With hopes of earning good wages and getting permanent residency in the United States, they came from Kerala to rehabilitate the Gulf Coast areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Instead, the 500 workers, mostly pipe-fitters and welders, were put to physical and psychological strain. Forced to share cramped quarters for which they had to pay an exorbitant sum, these workers were threatened with deportation when they protested against their condition.
More than 100 of these Indian H2B guest workers, however, managed to wrench themselves from their miserable situation and filed a lawsuit last week against their former employer, Signal International, and Indian and American recruiters, including prominent New Orleans attorney Malvern Burnett.
Members of the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity, the workers filed the lawsuit in the federal court in New Orleans.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, about 500 Indian were trafficked to the Gulf Coast to work for Signal International, a Northrop Grumman subcontractor. The workers allege that their recruiter conspired with Signal to control them with “a broad scheme of psychological coercion, threats of serious harm and physical restraint.”
“For more than a year, hundreds of Indian workers at Signal International have been living like slaves. We paid $ 15,000 to $ 20,000 to come here because we were promised green cards and permanent residency, but they gave us 10-month guest worker visas instead,” said Sabulal Vijayan, former Signal worker. “Signal knew about our debt, and exploited us.”
On March 5, Vijayan and other workers, who escaped from Signal shipyards, reported themselves to the Department of Justice as victims of human trafficking and held a dramatic protest at the company’s shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. “We shall overcome,” sang the workers in Malayalam and threw their hard hats en masse toward the main gate.
“I have been a guest worker all my life in many parts of the world, and I never saw such conditions. We were forced to live in company trailers, 24 men in a single room,” former Signal employee Rajan Pazhambalakode said. “We spoke out to break this chain of human trafficking and protect future workers.”
The trafficking chain began in 2006 when recruiters in New Orleans and Mumbai, with Signal, used the post-Katrina labor shortage in the Gulf Coast to create a trafficking racket under the guest worker program that President George W. Bush wanted to expand.
“These workers are unmasking the federal guest worker program,” said Saket Soni, director of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, which has taken up cudgels on behalf of the worker. “Signal’s actions are unjust and immoral, but unfortunately not uncommon. Guest workers across the Gulf Coast routinely face exploitation that rises to the level of human trafficking and forced labor.”
The revolt by the workers also triggered a promise of support from the Indian Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs, Vayalar Ravi, who called them after getting the news and promised his support.
The workers also blamed Mumbai recruiter Sachin Dewan, who initiated this trafficking ring. “We want Mr. Ravi to direct Mr. Dewan that he and his associates must refrain from contacting our families in order to intimidate then,” Vijayan added.
However, in a statement, Signal International called the workers’ charges “baseless and unfounded” and said it had spent “over $ 7 million constructing state-of-art housing complexes” for the workers. The company said the “vast majority of the workers” had been satisfied with their conditions and that they were being paid “in excess” of prevailing rates and in full compliance with the law, said The New York Times.
