300 Indian Guest Workers are taking part in a hunger strike in Washington D.C. to protest the human trafficking and exploitation they have faced. The workers have faced horrible conditions and obstacles in their path to Washington D.C., and their plight continues even today.
In 2006, after Hurricane Katrina, 550 Guest Workers from India (mainly the Southern part of India) were recruited in India to come to the U.S. Gulf Coast and work as welders and pipe fitters. The workers were recruited with false promises that they would be given green cards and work-based permanent residency in the United States, and that they would eventually be able to bring their families from India to come live with them. In return, the workers were forced to pay $20,000 apiece in reliance on these false promises. In December 2006, the workers arrived in the U.S. and began working for Signal International, a major Gulf Coast employer which has shipyards in both Texas and Mississippi. Signal International had knowledge of the fraudulent recruiting scheme but did not stop it, maintaining that the scheme was not the company’s problem. After arriving, the workers were required to live in labor camps and faced dehumanizing conditions: 24 men were forced to live in each cramped room; they faced a barrage of racist slurs; they were given only 10-month visas; and the men felt incredible discrimination as they were segregated from all the other workers in the factory.
In March 2007, the workers began to organize in order to protest the horrendous conditions they were facing. In response, Signal International sent armed guards to the labor camps, pulled the organizers out of bed, imprisoned them on company grounds, and attempted to deport them. 300 of the workers then went on strike that day to free the captive organizers. One year later, in March 2008, the 300 workers escaped from the labor camp and in April 2008, the workers walked from New Orleans to Washington D.C. to expose the harsh realities of the Guest-Worker program. This walk was in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha. Along their walk to Washington D.C., the workers faced racism in the various states they passed through, and in once instance, some workers even had acid thrown at them. On May 14th, 2008, the workers launched a hunger strike in Washington DC because they still had not received justice. Their strike has sparked a criminal trafficking and racketeering investigation against Signal International.
South Asian Network for more