New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice

Yesterday the workers had an incredibly successful meeting with Rep. Denis Kucinich. Rep. Kucinich expressed deep concern for the workers’ case and agreed to hold Congressional hearings into the abuses of guest worker in the Gulf Coast, to sponsor a sign-on letter to the Department of Justice calling for the workers to be granted continued presence, and to visit all of the hunger strikers. These commitment are an important step toward victory for the workers.

Please call him and thank him!

Take a look at Mr. Paul. This man is 53 years old and has survived on nothing but water for eight days. Could he be any stronger?

I asked him where he gets his strength from.

“It’s God’s gift,” he said. “From 1981 to 1987 I lived in Qatar and was a boxer. I loved this. Not to hurt people, but feel your strength — it’s a great feeling. That strength never left me. It’s God’s gift.”

“This is something we will do to the end,” he said, nodding toward a pair of tents where six new hunger strikers had joined the original five. “We aren’t doing this for ourselves. We need the system to change. If this weren’t about changing the system, there would be no reason to do all of this.”

He continued the theme at the rally:

“People come up to us and ask us: ‘Are you doing this for green cards? Are you doing this to stay in the country?’ What is our fight really about? It is about the workers who will come after us. They need a stable base so they can some and live better than we did. They’re the ones we’re fighting for.”

Afterward, about 50 workers lined up to march on Capitol Hill and confront two US senators who had been pushing for a back-door expansion of the H2B guest worker program that was used to exploit these workers.

The group, which included five of the hunger strikers, marched to Capitol Hill. The post-event press release tells the rest of the story:

NEW ORLEANS WORKERS’ CENTER FOR RACIAL JUSTICE

www.neworleansworkerjustice.org

*** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ***

Indian hunger strikers confront US Congress over H2B guest worker program expansion

Call for hearings into abuses as first hunger striker hospitalized on Day Eight of fast

WASHINGTON, DC – On Wednesday, May 21, Indian hunger strikers representing over 550 of their countrymen—all of them survivors of a labor trafficking ring within the H2B guest worker visa program—challenged Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) to visit the hunger strikers and confront the abuses of the H2B guest worker visa program the senators seek to expand.

Seven of the hunger strikers and about 20 supporters visited the offices of Mikulski and Gregg on Capitol Hill Wednesday afternoon, shortly after one of the hunger strikers, Christopher Glory, was taken to George Washington University Hospital with dangerously low blood pressure. (See photos at www.flickr.com/photos/nolaworkerscenter)

“I’m not going to stop my hunger strike,” former H2B worker Paul Konar told Alex Csicsek, Sen. Mikulski’s top legislative aide in charge of immigration policy. “Every one of us may wind up in a hospital bed, but this program has to change.”

Konar is one of over 550 Indian workers who were lured to the United States in late 2006 with false promises of green cards and work-based permanent residency—for which they paid up to $20,000 apiece—and instead received temporary, 10-month H2B visas and worked at Signal under deplorable conditions.

“Senators Mikulski and Gregg are pushing for expansion of the H2B program without taking a hard look at the realities of the guest worker visa program,” said Saket Soni, director of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. “Companies like Signal hollowing out key American industries and replacing well-paid US workers with exploitable, temporary guest workers. We invite the senators to come learn the truth from the workers who have lived it.”

After facing constant threats of deportation from Signal and armed force when they attempted to organize, the Indian workers escaped the company’s Gulf Coast labor camps in March 2008 and reported the company and its recruiters to the Department of Justice Criminal Anti-Trafficking Division.

They have since been re-traumatized by covert surveillance by Immigration authorities, and on May 14, they launched a water-only hunger strike demanding protected status so they can participate in the ongoing Department of Justice investigation against the traffickers, a Congressional investigation into abuses of the guest worker program, and Indian pressure on the US to protect future workers.

Six more workers joined the hunger strike after a rally at the Capitol Hill Reflecting Pool on Wednesday, bringing the total number of hunger strikers to eleven.

“The Indian workers’ story is emblematic of the way that so-called guest worker programs are actually indentured worker programs,” said Sarita Gupta, Executive Director of Jobs with Justice. “Expanding the H2B visa program would be a disaster both for the American workers it locks out and the foreign workers it locks in.”

Speaking at the rally were New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice director Saket Soni, hunger striker Paul Konar, Father Gerald Nagle of the Franciscan Brotherhood, and Free the Slaves president Kevin Bales.

Jobs With Justice affiliates in Washington, DC; Providence, RI; Buffalo, NY; and Richmond, VA also announced out 24-hour solidarity fasts on Wednesday in support of the workers.

The workers are members of the Indian Workers’ Congress and the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity, affiliates of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice.

Follow the hunger strike on our text and photo blog: www.neworleansworkerjustice.org.

CONTACT: Stephen Boykewich, Media Director, New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice

Mobile: 504-655-0876; email: spboykewich@gmail.com

www.neworleansworkerjustice.org

As Day Eight of the hunger strike opened at the Capitol Hill Reflecting Pool, hungers striker Christopher Glory’s blood pressure was still dangerously low, so doctors recommended he be hospitalized. Supporters took him in a wheelchair from the site, and he was driven to George Washington University Hospital, where he was being stabilized and rehydrated.

More on the rally and Capitol Hill visits that followed shortly….

As the hunger strike shifted locations this morning from the Indian Embassy to the Capitol Hill reflecting pool, we received great news this morning from our friend Fred Hirsch:

Brothers and Sisters,

Several members of Plumbers and fitters Local 393 had the privilege of
attending your conference in April where we met the welders and fitters from
India. As a result of meeting them and learning about them we are proud to have been able to take the following action.

Thank you for the conference and thank you for getting us together with our
Indian brothers. Please pass this on to the organizers and organizations
which are working on this issue in Mississippi.

In Solidarity and with the greatest respect,

Fred Hirsch

CALIFORNIA STATE PIPE TRADES COUNCIL CONVENTION PASSES
A RESOLUTION OPPOSING SO CALLED “GUEST WORKER” PROGRAMS

AND SUPPORTING “GUEST WORKERS” FROM INDIA WHO ORGANIZED
TO PROTEST “SLAVE LIKE” CONDITIONS

The resolution below was passed unanimously on 5/14/08 at a regular union
meeting of UA Plumbers and Fitters Local 393 in San Jose, California.

Local 393 delegates carried it to the California State Pipe Trades Council
Convention n Napa, California on 5/15 asking concurrence by the statewide
organization representing over 30,000 pipe trades workers. On 5/16 the

Resolutions Committee considered it in detail and recommended concurrence.
On 5/16 it was handed out to all delegates, it was read and a brief comment
was made supporting the resolution. The 156 delegates passed the resolution

with a unanimous vote.
————————————————————–

RESOLUTION ON “GUEST WORKER” STEAMFITTERS & WELDERS
WORKING IN SLAVE-LIKE CONDITIONS IN MISSSISSIPPI

Whereas, at a recent conference in Dearborn, Michigan members of Local 393
met with welders and pipefitters from India who were recruited as so-called
“guest workers” to work for Signal International LLD (an oil rig repair and

construction company) in Pascagoula, Mississippi, an area still affected by
Hurricane Katrina, and

Whereas these fitters and welders said they had given up life savings, sold
family homes and jewelry in order to pay up to $20,000 in immigration and

travel fees in advance after Signal’s recruiters tested them for their
skills and gave them false promises of permanent resident “green card” visas
to work in the United States starting at $24 an hour, and

Whereas the Indian welders and fitters said they did not come to take
anyone’s jobs, they were told by Signal’s recruiters that, because of
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, there were not enough local, skilled people to

fill these jobs, and

Whereas, on arrival the promised green cards turned out to be 10-month H2B
“guest worker” visas, controlled by the company, allowing not even enough
time to pay off their enormous debt, and

Whereas, the workers had to pay $1050 a month to live in Signal’s grossly
overcrowded, guarded “mancamp” trailers with inadequate toilets and bad food
that frequently made them ill, and

Whereas, when, in March 2007, they began to assert their labor rights, armed

company guards were sent in, threatening deportation and forcefully
detaining the leaders for six hours, until they were freed when co-workers
called local police, and

Whereas the Indian fitters and welders organized themselves with help from

the New Orleans Workers’ Center, the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance,
and the Southern Poverty Law Center and have filed a class action lawsuit on
behalf of some 500 Indian H-2B “guest workers” who Signal similarly

recruited since 2003, and

Whereas these fitters and welders organized a march to Washington to demand
a “just immigration system that does not seek to pit exploitable foreign
workers against American workers” in a race to the bottom, and

Whereas the Indian fitters and welders demanded that Signal International
hire local American workers under a union contract, with fair wages, health
benefits, immigrant rights, and a chance to move forward and make life

better for all of Mississippi, and

Whereas they want a Congressional investigation and Justice Department
action relating to Signal International’s involvement in “forced labor
and human trafficking” in violation of the Victims of Trafficking and

Violence Protection Act, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations
Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Civil Rights Act of 1871 and the Fair
Labor Standards Act, and

Whereas we as members of United Association should stand in solidarity with

our Indian counterparts, recognizing that the large American construction
company Signal, sought to replace local workers who are either
underemployed or were completely displaced by Katrina, and UA steamfitters

and welders with “guest workers” they believed would be cheap, exploitable,
and easy to manage and intimidate, and

Whereas the situation of Indian “guest workers” on the post Katrina Gulf

Coast doing work in the UA jurisdiction validates the 3/1/06 AFL-CIO
statement that: “Overhaul of our nation¹s immigration laws is long overdue.
The current system is a blueprint for exploitation of workers, both

foreign-born and native…America deserves an immigration system that
protects all workers within our borders – both native-born and foreign – and
at same time guarantees the safety of our nation without compromising our

fundamental civil rights and civil liberties…”

Therefore Be It Resolved that our Local Union recognizes that; we members of
the United Association have a vested interest in supporting the struggle of

the Indian welders and fitters in Mississippi; that their fight to win their
fundamental human rights as workers is part of the larger fight against the
pitfalls of globalization and of pro-corporate “guest worker” programs

designed to pit U.S. workers against our foreign counterparts in an economic
race to the bottom; that we offer our solidarity and support their demand
for a Congressional investigation and for action by the Department of

Justice against those guilty of violating their rights as workers under the
Fair Labor Standards Act, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence
Protection Act, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and

whatever civil rights laws may be applicable, and

Be It Further Resolved that we ask the UA to cooperate with the pipe trades
workers from India in their efforts, to show our support of dignity and
respect for all those who work in our industry, with the tools of our trade

in observance of the call of our U.A. Constitution to use our “influence on
those who do not as yet belong to the Association…to join with us in our
efforts to secure through the power of organization…the steady demand and

a fair compensation for our toil,” and

Be It Finally Resolved that we endorse and promote the AFL-CIO call for
reversing “the trend of allowing employers…to broaden the size and scope
of guestworker programs,” and to promote, “an immigration system that

protects all workers within our borders – both native-born and foreign – and
at same time guarantees the safety of our nation without compromising our
fundamental civil rights and civil liberties.”

The Indian guest workers’ struggle has been covered in hundreds of articles, radio broadcasts, and TV reports since March 2007. Garland McLaurin’s “Immigrant Laborers in Limbo,” by a new video news site called the American News Project, sets a new standard. It’s not only great journalism, it’s an entire education. Please watch and circulate widely!

Click here to watch.

Day 5 of the Hunger Strike began under gray skies, but with a blessing: four workers who are supporting the strike attended Sunday Morning Mass at Saint Aloysius Roman Catholic Church.  Pastor Hug greeted and blessed the workers, gave them a chance to tell their stories, then spoke in the support of the hunger strike and insisted on the need for faith communities to do “God’s work on the ground as well as above.”

Pastor Hug also encouraged his parishioners to come out to support the workers at 12 noon on Wednesday, May 21, when about a dozen more hunger strikers will be joining the fast at a rally at the Capitol Hill Reflecting Pool.

Hundreds of American visitors lined up around the block outside the Indian Embassy today, Day 4 of the hunger strike, for what the embassy cheerily advertised as:

its first official cultural day in conjunction with Cultural Tourism DC’s Passport Week. Featured performances include IDEA Dance, a consortium of classical dancers performing Bharatnatyam and Kathak, as well as Dhoonya Dance, a Bollywood-inspired South Asian Dance company who will be performing bollywood-fusion and pop bhangra. The event will begin at 11:30 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. Inside the Embassy will be informational sessions on India, as well as snacks and refreshments.

But only steps away from the embassy’s doors, in the shadow of the Mahatma Gandhi statue, the visitors were met with sight that says more about the Indian government than any pop bhangra dance performance: Indian hunger strikers growing weak on the fourth day of a fast to protest their government’s failure to support their quest for justice against a US-Indian labor trafficking ring.

The workers chanted: “Lift up your voices—we are one!” and carried signs reading: “As you feast, we starve” and “Indian government, help your people!”—even while caterers carried steaming trays of food through the embassy doors.

Hundreds of American visitors and passersby came to speak with the workers and offer their support. Many were shocked that the workers had been abandoned by their own government and driven to risk their lives with a hunger strike. Many also signed a petition supporting the hunger strikers’ demands: protected status for the workers to let them participate in a criminal investigation against the traffickers, a Congressional investigation into abuses of the guest worker program, and Indian pressure on the US to protect future workers.

The five workers who began the water-only hunger strike on May 14 were visibly weakened, often laying down to conserve their energy. Supporters raised their spirits with street theater.

Though it grows more difficult by the hour, the workers’ commitment to continue the fast is as strong as ever. As hunger striker Paul Konar put it:

“We feel strong because in our hearts, we know our cause is just.”

Members of the Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity, Congress of Indian Workers launched a hunger strike on May 14th.

They will be keeping their fast 24 hours a day — in public from 9am to 7pm daily, and in a separate indoor location at night. You can visit them at the following locations:

Weds, May 15th – Friday, May 16th:
Lafayette Park in front of the White House (16th and H, NW). Look out for their banner and blue tarp.

Sat, May 17th – Monday, May 19th:
Gandhi Memorial at 21st and Massachusetts Ave, NW, off Dupont Circle.

Beginning Tuesday, May 20th:
Capitol Reflecting Pool (3rd St between Maryland and Pennsylvania Ave, NW).

Rally: Weds, May 21st
Noon
Capitol Reflecting Pool
(3rd St between Maryland and Pennsylvania Ave, NW)
A second wave of workers will join the hunger strike, and allies will join in a solidarity fast.

Community-wide Meeting with the Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity
Thursday, May 22nd
7-9pm
All Soul’s Unitarian Church
1500 Harvard St, NW

Interfaith Worker Justice Prayer Circle
Friday, May 23rd:
Noon
Capitol Reflecting Pool, 3rd St between Maryland and Pennsylvania Ave, NW

There will be another major action on Wed, May 28th.

Please back for updates!

Hours after the hunger strike launch in view of the White House, the Indian Embassy turned away a delegation of workers on Wednesday, including two of the hunger strikers, who attempted to deliver a statement of the hunger strike’s goals. (See more photos of the incident at www.flickr.com/photos/nolaworkerscenter.) After reading the letter, an embassy official forced the delegation of five workers outside onto the sidewalk. When the workers requested to speak with Ambassador Sen, the Ambassador exited the embassy but hurried past them and sped away in a limousine.

“When we spoke to Ambassador Sen in March, he told us: ‘My doors are always open to you and to any citizen of India,’” said workers’ advocate and New Orleans Workers’ Racial Justice Center director Saket Soni. “It seems that this promise excludes hungers strikers.”

The hunger strike launched on a bright, beautiful day with the workers in high spirits and an outstanding show of support from allies from organized labor, workers’ rights, immigrant rights, and faith communities. Just a few of the strong words in support of the hunger strikers:

AFL-CIO General Counsel Jon Hiatt:

The AFL-CIO and its 10 million members are proud to support the hunger strike by these Signal workers, and their campaign to shed light on the abuses of the U.S. Government’s H2B guest worker program.

For decades, the AFL-CIO has been fighting against so-called guest worker programs, programs that are in reality indentured worker programs.

The substantial exploitation of workers in these programs has been well documented, most recently by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and now through the struggles of these courageous workers.

These courageous workers have clearly shown us that the H2B program is a template for exploitation, and that we need to work together to expose the abuses of the program. By denying workers their labor rights, this program lowers wages and working conditions, to the detriment of all workers.

The AFL-CIO supports this strike and will stand in solidarity with the workers through this struggle.

AFL-CIO Metal Trades Department president Ron Ault

Very little has changed in the last hundred years. Welcome to the new world order.

It is my honor and privilege to stand in support of our brothers here, and I pledge the support of organized labor and the metal trades department to your fight.

Muruganantham Kandhasami, hunger striker

We know the US is a powerful country, and we know that Signal is a powerful company. That is why we are asking the Indian government to support us as we stand here with our lives shattered.

Until we get all three demands, we are standing here to strike until the end.

United Food and Commercial Workers International VP Michael Wilson

Nine score and 15 years ago, a great president—a great Republican president—signed the Emancipation Proclamation and ended slavery—but not indentured servitude.

These workers are our brothers. Their fight is our fight. Congress should insist the Department of Justice take action.

These workers shouldn’t have to wait for another Emancipation Proclamation for justice.

SAALT Executive Director Deepa Iyer

We’re here because of a heinous crime committed against our South Asian brothers—modern-day slavery.

Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Hip Hop Caucus

We are now eight years in the 21^st century and still we have slavery in this country.

I’m not here for charity, we are here in solidarity.

You may not have come to this country for justice, but now you must fight for justice, you must fight for liberty, you must fight for dignity, and push on. You must push on for justice in America.