Rally Against Human Labor Trafficking

Rally to support the Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity

Weds, May 14th
10am
Lafayette Park in front of the White House
(16th and H St, NW)

18 months after they started organizing with the Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity, Indian guest workers will launch an indefinite hunger strike to demand the federal government investigate the guest worker program and abuse of post-Katrina Gulf Coast workers. They are fighting to be released from the terror of deportation and violence; fighting to force Congress to bear witness to the treatment of guest workers after Katrina; and fighting to the end the silence of their own Indian government. Join their courageous battle for dignity and justice!

Next week’s launch follows a nationwide tour by the workers - sponsored by the New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice (NOWCRJ) with support from Jobs with Justice - in March and April that included stops in DC.

In late 2006, the workers mortgaged their futures - and $20,000 - on false promises of fortune and green cards by recruiters from marine construction company Signal International. But when the workers arrived in the US to work on post-Katrina reconstruction, they only received guestworker visas and were forced to pay Signal $1,050 a month to live in a trailer with 23 other workers. “At a time when 30 percent of New Orleans workers were looking for work, the government suspended a law that made it illegal to hire undocumented workers,” says NOWCRJ Organizer Saket Soni. “The guestworker program is designed to control labor. It sanctions forced labor by migrants and further disenfranchises the most vulnerable American workers.” The hunger strike will specifically call on the Department of Justice to prosecute Signal International and for Congress to hold hearings on the guest worker program in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast.

Background:
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the US government has allowed companies and recruiters to bring thousands of guest workers into the Gulf Coast. While African American workers are locked out of a racist Reconstruction, these workers are locked in. Guest workers from across the world are systematically exploited under the federal H2B visa program. They suffer abuses that routinely rise to the level of labor trafficking, forced labor, and involuntary servitude. If they organize, they face violence and deportation.

The story of Signal International is emblematic of the abuses of the guest worker program in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast. These guest workers, like thousands of others, entered the US chained to debt, and found themselves bonded to one employer – an arrangement companies and recruiters use to wield extraordinary power over workers. In the post-Katrina landscape, the guest worker program is a legally sanctioned vehicle for exploitation.