It was only two weeks ago that I spoke with Reva and her student about bonded labor in South Asia. Today's Times of India has a report on it although this time it only originates in South Asia but happens in the US. Talk about corporate greed, weak government regulations, greedy individuals preying on unsuspecting poor, the lure of the American Dream, etc. etc.
Trafficking racket: Indian workers file case against US employer
10 Mar 2008, 1559 hrs IST,CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA,TNN
WASHINGTON: Some 500 Indian workers caught in what they claim is a human trafficking racket have asked the Indian government to protect their families in India from vengeful recruiters even as they filed a class action anti
racketeering lawsuit in the US against their American employer.
- - - -
The case involving the Indian workers and their alleged exploitation is more than a year old. Sometime in 2006, hundreds of welders and pipefitters, mostly from Kerala, responded to a series of advertisement placed by a recruiting company run by Mumbai-based Sachin Dewan promising green cards and permanent residency in US. Over 600 workers from all around India and some from the Gulf paid Dewan up to Rs 10 lakh (about $ 25,000 in today’s rates), often selling their homes and raising loans, for the promised "American dream".
When they arrived in US, they discovered that there were no green cards. Instead, the workers found themselves working for Signal International, a major marine construction company, on ten-month "H-2B’’ visa that bonded them to work for it. Most of the work stemmed from the post-Hurricane Katrina labour shortage in the Louisiana-Mississippi region. The workers, many of them sent to Pascagoula, Mississippi, say they found the living conditions horrible. They were placed in cramped quarters, 24 to a 24x36 room equipped with bunk beds. They were given substandard food, for which Signal charged them $ 1050 per month, although the company claimed to have hired an Indian cook from New Orleans. "Welding and pipe-fitting are high stress jobs. We could not even have a decent nights sleep before undertaking these dangerous jobs," said Sabulal Vijayan, a former Signal worker who first began organizing his colleagues for a protest last March, told TOI. Vijayan, who was subsequently fired by Signal, is now on a special extended visa to help US authorities in investigating the case with help from the New Orleans Workers Centre for Racial Justice.
For the rest of the story
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2852060.cms
Monday, March 10, 2008
Friday, December 14, 2007
Just Created
Hi, this is my first foray into the blogosphere. I will perhaps use it for my upcoming classes in addition to the precious blackboard. But I should use it most for what it is: to blog!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
