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The story began with a simple grievance against poor working conditions by a few Media
foreign employees. But it was a lot more complicated than that. A group of Indian
workers at Signal International Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, called Saket Microcredit
Soni, an organiser with the New Orleans Workers’ Centre for Racial Justice, and
complained that the company had forcibly imprisoned six of their colleagues. The Population
six Indian workers were picked up from their homes by Signal International’s
security guards in an early morning raid, and had been corralled in a ‘TV room’ Poverty
without bathroom privileges. The men were being held against their will. When
asked, Signal International stated that it had received a nod from the government for Right to Information
such treatment of its ‘guest worker’ employees who were about to be deported. It
was a precaution against the men running away. Signal International was going to Trade & Development
hand the men over to the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) that very
day. The company believed it was well within its legal rights as an employer. Technology
The concept of ‘guest workers’ has a long history in the US. Although ‘guest Urban India
workers’ are actually temporary labour who come into the country for a fixed period
of time to contractually work on certain jobs in particular industries, and are Water Resources
supposed to leave when their time is up, the concept is certainly not new or
temporary. Indeed, the silent and invisible contribution of ‘guest workers’ is the Women
basis of the United States’ historically thriving economy.
But the focus on temporary skilled workers in specialty occupations hides another
side of the story of ‘guest workers’, whose skills are considered bluecollar. These Syndicate
workers enter the US on H2B or H1A visas. H2B visas are usually issued to non
agricultural workers, while H1A are delivered to agricultural workers. Both are given
out for the purposes of meeting seasonal recurring needs, intermittent needs, one
time needs, and peakload needs. The protagonists of this story are workers on
H2B visas who had come to work as welders and pipe fitters for Signal International Add this page to your
Shipyard in Mississippi. They came to the US as ‘guest workers’, lured by the favorite Social Bookmarking
promise of lucrative jobs and permanent residency. websites
Global Resources Inc, a USbased placement agency, recruited 290 Indian workers
in situ by collaborating with local agencies. The men paid more than $15,000 each
to local agencies and a deputy sheriff of Mississippi who was also the president of
Global Resources. Much of the money was charged as processing fees. The
money the individuals paid was often borrowed from loan sharks, obtained by
selling family homes, or represented a family’s total savings. As workers in a
globalised world, the men were seeking opportunities to secure a financially stable
future in the land of milk and honey.
At the worksite, the men were paid $18.50 an hour for eight hours of work per day;
however, $35 was deducted daily as living expenses. Signal International required
the men to live in houses provided by the company, and to eat at the company
cafeteria. The ‘houses’ were nothing more than windowless trailers where 2024
men lived together and slept in bunk beds. The promised hourly rate was not
secure either. The Indian agencies had promised Signal International first class
welders, and the company’s own staff had tested the recruits’ skills before they
were allowed to travel to the US. All the men passed the Signal test. However, once
they reached the worksite, Signal tried to cut some of their wages to $13.50 per
hour, claiming lowerthanexpected skills. The company forced 30 workers to agree
to a lower wage contract, holding the threat of deportation over their heads.
As the men settled in, Signal accused the employees of accumulating ‘garbage’ in
the trailers and using water from the coolers to clean up after using the toilet. It
decided to ‘punish’ them by removing the water coolers. When the workers wanted
to move to residences of their own, to save on living expenses, Signal denied their
requests. Ultimately, Signal decided to round up and deport the ‘troublemakers’,
the employees who complained and demanded better living conditions and
treatment. The constant threat of deportation was too much for some of the men
who had staked all their families’ assets to come to the US. One man tried to
commit suicide by slitting his wrists.
Such inhuman exploitation is a part of being a ‘guest worker’. The standard power
differential between employer and employee is exacerbated due to the employees’
vulnerabilities brought on by an eagerness to remain in the US and to make money
for their families. Employers, on the other hand, can use their employees’ fears of
deportation, social shame of being terminated from a USbased job, and losing all
they ever had. Although the labour rights that all US employees enjoy also protect
‘guest workers’, these are near impossible to implement as the employees’ very
existence in the country depends on the amiability of the employers. As a ‘guest
worker’ who has given up a lot to come to the US, an employee can hardly sue an
employer and demand legal justice. There are many more prospective ‘guest
workers’ waiting eagerly to take his place.
The plight of the Indian ‘guest worker’ in Mississippi is certainly not an isolated one.
A report in 2004 illustrated the situation of H2A visa holders working temporarily in
the agricultural sector, in the US. Nearly 170 workers from Thailand paid $8,000
each to local recruiters who sign up ‘guest workers’ for Global Horizons, a
Californiabased employment company that recruits heavily in South and South
East Asia. The men were hired to work in orchards in the northwest of the US. They
were put up in substandard housing with very few amenities and lived in terrible
squalor; they were not even paid the agreed amount for their work. Speaking little
English, the men did not know where to seek help.
Along with agriculture, forestry is an employment source for foreign ‘guest workers’.
Recruiters issue H2B visas to unskilled nonagricultural workers who cut down
trees with chainsaws and replant incredible numbers in good and bad weather.
Once in the US, they work for contractors who often pile them into overcrowded
vehicles and transport them from place to place. Accidents happen frequently but
the employees are not free to shop for better employment as the validity of their
work permits depends on their staying with the original sponsoring employer. Such
restrictions make ‘guest workers’ more vulnerable to recruiter and employer abuse
and exploitation.
Regardless of the pressures and constraints, workers tend not to take such
mistreatment lying down. Loggers in the northwest came together to contact
immigrants’ rights organisations that brought class action legal suits (equivalent to
a PIL) against Global Horizons and have forced some changes in the company’s
practices.
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2/8/2010 InfoChange India News & Features dev…
For the Indian ‘guest workers’ at Signal, protest came with a price. The men had
started to gather at a local church to discuss how they could recover from the
company the huge sums they had paid to come to the US. They named the group
Signal H2B Workers. According to them, once the meetings became visible Signal
executed an early morning raid, rounding up the leaders and immediately starting
deportation proceedings. The workers struggled to bring public attention to their
plight, and then went on a hunger strike in 2008 to find justice. Fortunately, they did
not have to stand alone for long. Asian American Legal Defense Fund, Southern
Poverty Law Centre, individual labour attorneys and community organisers offered
legal help and other assistance to support the workers’ fight against injustice.
Lawsuits have been filed under the AntiSlavery Human Trafficking Act.
(Shamita Das Dasgupta is cofounder of Manavi (New Jersey), the first organisation
in the US to focus on violence against South Asian immigrant women. She has
b een engaged in advocacy to end violence against women for nearly 30 years.
Dasgupta is currently teaching as an adjunct professor at NYU Law School. In
addition to several articles, she is the author of four b ooks, The Demon Slayers and
Other Stories: Bengali Folktales (1995, Interlink Books, USA); A Patchwork Shawl:
Chronicles of South Asian Women in America (1998, Rutgers University Press,
USA); Body Evidence: Intimate Violence Against South Asian Women in America
(2007, Rutgers University Press, USA); and Mothers for Sale: Women in Kolkata’s
Sex Trade (2009, DasguptaAlliance, India)
Infochange News & Features, December 2009
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