived 24 people to a room. And for this, the company deducted $1,050 a month from our paychecks."
The workers say they paid $20,000 each in order to come to America. One of the workers, Sabulal Vijayan (a Malayali, presumably), tried to organize his fellow workers last year and was fired. He then attempted suicide.
Here's more from a press release sent to me by Stephen Boykewich, who works with Soni at the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice:
"The chain began in 2006 when recruiters in New Orleans and Bombay, together with Signal, a Northrop Grumman subcontractor, used the post-Katrina labor shortage in the Gulf Coast to create a trafficking racket within the guest worker program that President George W. Bush wants to expand.
“Each of us paid $15,000 to $20,000. They promised us green cards and permanent residency, and instead gave us ten-month visas and made us live like animals in company trailers, 24 to a room,” said former Signal employee Sabulal Vijayan. “We were trapped between an ocean of debt at home and constant threats of deportation from our bosses in Mississippi.”
When the workers began to organize last year, Signal sent armed guards to detain and fire the organizers. A year later, Signal workers are taking action to protect future workers.
“The recruiters who defrauded us are collecting money from other workers right now with the same false promises. We are speaking out to protect them,” said Vijayan, who has testified before a Congressional subcommittee investigating post-Katrina labor violations on the Gulf Coast.
“The US State Department calls it ‘a repulsive crime’ when recruiters and employers in other parts of the world bind guest workers with crushing debts and threats of deportation,” said Saket Soni, director of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. “This is precisely what is happening on the gulf Coast.”
The actions will continue through the weekend and next week, so there will be strong opportunities for coverage after tomorrow..."
Signal has denied the charges and issued a statement in which it says it spent over $7 million to house the workers.
WLOX-TV appears to be the only media outlet to have covered the walkout. For more information, contact Stephen Boykewich at 504-655-0876. Or email him at spboykewich[at]gmail.com
Here's are some of the media outlets who picked up on the story after reading this post:
