Law centre: Rig repair firm, apology for mistreated workers

A US-based oil rig repair company has apologised to hundreds of Indian guest workers drawn to the Gulf Coast through false promises and housed in squalid conditions to help with damage repairs after Hurricane Katrina, a law center has said.
The apology is part of a USD 20 million settlement that Signal International of Mobile, Alabama, agreed to in July, the Southern Poverty Law Centre announced yesterday.
That group and others, including the American Civil Liberties Union, had sued Signal on behalf of the guest workers and called it one of the largest labor-trafficking cases in US history.
Signal hired roughly 500 Indian welders and shipfitters after the devastating 2005 hurricane in a rush of repair work on storm-damaged oil equipment and rigs.

The company sent a letter dated September 22 to the guest workers, apologizing for its actions, according to the law center. Signal didn't return a message yesterday seeking comment from The Associated Press, which obtained a copy of the letter.
The workers were lured to Mississippi and Texas with false promises of permanent US residency and paid USD 10,000 or more to recruiters, according to Jim Knoepp, SPLC's deputy legal directors.

Most of the workers sold property or put their families into debt to pay the fees, the SPLC said, adding the workers also accused Signal of forcing them to pay about USD 1,000 a month to stay in overcrowded and dirty trailers.

Richard Marler, chief executive officer and president of Signal, said in the letter that the company was expressing its "sincerest apology and regret for the treatment of its guest workers."
He added that the company "deeply regrets the living conditions the guest workers were subjected to."
According to the letter, he also said the "company has learned from its mistakes."
"We hope that this will help deter other companies from exploiting guest workers, or any workers," said Alan Howard, the board chair of the SPLC.
In February, the first five plaintiffs won a USD 14 million verdict in federal court in New Orleans. That victory led to the settlement, which was part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing the company made in July, according to the SPLC.

The SPLC said Signal also apologized for a pre-dawn raid in March 2007 on some living quarters in Pascagoula, Mississippi, of guest workers. The SPLC said the raid was "an attempt to deport guest workers in retaliation for complaining about abuses to workers' rights advocates.