NEW ORLEANS WORKERS' CENTER FOR RACIAL JUSTICE

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Indian guest workers in US demand meeting with Indian ambassador

Workers hail US Congressman’s investigation of US company, Indian recruiter

NEW ORLEANS, USA – On Tuesday, March 11, 2008, a delegation of Indian guest workers from the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity demanded a meeting with Indian Ambassador to the United States Ronen Sen. The delegation, representing over 100 Indian guest workers who broke a US-Indian human trafficking chain last week, conveyed a letter to the Ambassador while meeting with Indian diplomats K.P. Pillai and Alok Pandey, dispatched to New Orleans by Ambassador Sen.

“We don’t want to turn into a piece of paper in a file that sits on someone’s desk for a month,” said Rajan Pazhambalakode, a former worker at US marine construction company Signal International, which conspired with US and Indian recruiters to traffic over 500 Indians to the United States. “We need an immediate decision by the ambassador that he will meet with us. The lives of hundreds of workers are at stake. They’ve packed their bags, but they don’t know where they’ll go.”

The Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity and its legal team filed a class-action lawsuit against the traffickers in US federal court Friday on behalf of the hundreds of workers who were told by Mumbai consultant Sachin Dewan, New Orleans lawyer Malvern Burnett, and other recruiters that they would receive green cards and permanent residency to work at Signal in exchange for $20,000. Instead they received ten-month H2B guest worker visas, and worked in deplorable conditions.

When the Signal workers first began to organize last year, the company retaliated with armed guards, driving worker Sabulal Vijayan to slit his wrist in a suicide attempt.

“On March 9, 2007, I was in the hospital after I slit my wrist,” Mr. Vijayan told the consular officers. “Where were you?”

Mr. Vijayan had contacted Mr. Pillai, a diplomat at the Indian consulate in Houston, after Signal attempted to deport him and other organizers in March 2007. Mr. Pillai responded by meeting with the company, but not the workers. In the meeting today, the delegation expressed deep disappointment with Mr. Pillai’s failure to answer their pleas for help.

Mr. Pandey expressed confidence that the Indian Embassy in Washinton would take a stand on behalf of the workers this time.

In their letter to Ambassador Sen, the workers wrote: “We have spoken with Cabinet Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs, the Honorable Vyalar Ravi, and he has directed us to you. … We request that you meet with us immediately so that we may brief you on our situation and discuss how the Indian Government will ensure both the U.S. and the Indian governments conduct appropriate investigation of the criminal activity and ensure the safety of our families and ourselves. We also believe very strongly that future workers should not face such abuse. We want discuss measures that can be taken to address institutional measures that must be taken in India and United States to put an end to labor trafficking from India through the United States guest worker program.”

He letter requested a response from Ambassador Sen no later than 4 p.m. EST tomorrow, March 12, 2008.

The workers also welcomed US Congressman George Miller’s investigation into Signal and the recruiters. Congressman Miller wrote to US Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao on March 11, 2008, demanding to know whether Signal was behaving lawfully and asking for copies of five years’ worth of H2B visa applications from Signal, Sachin Dewan’s Mumbai-based Dewan Consultants, and other recruiters.

After nearly 100 workers walked out from Signal shipyards last week and revealed Signal’s abuses to the world, the Indian government responded by suspending the licenses of Mr. Dewan and Mumbai recruiter S. Mansur & Company, which had also been recruiting for Signal, charging workers $15,000 for temporary H2B visas.

“Congressman Miller’s investigation should put employers like Signal on notice that their abuses of the guest worker program will not go unpunished,” said Saket Soni, director of the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice. “The next step is for the US and Indian governments to open a dialogue on the highest level about these abuses.”

For further information, please contact:

India contact: Anannya Bhattacharjee

+91-9810970627 (India mobile phone); email: anannya48@gmail.com

US Contact: Stephen Boykewich – Media Director

+1-504-655-0876 (US mobile phone); email: spboykewich@gmail.com