Escaping Bondage

By Javiera Alarcon

On February 18, plaintiffs in the case EEOC vs. Signal International, LLC successfully won a total of $14 million in compensatory and punitive damages from an Alabama-based U.S. ship repair firm for luring guest workers from India into bondage and forcing them to work in inhumane conditions. It is one of the largest labor trafficking cases in U.S. history, as Signal International is alleged to have colluded with an Indian-recruiter in order to extort and enslave roughly 500 Indian men.

Lured by the promise of green cards, these workers instead paid upwards of $10,000 each to secure employment with Signal only to be denied the residency documents and proper living arrangements that the company originally offered to provide. These exploitations saved Signal $8 million, while threats and actual deportation helped to keep workers in line once they arrived.

Instead of receiving any elevated legal working status, $1,050 was deducted from the monthly checks of each employee to cover their living expenses. To further insulate the company’s bottom line, the miserable quarters given to workers were frequently subject to intrusive searches for violations of frivolous rules that, if broken, may have resulted in fines.

Hard-fought legal victories aside, this case illustrates how a lack of consistent government oversight and inspection can result in a sequence of terrifying realities for domestic and guest workers on employment-based visas. The continuing trend of bad employers getting free passes for illegal contracting practices, along with legal loopholes such as diplomatic immunity, have made it almost a given in the 21st century that employers can skirt labor laws and get away with it.

In their book The Slave Next Door, Kevin Bales, Co-Founder of Free the Slaves and co-author Ron Soodalter explain the oppressive outcome of a lax but enduring system of special privileges for foreign employees reinforced by the World Bank, United Nations, and International Monetary Fund. It is estimated that nearly 30,000 workers have entered the U.S. on such visas in the previous decade.

Modern anti-slavery efforts thus require a multidimensional advocacy approach that includes leadership development and popular education, both of which can mature into powerful action. By emphasizing the different types of labor trafficking, the authors push for increasing awareness on identifying traces of not only forced prostitution, but also of domestic servitude and agricultural labor exploitation. Still, trafficking for labor is widely ignored by much of the world or at least not made any real legislative priority.

Despite the lacking initiative among policymakers to implement system-based solutions, there is new hope on the horizon for victims of labor trafficking who are seeking justice through criminal and civil claims. More than 200 workers have sued Signal, and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has brought another suit against the company claiming that workers experienced retaliatory action including illegal private deportations. A trial for this new case is set for June.

One of the lessons to be learned from the litigation surrounding Signal is that a diligent and collaborative approach is ultimately necessary to combat modern slavery in the face of legislative inaction. Legal counseling, especially pro bono work by the Southern Poverty Law Center and allies such as the Guest Worker Alliance, have made a tremendous contribution in exposing rampant labor trafficking issues and providing just cause for enforcing the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.

Subsequently labor trafficking can be stopped, but not without enforcement, organizing, and government accountability. Only then will trafficked workers be able to find their escape route to freedom. Nonimmigrant visas, such as the H2-B visa issued in this case, should be more closely monitored with severe penalties for any offenders in order to prevent further abuses of temporary workers.

Corporate interests and market demands skillfully engineer a favorable economic environment that includes legal allowances that make it less taboo for employers to abuse foreign workers. Guest workers around the world are in circulation, because countries like India are part of a capitalist system that has facilitated outsourcing, freedom of movement, transportation feasibility, and oftentimes creating problematic situations.

In this case, the Indian guest workers were between a rock and a hard place. They had a limited understanding of the company that they signed up to work for, and the working conditions and duties that they would be beholden to. Protecting skilled and unskilled workers, ensuring basic human rights and employee guarantees should take precedence—as it did for the Geneva Convention on the Prisoners of War.

Companies must be pressured by an organized civil society, along with the practice of upholding both national and international laws, from singularly following a “what’s good for business" model. Concentrating on the bottom-line figure could eventually be detrimental to the topline production. After all, it’s not in any company’s interest to be branded as morally bankrupt.

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Javiera Alarcon is a New Economy Maryland Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. She tweets at @Javiera_Alarcon.