I’ll Bet You Thought Slavery in the US Ended in 1865.
Saturday, March 29th, 2008Sadly you would be incorrect, because to a very real extent it is still going on today. True, people are not being shackled sold and kept as legal property. However what is being done is very close to that, particularly with the amount of manipulation and intimidation utilized against these individuals.
Years ago when I first heard George W. Bush use the words “Guest Worker Program” I had a bad feeling. Knowing his type (Republicans who refuse to raise the minimum wage because poor people don’t count) as I do I could only envision desperate people coming from destitute nations, being put to work in our nation’s most dangerous and dirty jobs for rock bottom wages, then tossed out when their Guest Worker visas had expired. Then they’d be replaced with a fresh batch of desperate people willing to do the “jobs Americans won’t” (because we won’t do those horrible, dangerous jobs for peanuts). Now my dark visions are coming true, with an insidious twist.
March 10, 2008 – Hundreds of guestworkers from India, lured by false promises of permanent U.S. residency, paid tens of thousands of dollars each to obtain temporary jobs at Gulf Coast shipyards only to find themselves forced into involuntary servitude and living in overcrowded, guarded labor camps, according to a class action lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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Several of the workers were illegally detained by company security guards during a pre-dawn raid of their quarters after they began organizing other workers to complain about abuses they faced.
“We were like pigs in a cage,” said Sabulal Vijayan, a worker who tried to commit suicide when company guards attempted to detain him.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, the complaint claims defendants engaged in forced labor, human trafficking, fraud, racketeering and civil rights violations. Signal is a marine and fabrication company with shipyards in Mississippi and Texas. It is a subcontractor for global defense company Northrop Grumman Corp.
After Hurricane Katrina scattered its workforce, Signal used the federal H-2B guestworker program to import employees to work as welders, pipefitters, shipfitters and in other positions. Hundreds of Indian men mortgaged their futures in late 2006 to pay recruiters as much as $20,000 for travel, visa and other fees after they were told it would lead to good jobs, green cards and permanent U.S. residency.
Many of the workers gave up other jobs and sold their houses, family farms, jewelry and other valuables to come up with the money. Some took out high-interest loans. Many were also told that for an extra $1,500-per person fee, they could bring their families to live in the United States.
When the men arrived in early 2007, they discovered they wouldn’t receive the green cards as promised but only 10-month, H-2B guestworker visas. They were forced to pay $1,050 a month to live in crowded company housing in isolated, fenced labor camps where as many as 24 men shared a trailer with only two toilets. When they tried to find their own housing, Signal officials told them they would still have the rent deducted from their paychecks.
The camps were miles from the nearest shopping areas, places of worship and residential neighborhoods. With the exception of rare occasions, such as Christmas, visitors were not allowed into the camps, which were enclosed by fences. Company employees regularly searched the workers’ belongings.
“This company and its recruiters exploited foreign workers who legally entered the country under the belief that they were going to be able to live the American dream,” said Mary Bauer, director of the SPLC’s Immigrant Justice Project. “Instead, they found themselves chained to an abusive employer, forced to live in a substandard labor camp and threatened with ruin if they tried to stand up for their rights. This case illustrates everything that’s wrong with our guestworker program.”
Workers who complained about the conditions they faced were threatened with deportation.
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By March 9, 2007, the workers had started organizing. Signal responded with an early-morning raid by armed guards on the labor camp in Pascagoula, Miss. Three of the organizers were locked in a room for hours. They were told they would be fired and deported.
Vijayan, who sold his wife’s jewelry and borrowed from friends to build a better life in America, slit his wrist in desperation. He recovered after being hospitalized.
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Last year, the SPLC released Close to Slavery, a report that documented the widespread, systematic abuse of guestworkers by U.S. employers. It found that guestworkers are routinely cheated out of wages, forced to pay thousands of dollars in fees to obtain low-wage temporary jobs and held virtually captive by employers or labor brokers who seize their documents. It also found that these workers are often forced to live in squalid conditions and denied medical benefits for on-the-job injuries.
The SPLC has worked in the courts and Congress to reform this system fraught with abuse and exploitation. “We are taking action to protect these workers because the Bush administration is refusing to enforce their rights,” Bauer said. “We need Congress to reform this shameful system.”
Delmonte Corporation is also under fire for serious abuse of individuals under the Guest Worker Program. Doubtless they’re one of hundreds, if not thousands of offenders.
I am utterly revolted by these practices. These people are human beings, not personal property to play around with. I just can’t fathom how people can live with themselves when they use and abuse other people like this, but then again I have a conscience. Maybe those people don’t.
The Guest Worker Program is resulting in widespread abuses of human rights and is tantamount to indentured servitude at best, and slavery at worst. The program as it is now needs to undergo a massive overhaul or be completely disbanded. Otherwise things will go on as they have been, and that is simply unacceptable.
