Indians allege slave treatment in US shipyard

Over 100 Indian workers have quit their jobs at a Mississippi shipyard protesting alleged "slave treatment" by their employer after being "tricked" into coming to the US, and are demanding a probe against the firm which faced similar accusations last year.

The workers, mostly welders and pipe-fitters, alleged they lived "like pigs in a cage" in a "work camp" run by Signal International in Pascagoula shipyard.

Signal forced them to live in substandard housing with 24 men crammed into a small room for which they were charged more than $1,000 a month, the workers claimed.

The Indians symbolically threw their hard hats at the company gates as they walked out alleging that it had brought them to the US by promising permanent residency in exchange for $20,000 fee. Instead, they said they were given 10-month work visa.

Signal International, however, strongly denied the workers' allegations. "Unfortunately, a few of the workers whom Signal had sponsored for H2B visas and recruited have made baseless and unfounded allegations against Signal concerning their employment and living conditions," it said in a statement.

The workers told the local media that they plan to "report themselves to the Department of Justice as victims of trafficking, and demand federal prosecution of Signal."

"For more than one year, hundreds of Indian workers at Signal International have been living like slaves," a former Signal worker Sabulal Vijayan was quoted as saying by ABC. "Today, the workers are coming out to declare their freedom. This trafficking needs to end."

A similar protest was held by neary 300 Indian workers at the shipyard in March last year, local media reports said.

Stephen Boykewich of the New Orleans Workers Centre for Racial Justice, which led the protest, said the workers were afraid of organising and feared being detained by the company.

The workers claim the company used armed guards and deportation threats to stop the protest last year but Signal has denied the allegations.
"The vast majority of the workers whom Signal recruited has been satisfied with the employment and living conditions at Signal," the company statement was quoted as saying.

Signal called its housing complex "state-of-the-art" and said government inspections have "found that Signal's practices and facilities are fully compliant with the law."

It said since the initial allegations, the company's employment practices and facilities have been inspected by representatives of the US Labour, Homeland Security and State departments and Immigration and Customs enforcement.

Many companies on Mississippi Gulf Coast had brought in foreign workers after they faced a severe labour shortage in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.