The New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice held a rally on June 11th in front of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). The rally marked the end of a month-long hunger strike by Indian guestworkers, who allege that they were coerced into working at Signal International’s shipbuilding yards in the Gulf Coast. Representing a larger group of about 500 Indian H2B guestworkers, the workers at the rally had completed a march from New Orleans to Washington, DC to demand justice from the both the US and Indian governments which have been complicit in allowing unregulated labor contractors to profit from what rally organizers describe as “modern-day slavery and indentured servitude.”
In late 2006 and early 2007, workers paid up to $20,000 each to labor brokers and lawyers in order to get these guestworker positions and were promised that temporary work visas would lead to permanent residency or green cards. Upon arriving in Mississippi, they were housed in appalling conditions, prevented from leaving the labor camp and threatened with deportation when they objected to these conditions. Finally, with assistance from the New Orleans Worker Center, several hundred workers left Signal, filed a lawsuit and began their quest for justice. These workers demand a full DOJ investigation into the trafficking charges as well as the issuance of temporary visas to the Indian guestworkers so they can remain in the US to pursue their case against Signal.
Additional print and multimedia coverage of the hunger strike, march, rally and legal proceedings is available through the New York Times (“Workers on Hunger Strike Say They Were Misled on Visas” by Julia Preston, June 7, 2008) and the American News Project (“Immigrant Laborers in Limbo” by Garland McLaurin, May 15, 2008).