Northwest labor press., June 03, 2011, Page 9, Image 9

June 3, 2011_nWLP 5/31/11 10:21 aM Page 9
Federal lawsuit targets companies for labor trafficking
EEOC alleges that
foreign pipefitters
brought in on H-2B
visas were abused
On April 20, the U.S. Equal Employ-
ment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
announced prosecution of some of the
worst abuses ever encountered in the
agency’s 45-year history. EEOC filed
federal lawsuits against companies that
trafficked hundreds of foreign workers
to Washington, Hawaii, Texas, and Mis-
sissippi and forced them to work under
conditions of shocking exploitation.
One of the defendants is Signal In-
ternational, which builds and repairs oil
rigs at shipyards along the Gulf Coast.
According to the EEOC lawsuit, Signal
International brought over 500 pipefit-
ters and welders from India between
October 2006 and March 2007. Signal
was able to import the workers under
temporary H-2B visas, after telling the
U.S. government it could not find
enough qualified American workers to
meet its workload in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina.
In India, the workers were recruited
under false promises that the visas
would lead to green cards and perma-
nent residency in the United States, and
JUNE 3, 2011
they paid recruiters up to $20,000 each
for their jobs. Upon arrival at Signal
shipyards in Pascagoula, Mississippi,
and Orange, Texas, the workers were
made to sign forms, in English, commit-
ting them to pay over $1,000 a month
for housing, transportation and food —
whether or not they ate the company’s
food or lived in its housing. The hous-
ing consisted of what the company
called “man camps” — a series of one-
room modular trailers connected by ele-
vated walkways, enclosed by barbed
wire fences and accessible through a sin-
gle guarded entrance. The camps were
located in isolated industrial areas, miles
from anywhere. Each trailer housed up
to 24 men in two-tiered bunk beds,
packed so tightly it was difficult to move
between bunks. In separate mess hall
trailers, workers were fed poor quality
food. Toilets were insufficient, and
workers had to line up in the morning to
shower or relieve themselves. Workers
were not allowed to have visitors. They
had their bags searched when they en-
tered, and were also subjected to sur-
prise searches of their belongings by
camp guards employed by Signal.
Guards enforced camp rules with fines
of $250 for the first violation and $500
for the second.
Workers also had $100 to $200 a
week deducted from their wages to pay
for tool kits they were required to buy
from the company.
Signal International assigned num-
bers to each Indian employee, and called
workers by their numbers instead of
their names. Supervisors also used of-
fensive and insulting language, calling
workers thieves, animals, rats, “f…ing
Keralites,” and “whining little bitches,”
and telling them that their company liv-
ing conditions were better than those of
the slums of India.
When workers complained to man-
agers, they were threatened with depor-
tation. On March 4, 2007, a group of
workers at the Pascagoula shipyard met
with attorneys at a local church. The
company got wind of it, and called the
wife of one of the workers, in India,
threatening he’d be deported. Five days
later, five Signal guards locked the gate
to the “man camp,” swept through the
bunkhouses looking for workers who
had organized the church meeting, and
forcibly brought them to another trailer.
The plan was to fire the ringleaders and
put them immediately on a plane back
to India, but one of the workers foiled
the plan by cutting his wrists in an at-
tempt at suicide.
In separate lawsuits, EEOC accused
a Beverly Hills-based labor contractor,
Global Horizons, of similar abuses
against workers brought from Thailand
to work on farms in Hawaii and Wash-
ington. According to the lawsuit, be-
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
tween 2003 and 2007, Global Horizons
enticed over 200 Thai men with false
promises of steady, high-paying agricul-
tural jobs along with temporary visas al-
lowing them to live and work legally in
the United States. But upon workers’ ar-
rival in the United States, Global Hori-
zons confiscated their passports and
threatened them with deportation if they
complained. To get jobs and passage,
Thai workers had paid hefty recruitment
fees to Global Horizons, but their farm
wages were low — far less than prom-
ised — with the result that they and their
families back in Thailand were severely
in debt to the company. On the farms,
Thai workers lived in vermin-infested
company housing and were forbidden to
leave. At work, they endured screaming,
threats and physical assaults by over-
seers, and were isolated from non-Thai
farm workers working under more tol-
erable conditions.
In addition to Global Horizons, the
suits name six Hawaiian farms as defen-
dants: Del Monte Fresh Produce, Kauai
Coffee Company, Captain Cook Coffee
Company, Kelena Farms, Mac Farms,
Maui Pineapple Company; as well as
(Turn to Page 10)
Local voters mostly reject union
picks in Oregon’s May 17 election
In a May 17 special election, Port-
land voters narrowly rejected a six-year
$548 million Portland Public Schools
bond measure that might have put union
members to work repairing and remod-
eling schools. But the majority did vote
to increase and extend a property tax
levy that will prevent 200 teacher lay-
offs. The bond measure had 49.58 per-
cent support, failing by 993 votes. The
levy passed easily 58 to 42 percent.
Both measures were backed by North-
west Oregon Labor Council (NOLC)
and Columbia Pacific Building and
Construction Trades Council (CP-
BCTC), and numerous locals.
In a press statement after the elec-
tion, PPS Superintendent Carole Smith
said the bond defeat “doesn’t mark an
end of the conversation, but rather the
start of a new phase. School buildings
are still crumbling. They need serious
safety upgrades, and they lack the facil-
ities students need to compete.” District
leaders may regroup and come back to
voters at a later date with a scaled-back
proposal.
In candidate races, NOLC and CP-
BCTC picks fared poorly. Harold
Williams, endorsed by the building
trades council, won re-election to Port-
land Community College Zone 2 Di-
rector, garnering 47.33 percent of the
vote in a four-way race. But other en-
dorsed candidates lost:
• Former state representative Chuck
Riley lost a race for PCC director for
Zone 7, Washington County, with 39.7
percent of the vote.
• Mike Delman, endorsed by NOLC,
lost his re-election race for Multnomah
Education Service District, with 46.75
percent of the vote.
• Maggie Brister-Mashia placed sec-
ond in a three-way contest for Portland
Public Schools board, earning 30.25
percent of the vote.
• Retired Sheet Metal Local 16 busi-
ness agent Mike Smith also came in
second in a three-way race for Reynolds
School District, earning 28 percent of
the vote.
But a unionist did win elected office
in Cottage Grove. Oregon School Em-
ployees Association past president Mer-
lene Martin won election to South Lane
School Board — where she worked for
22 years as an educational assistant.
Martin was endorsed by the Lane
County Labor Council.
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