H2B Press Watch

NDTV: US job racket: Agents lose their licences

March 11, 2008 · No Comments

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080043771&ch=3/11/2008%2011:21:00%20PM#

US job racket: Agents lose their licences

Indo-Asian News Service

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 (New Delhi)

The Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs has suspended the licences of two Mumbai-based recruiting agents who sent Indian workers to a US marine construction company and have been charged with human trafficking.

Following a campaign by the workers in the US, the ministry has ordered an inquiry against Dewan Consultants and S Mansur and Company, the two recruiting agents.

”We have suspended their licences till the inquiry is complete. If the report finds them guilty, their registration will be cancelled,” said a senior MOIA official.

According to the MOIA 2007 list, Dewan Consultants has a registration valid till October 2014, while S Mansur and Company’s registration lapsed on February 13, 2008.

Over 100 Indian workers walked out of the premises of Signal International in Pascagoula, Mississippi, supported by two NGOs, the Workers Centre for Racial Justice and the Alliance for Guest Workers for Dignity on March 6.

According to officials, about 590 Indian skilled workers were brought to the marine construction company’s Pascagoula headquarters and yards in Texas on H2B guest worker visa for a period of 10 months from December 2006.

The recruitments were done through Global Resources, which is headed by Mississippi sheriff’s deputy Michael Pol, and Indian recruiter Dewan Consultants.

The workers were unhappy at the poor living conditions, as up to two dozens of them were bunched into a single dormitory and expenses on food and electricity were deducted from their salaries.

The workers were also angry that the recruiters had charged them between Rs 600,000 to Rs 900,000 as commission on the promise that they will get long-term employment or green card.

A similar issue erupted earlier in March 2007 when workers’ protests took place.

Following the negative publicity, Signal International reportedly increased the workers’ salary to $19.15 per hour and terminated its contract with Global Resources.

After the uproar, several workers left the company and got jobs in other firms, while some others went absconding.

A few workers also engaged lawyers to file applications for work permit and green card.

Officials estimate that about 100 workers remained in Pascagoula, and around 40 to 50 in Orange County, Texas.

The remaining workers apparently continued with Signal in the hope that their visas would be extended, which was not done. Meanwhile, Signal contracted S Mansur and Company to arrange for another set of workers from India.

Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi has offered all help to Indian workers and also spoken to them by phone.

The workers and their attorney have sued the US based company as well as the recruitment agents for human trafficking.

Categories: Uncategorized

NY Times:

March 11, 2008 · No Comments

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/us/11workers.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

March 11, 2008

Workers Sue Gulf Coast Company That Imported Them

 

By ADAM NOSSITER

 

NEW ORLEANS — A group of 500 foreign welders and pipefitters brought in to work at Gulf Coast oil rig yards after Hurricane Katrina said Monday that they had sued their employer, claiming they were lured with false promises of permanent-resident status, forced to live in inhumane conditions and then threatened when they protested.

The workers were recruited in India and the United Arab Emirates and brought in late 2006 and early 2007 under the government’s temporary guest worker program. They worked at Signal International, an oil-rig repair and construction company with yards in Pascagoula, Miss., about 85 miles east of here, and in Orange, Tex., about 100 miles east of Houston.

The company said it had brought them in to supplement a labor force depleted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

At a rally here Monday, workers and their lawyers said they had given up life savings, sold family jewelry and paid up to $20,000 in immigration and travel fees after being assured that the company would help them to become permanent residents of the United States.

In a statement, the company called the workers’ charges “baseless and unfounded” and said it had spent “over $7 million constructing state-of-the-art housing complexes” for the workers. The company said that the “vast majority of the workers” recruited had been satisfied with their conditions and that the workers were being paid “in excess” of prevailing rates and in full compliance with the law.

Workers and their advocates disputed those assertions. Ignorant of American immigration law, advocates said, the workers were unaware that they had been brought in only temporarily.

“They didn’t know they were guest workers,” said Stephen Boykewich of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. “They thought they were getting permanent status.”

The green cards enabling residency never materialized, according to the lawsuit, and the workers were forced to live in overcrowded guarded “bunkhouses” at Signal International, with inadequate toilets and unhygienic kitchens that frequently made them ill.

The class-action lawsuit was filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Ala., among other groups.

The workers’ assertions are the latest in a series of complaints about exploitation of foreign laborers on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

Previous complaints have involved Hispanic hotel and construction workers and farm laborers and have centered on low pay and harsh working conditions.

In the summer of 2006, Hispanic hotel workers sued a prominent New Orleans developer over inadequate pay, and last month, fruit pickers walked off the job in a parish north of here over exploitative conditions.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has also sued on behalf of immigrant workers involved in the reconstruction and cleanup of New Orleans after the storm. It maintains that immigrants brought in under the guest worker program are “systematically exploited and abused,” all over the country.

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized

Hindustan Times: Workers sue US firm, India cracks down on recruiters

March 11, 2008 · No Comments

New Orleans/New Delhi/Mumbai, March 11, 2008
First Published: 02:02 IST(11/3/200 8)
Last Updated: 17:19 IST(11/3/200 8)

Workers sue US firm, India cracks down on recruiters

The 120 workers who walked out of Signal International facilities in Mississippi last week rallied outside the office of the lawyer, who acted as a recruiter to bring them from India to the United States.

“The reason we gave up our homes to come here was to get permanent residency,” said Vijaka Kumaran, 34. Kumaran sold his wife’s jewellery to get the $15,000 he was charged to go to the US.
 
The H2B workers complaint alleges that recruiters conspired with Signal to control the workers with “a broad scheme of psychological coercion, threats of serious harm and physical restraint, and threatened abuse of the legal process.”The workers attempted to present lawyer Malvern Burnett with a federal lawsuit filed in a district court in New Orleans that names two recruiters and Signal as defendants and accuses the companies of human trafficking.

The 82-page complaint claims the defendants violated their rights besides violating nine federal laws. It claims they violated Trafficking Victims Protection Act by having both forced labour and trafficking. They also claim violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Klu Klux Klan Act of 1871, fraud, breach of contract, violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and false imprisonment, assault and batter and infliction of emotional harm.

In India, the government suspended licences of two Mumbai-based recruiting firms hiring Indian workers for Signal International, accused of ill-treating workers in Mississippi. Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs, Vayalar Ravi told Hindustan Times, “Licences of Dewan Consultants and S Mansur & Company have been suspended. The report of Indian ambassador in the US is expected in two days time”. The government move comes two days after the HT reported the inhuman living conditions of 120 Indian workers in a small town in Mississippi.
 
Besides Mumbai-based Dewan Consultants, another Mumbai-based recruiter, S Mansur & Company, was carrying out the recruitment process for Signal by allegedly charging $15,000 for a visa — a charge proprietor Syed Mansur Razvi denied. “ I am allowed to charge just Rs 10,000 for processing an application. The Ministry should have questioned me before suspending the licence,” Razvi said.

The Ministry has issued show-cause notices to both the firms, asking, “why action should not be taken against them for charging money from innocent people to illegally send them abroad to work in inhuman conditions and also for enticing them with the promise of green cards”, sources said.
 
The H2B workers complaint alleges that recruiters conspired with Signal to control the workers with “a broad scheme of psychological coercion, threats of serious harm and physical restraint, and threatened abuse of the legal process.”

The workers’ litigation team includes attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Louisiana Justice Institute. Tushar Sheth, an attorney working on the case from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the march was a “phenomenal demonstration of worker unity and worker strength.”

J Rosenbaum, an attorney from the Southern Poverty Law Center, spoke with crowd, saying the plight of these workers would be represented by her organisation.

“We’re proud to stand with them in this litigation and their calls for investigations,” she said.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print.aspx?Id=76b8294c-017b-4140-80e2-d00e1e946a68
© Copyright 2007 Hindustan Times

Categories: Uncategorized

CNN: Workers from India sue, charging ‘modern-day slavery’

March 11, 2008 · No Comments

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/11/h2b.workers.suit.ap/?iref=mpstoryview

CNN.com

Workers from India sue, charging ‘modern-day slavery’

  • Story Highlights
  • Workers say recruiters lured them to U.S. with false promises
  • They claim job conditions were abusive, complaints brought deportation threats
  • Company calls charges “baseless,” says most guest workers happy with conditions
  • Signal International says federal government has OK’d its practices, facilities

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) — A group of workers from India who claim they were duped into taking jobs at Gulf Coast shipyards and subjected to abusive living conditions are suing the company that hired them.

A class-action lawsuit filed Friday in federal court accuses Signal International, an oil rig construction and repair company, of exploiting and defrauding more than 500 Indian nationals who worked at its facilities in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and Orange, Texas.

Several dozen former workers protested Monday outside the New Orleans office of a lawyer who allegedly helped recruit them to work for Pascagoula-based Signal as welders, pipefitters and in other positions through a federal guest worker program.

The workers claim they were lured here by the false promise of green cards and permanent U.S. residency. Some say they didn’t know their work visas would last less than a year until after they paid thousands of dollars on travel and other expenses.

The company denied the allegations as “baseless and unfounded” and said in an unsigned statement that most guest workers have been satisfied with their employment and living conditions.

Federal officials have reviewed Signal’s employment practices, inspected its facilities and deemed them fully compliant with the law, the company said.

“Signal respects the right of its former employees to demonstrate but maintains that the allegations being made against Signal, its employment practices and housing complex conditions are simply untrue,” the company said.

In their lawsuit, the workers accuse Signal of subjecting them to “psychological coercion,” threats of deportation and overcrowded living quarters.

“These workers mortgaged their futures for the American dream and instead incurred substantial debt, were forced to live in squalid living conditions and were threatened with [deportation] when they tried to stand up for their rights,” said Jennifer Rosenbaum, a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Subulal Vijayan, one of 12 former workers named as plaintiffs, said he gave up a job in the United Arab Emirates to work for Signal and didn’t know his work visa would expire 10 months after his arrival in December 2006.

Vijayan said he attempted suicide after Signal allegedly threatened to deport him in retaliation for complaining about the working conditions.

“We are saying this a modern-day slavery,” Vijayan said.

Lawyers for the workers are asking a federal judge in New Orleans to certify the lawsuit as a class action. The suit accuses Signal and its recruiters of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act.

Rosenbaum said a shortage of skilled labor after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 has left many Gulf Coast companies relying on guest workers. She said some use the program to “undercut job quality and exploit foreign labor.”

Categories: Uncategorized