Indian Workers On Hunger Strike Over Slave Labor Conditions
Put forth on June 9, 2008 by XicanoPwr
Posted in Deportation, Immigration, activism
On May 14, five Indian guest workers launched a water-only hunger strike outside the White House to protest the slave-like conditions that more than 500 Indian welders and pipe fitters have endured while working at the Signal International, a marine oil rig construction company based in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
Each workers paid $20,000 to a recruiting agency for the promise of green cards and work-based permanent residency for themselves and their families. Instead they received 10-month temporary H2B guest worker visas and worked under deplorable conditions.
Like many immigrants, they are forced to sell their homes in India or take out loans so they can afford the high fee so they can come here and achieve the “American dream;” but in reality, all they found was the American nightmare.
After walking out on their jobs, most of the workers lost their legal immigration status. According to ABC local affiliate WLOX, Sabulal Vijayan took the most drastic action after he was fired for trying to organize his fellow workers. Now facing deportation, Vijayan decided to take his own life instead of being deported.
“I slit my wrists to kill myself. There was no other option for me. I didn’t know what I was doing. The situation forced me to do so. I was in a horrible situation. Signal was retaliating against me for organizing my people for our rights,” he told the group of fellow workers and visiting media.
They talk of living “like pigs in a cage” in a company-run “work camp.”
“I’ve been a guest worker all my life. I’ve never seen these kinds of conditions,” said the interpreter, “We lived 24 people to a room. And for this, the company deducted $1,050 a month from our paychecks.”
It is time to unite and fight these corporate bullies.
(h/t to symsess from The Sanctuary and Carlos from Carlosqc From Washington, DC)
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This is the blog of Edmundo "XicanoPwr" Rocha, a social worker, an activist, freelance writer and founder and editor of The Sanctuary. My interests include: immigration reform, critical race theory and it's interaction with equality/inequality and freedom/oppression as they relate to the experiences of people of color in the Americas.
Para Justicia y Libertad is a Latino-centered political blog focusing on the humanistic perspective of politics, history, and society as they relate to the Latina/o community throughout Texas and the United States.
3 Responses to “Indian Workers On Hunger Strike Over Slave Labor Conditions”
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kinda surprised this hasn’t been all over yet - the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice has more info, including an on-line petition
meant to add, there’s also a way to make donations to the strikers there
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