Guest Workers Fired After Protesting Slave-Like Conditions

[Sapphire Blue]

Guest Workers Fired After Protesting Slave-Like Conditions
Photojournalist and trade unionist David Bacon is author of Communities Without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of Migration.

(excerpt)

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.

(snip)

“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.”

Please read the full article @ http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/03/15/guest-workers-fired-after-protesting-slave-like-conditions/

Related thread...

SPLC Report: 'Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States': http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x396540

[Hekate]

1. There are so many issues here it's hard to know where to start

FIRST:
All workers deserve the protections of US labor law when working for a US company, no matter where in the world, but ESPECIALLY in the US.

SECOND:
There are American citizens who can do these jobs and want them.
Jobs like welding and fitting used to be unionized and well-paid in the US. Even for longshoremen -- I read a few years ago that when a handful of openings were announced at Long Beach, CA over a thousand applicants showed up.

Everyone from Ted Kennedy to Lou Dobbs should be on this issue.

Hekate
:argh:

[Marrah_G]

2. More jobs Americans won't do?

Same old bullshit. These employers and their lackeys in the white house all need to be behind bars.

[earth mom]

3. Yup here comes the meme: more jobs that Americans won't do!

:grr:

p.s. Jail is to good for those criminals in D.C.!

[Sapphire Blue]

4. It is NOT about "More jobs Americans won't do"; it's about cheap SLAVE labor.

It's about denying human rights to & taking advantage of people trying to make a better life for themselves by coming to this country for the opportunities that they have been conned into believing exist here.

It has never been about jobs that Americans won't do.

[TahitiNut]

5. What better than workers without voting rights?

Do we count these people as 3/5ths in a Census? :puke:

[dogday]

6. We can always put them in a detention

center and then get real cheap labor :sarcasm:

[sandnsea]

7. Global Horizons

Is another labor trader that did this in Washington State. Some days I just feel like a freight train is coming down the track and the people who can see it are the ones who can't do a blessed thing to stop it because the ones who can stop it are driving the train.

http://www.yakima-herald.com/page/dis/287297118132222

[Sapphire Blue]

8. Maybe we can't stop the train, but we can pull up its tracks!

[sandnsea]

11. lol, okay then

We've got a plan!! Thanks. I really needed to hear that. :)

[Elwood P Dowd]

9. There are only about 40 million so called "safe" jobs in this country.

At least that's what I heard on one of the cable shows (Lou Dobbs maybe). All the other jobs (almost 100 million) can be performed either out of the country or by imported labor within the country. The race to the bottom is accelerating. Corporate America won't change until they create a depression.

[bobbolink]

10. This is deserving of some LTTEs!

For those who don't believe the US is fascism....

:nuke:

[Decruiter]

12. Hang on everyone, the roller coaster is at the peak of a very high

mountain. "Race to the bottom" just seems so tame.

I hate to say it, but, hell on earth is coming.

[robinlynne]

13. This is exactly why Bush pushes the "guest worker program". this is what it is.

People think guest wroker rpogram is some nice, liberal concept. It is NOT. Big business came up with this plan and lobbied Bush 6 years ago to do this. Many dems support the notion of guest worker program, as if it were a good thing. (including Kennedy, unfortunately, although I love the man.) It brings down wages, kills unionizing, and mistreats workers from ALL countries....

[pampango]

14. I know it is not fair to ask for a solution, but it is a difficult problem.

The current system doesn't work and never will.

Do we seek to eliminate illegal immigration through some combination of employer sanctions and border controls? Or do we increase legal immigration substantially? Some other half way measure that is different from guest worker programs?

[robinlynne]

15. to be honest, I really think that immigration is only a big issue because Bush made it so.

in my opinion, we end the war, get rid of all the corruption in this country, work on health care and decent living conditions for all americans, THEN we decide what to do about immigration.
IMHO

[pampango]

17. While I certainly agree that there are more important issues

than immigration for us to deal with, it would make me feel a little hypocritical to just ignore it for the time being.

Such a strategy would be politically wise, since the current situation is indefensible and I don't have a solid proposal to make. This way I can take shots at whatever proposals are made to either expand immigration (through guest worker programs or some other measure to increase legal immigration) or to restrict immigration (through tougher employer sanctions and/or border controls).

I realize that is seems to always be easier for politicians to give vague, but inspiring, speeches on important issues than to propose specific solutions. Such politicos can then sit back and take shots at any proposed solution that any "fool" is dumb enough to put forward, since few proposals are even close to perfect. On an issue such as immigration, I can appreciate the "wisdom" of such an approach.

[TheBaldyMan]

16. they say 'it almost didn't happen'

in the article the authors say,

Indeed, let’s not forget that this scandal almost didn’t happen. The purge occurred last December, appropriately enough, on December 7 (a day that will live in infamy?). It generated exactly zero headlines. Some local media outlets took note of individual prosecutors offering their “resignations,” but no one noticed the larger trend. There was no outrage from Democrats on the Hill, no media interest, and no controversy. The process unfolded exactly as the Bush gang had hoped..

This seems a bit odd, they can't frequent DU much, there were several DUers that started to join the dots on this one long before i became mainstream.

excellent post. k&r'ed