After Hurricane Katrina the U.S. company worked with U.S. and Indian
recruiters to traffic over 500 welders and pipe-fitters from India to
the Gulf Coast to use as cheap labor on Signal’s shipyards. Each of the
workers paid $20,000 based on the false promise that they would be
given permanent residency status in the U.S. for working with the
company. Instead the workers were given temporary H2B worker visas,
chaining them like slaves to Signal and facilitating their
exploitation. The workers were forced to pay $1,050 a month to live on
company property with 24 men to a room. Under the H2B program, the
company has readily threatened workers with deportation and cracked
down on the workers last year when they tried to organize to defend
their rights as workers and human beings.

Thus, while 30 percent of New Orleans workers remain jobless and locked
out of a racist reconstruction, these 550 Indian guestworkers and other
vulnerable laborers like them remain trapped within that reconstruction
process as cheap expendable labor, unprotected from companies’
violations of their most basic worker rights.   

In March, over 100 of the workers walked out of the shipyards and
reported Signal to the Department of Justice, in addition to filing a
federal lawsuit against the company and the recruiters. The hunger
strike launched on May 14 comes at the heels of a two-month nationwide
tour by the workers.

About 15 guestworkers were at the rally alongside over 50 others who
stood in solidarity with them. The workers themselves spoke about the
working conditions and their struggle to pressure both the U.S. and
Indian governments to investigate and prosecute companies guilty of
human trafficking, as well as protecting the workers from the terror of
deportation and their families in India from the violence of the
recruiters. Speakers from the AFL-CIO underlined the importance of all
workers standing together against these crimes and abuses, pointing out
that the exploitation of guestworkers under H2B drives down the wages
of all workers in the U.S. A speaker from UFCW spoke to the memory of
the Emancipation Proclamation that abolished slavery and lamented that
such practices and conditions persist in the U.S. in spite of that
historic executive order and its corresponding amendments. There were
also speakers from the Low Wage Immigrant Worker Coalition and the
Asian American Justice Center.

Before officially beginning the hunger strike Rev. Lennox Yearwood of
the Hip Hop Caucus spoke and led the group in prayer with his booming
baritone preacher voice, leaving everyone moved and inspired by what
these workers have been through and their courageous struggle.

The five Indian guestworkers participating in the hunger strike will be
on a tarp in front of the White House in Lafayette Park for the
remainder of the week (until May 17), so if you are in the area please
stop by and show them your support.       

To support these workers and all guestworkers suffering exploitation,
call or write your Congressperson and tell them that the U.S. must end
the abuses of the H2B guestworker program.