Today Global Workers met with Brazilian and Mexican workers who were all exploited through the guest worker program and are organizing with the support of the New Orleans Workers Center. The Brazilian workers paid up to $6,000 to secure jobs as welders at the Signal shipyard in Mississippi. But when they arrived they were shocked to discover that there was no work at all. After three months with no pay whatsoever, the desperate workers left the job to seek work elsewhere, despite the fact that the Brazilian recruiter threatened to charge them thousands of dollars if they broke the contract, regardless of the reason.
The Mexican workers traveled to Louisiana to pick strawberries under H-2a contracts. Going into debt of $1,000 with 20% monthly interest, the promise of $8.10 an hour seemed well worth the risk. However, when they arrived they only received an average of $2.00 an hour after the farmer unilaterally, and illegally, changed the terms of their contract. Moreover, the farmer confiscated the passports and would not return them even when one worker wanted to return to Mexico to be with his wife who was about to give birth to their first child. Faced with a total loss of freedom, the workers staged a citizen’s arrest of the farmer to demand the return of their passports and compliance with the contract. After the protest, the workers were fired and now seek work off the books to be able to pay off of their crushing debts before returning home.
The workers confirmed that they received no pre-departure information about their rights or where to turn if they employers did not live up to the contractual commitments. They all agreed that this information would have greatly helped them face their exploitative employers. They felt utterly ignorant, alone, and angry. Upon hearing the mission of Global Workers they were encouraged and stressed that coordinated legal support back home was important to achieve justice against their recruiters. Both groups of workers want their recruiters and employers to be charged for violating human trafficking laws in the USA and Mexico and Brazil. Global Workers will work with them to ensure that this happens.
Today, 100 of these Indian guest workers quit their jobs at Signal and threw their hard hats at the front gate in a symbolic protest. Angry and defrauded, these workers want justice. A local TV station covered the action. Global Workers was present at the protest in Pascagoula as part of an international legal support team. Global Workers is assisting the workers to bring their plight to the attention of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteurship on Migrants and the United Nations Special Rapporteurs on Migrants and Trafficking. Since Global Workers has yet to establish a program in India, it has worked closely with an Indian colleague who has connected the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice with legal assistance in India. This powerful connection has already resulted in widespread press coverage in India, and potential criminal action against the recruiter, all of which has prompted the Indian government into action. The Indian ambassador to the USA will travel to New Orleans to meet with the workers next week. This collaboration, once again, underscores the importance of working transnationally to address the issues that transnational workers face. Hopefully, this case will spark a movement to push for recruiter laws both in the USA and India. Until the employers are responsible for all transportation and recruitment fees, the workers will be mercilessly exploited with exorbitant fees.
The New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice asked Global Workers to support a case of Indian H-2b guest workers trafficked to work for Signal International, a large shipyard in Mississippi. Specifically, they wanted to bring legal actions in India against the recruiter and to explore international legal actions in addition to the domestic actions they were about to pursue.
The case of the Indian workers highlights once again the serious problems of the USA guest worker program. On the one hand the US is a strong advocate against trafficking of humans. On the other hand, the government itself is facilitating a program that has resulted in more than one instance of human trafficking.
Signal hired a recruiter in India to bring over 600 welders to the gulf coast, due to an alleged lack of American welders available after Hurricane Katrina. The recruiter charged the Indians $20,000 a piece with the promise that they would receive green cards and be able to bring their families to live with them permanently in the USA. Since many of these workers had spent their entire adult lives holding jobs all over the world as guest workers on short contracts, the opportunity to hold good jobs and live with their families seemed well worth going into deep debt. Once they arrived in the USA they realized that they were terribly deceived. The workers were on H-2b visas, which offer no possibility of converting to green cards (i.e. permanent residency). Their families would never be able to join them and there was no way to pay off the debt with a six month job. To their further humiliation, they were housed in “man camps” with 24 persons to a room with one bathroom. The conditions, they claim, were worse than any country in the middle east where they had previously worked. In response, the workers started to organize. The company reacted by illegally detaining several of the workers with the threat to deport them. The fear of deportation while having a crushing debt drove one worker to attempt suicide. In solidarity, the rest of the workers spontaneously struck to demand their release. Over the course of the next year, the workers continued to organize while the Workers Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center laid the ground work for a massive law suit alleging, amongst other claims, human trafficking.