Guest Workers Begin Hunger Strike for Justice

by via James Parks, AFL-CIO

Thu, May 15, 2008 7:45AM

Wednesday, May 14, 2008 : Indian workers from the Signal International shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., rallied in front of the White House last month. Guest workers who risked everything to come from India and work on the Gulf Coast, only to find abuse and injustice, now are risking the only thing they have left?their lives?to gain the justice they have been denied on the job.

The water-only hunger strike began today in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, with six of the more than 500 workers who came to this country beginning in 2006 in what turned out to be a human-trafficking scheme under the guise of the H-2B guest worker program. Some 30 more workers will join the hunger strike in two waves, on May 21 and on May 28.

The workers, who are welders and pipe fitters, paid $20,000 to recruiters who promised permanent residency and citizenship under the H-2B guest worker program, which business interests want to expand. When they got to this country, they say their employer, Signal International, held them in modern-day forced labor at its shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss. Signal makes the huge floating oil rigs for the offshore fields in the Gulf.

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For more information: http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/05/14/guest-wo...

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