Washington, Februaary 03: Indian workers in US have filed a lawsuit against managers of a Mississippi marine oil-rig company for turning them into victims of ‘human trafficking and labor abuse.’
Signal International is fighting the suit and has sued American and Indian recruiters of its foreign labor force that contracted with the workers in India.
The US immigration authorities “worked closely with the company to discourage protests” by the temporary Indian workers over their job conditions, “including advising managers to send some workers back to India,” the New York Times reported Tuesday, quoting testimony in a federal lawsuit against the company.
The company claims the recruiters misled it and the recruited Indians about conditions of the work visas that brought them to the US.
The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have opened separate investigations. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined in September that there was “reasonable cause” to believe the Indian guest workers at Signal had faced discrimination and a work environment “laced with ridicule and harassment.”
The Signal case has come to represent some of the flaws and pitfalls, for immigrants and for employers, in the H-2B temporary guest worker program. As Congressional lawmakers weigh moving forward this year on an overhaul of the immigration system, they are debating whether to include an expansion of the guest worker programs.
The cooperation between the company and federal immigration agents is recounted in sworn depositions by Signal managers who were involved when tensions in its shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, erupted into a public clash in March 2007.
——-Agencies