FROM: New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice

803 Baronne St., New Orleans, LA 70113

CONTACT: Stephen Boykewich – (504) 655-0876

Indian Gulf Coast guest workers break human trafficking chain

Report Mississippi employer to Department of Justice, hold dramatic action at shipyard

PASCAGOULA, Mississippi – Thursday, March 6, 2008, nearly 100 Indian H2B guest workers celebrated with song and dance after breaking an 18-month chain of human trafficking that stretched from Mumbai to Pascagoula, Mississippi. After reporting themselves to the Department of Justice as victims of trafficking and demanding federal prosecution of Signal International, the Gulf Coast marine construction company where they worked, the workers marched to the company’s main gates bearing signs that read, “Dignity.” In a symbolic rejection of the coercion and exploitation they endured for over a year, they threw their hard hats en masse toward Signal’s main gate.

Watch dramatic CBS TV coverage of today’s action here: http://www.wkrg.com/news/article/workers_protest_human_trafficking/11146/

“For more than one year, hundreds of Indian workers at Signal International have been living like slaves. We paid $15,000 to $20,000 to come here because we were promised green cards and permanent residency, but they lied and gave us 10-month guest worker visas instead. Signal knew about our debt and exploited us,” former Signal worker Sabulal Vijayan told an audience of domestic and international media.

“Today the workers are coming out to declare their freedom. This trafficking needs to end. We need freedom in this country. I am a human being. That’s my message,” said Vijayan, who has testified before a Congressional subcommittee investigating post-Katrina labor violations on the Gulf Coast.

The trafficking chain began in 2006 when recruiters in New Orleans and Bombay, together with Signal, a Northrop Grumman subcontractor, used the post-Katrina labor shortage in the Gulf Coast to create a trafficking racket within the guest worker program that President George W. Bush wants to expand.

“I have been a guest worker all my life in many parts of the world, and I never saw such conditions. We were forced to live in company trailers, 24 men in a single room,” former Signal employee Rajan Pazhambalakode. “We spoke out to protect future workers.”

When the workers began to organize last year, Signal sent armed guards to detain and fire the organizers. A year later, Signal workers took action to end Signal’s continuing recruitment of Indian workers.

“The US State Department calls it ‘a repulsive crime’ when recruiters and employers in other parts of the world bind guest workers with crushing debts and threats of deportation,” said Saket Soni, director of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. “This is precisely what is happening on the Gulf Coast.”

On Thursday, members of the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity, a grassroots project of the New Orleans Workers' Center, challenged US officials to practice what they preach.

See ABC News feature: “Revolt in Mississippi: Indian Workers Claim ‘Slave Treatment’”: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4409785&page=1

CONTACT: Stephen Boykewich, Media director – 504-655-0876