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Shipyard Workers Organize to Stop 21st Century Slavery
Workdayminnesota.org
Tuesday 11 March 2008
Pascagoula, Mississippi - More than 100 workers, carrying signs reading "I
Am A Man," walked off the job at a Mississippi shipyard last week to protest
conditions of slavery. Their struggle for justice comes 40 years after the Rev.
Martin Luther King, Jr., marched with striking Memphis sanitation workers carrying
the same signs.
The shipyard workers - who are from India - have filed a class
action suit against Signal International, a marine fabrication company; recruiters
in India and the United States; and a New Orleans immigration lawyer, Malvern
Burnett; accusing them of forced labor, human trafficking, fraud and civil rights
violations.
The suit charges that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, more than 500
Indian men "were trafficked into the United States through the federal
government's H-2B guestworker program to provide labor and services . . . Plaintiffs
were subjected to forced labor as welders, pipefitters, shipfitters, and other
marine fabrication workers at Signal operations in Pascagoula, Mississippi and
Orange, Texas."
At the walkout last Thursday, the workers symbolically threw their hardhats
over the fence as they left the shipyard, media reported, and sang the civil
rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome."
Saket Soni of the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice, who served
as an interpreter for the workers, said they talk of living "like pigs
in a cage" in a company-run "work camp."
One of the workers, Sabulal Vijayan, tried to organize his fellow workers last
year and was fired. He then attempted suicide.
The exploitation began in 2006 when recruiters in New Orleans and Bombay, together
with Signal, a Northrop Grumman subcontractor, used the post-Katrina labor shortage
in the Gulf Coast to create a trafficking racket within the guest worker program
that President Bush wants to expand, the Workers Center said in a news release.
Workers paid up to $20,000 to get jobs in the United States.
"They promised us green cards and permanent residency, and instead gave
us 10-month visas and made us live like animals in company trailers, 24 to a
room," Vijayan said. "We were trapped between an ocean of debt at
home and constant threats of deportation from our bosses in Mississippi."
When the workers began to organize last year, Signal sent armed guards to detain
and fire the organizers, the Workers Center said.
The lawsuit, filed by the Louisiana Justice Institute, Southern Poverty Law
Center and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, charges violations
of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act; the Racketeer Influenced
and Corrupt Organizations Act ("RICO"); the Civil Rights Act of 1866;
the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871; and the Fair Labor Standards Act.
"The U.S. State Department calls it 'a repulsive crime' when recruiters
and employers in other parts of the world bind guest workers with crushing debts
and threats of deportation," said Soni. "This is precisely what is
happening on the Gulf Coast."
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages and injunctions to prevent
future exploitation of workers. While the court action moves forward, the workers
pledge to continue more demonstrations to call attention to the treatment of
workers on the Gulf Coast.
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This report is adapted from information on www.Sajaforum.org, the
blog of the South Asian journalists association, and www.Sepiamutiny.com.
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