Gulf Coast Guestworkers Launch Hunger Strike Against Labor Abuses
By Brian Tierney, International Labor Rights Forum
A corporate model that puts profit before people is not interested in leaving the brutal practice of human trafficking and slavery to rot in the proverbial dustbin of history, much less modern worker exploitation. Today that callous model is resurrecting such long-denounced practices through the temporary H2B worker program and stripping the dignity of some 550 Indian guestworkers brought to the U.S. to work in the post-Katrina reconstruction of the Gulf Coast.
On Wednesday May 14, the Alliance of Guestworkers with Dignity and the Indian Worker Congress – with the support of organizations like the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, Jobs with Justice, and the AFL-CIO among others – held a rally in front of the White House to launch a hunger strike by Indian guestworkers who are demanding the federal government to investigate the guestworker program and labor abuses against Gulf Coast reconstruction workers. The workers are calling on the Department of Justice to prosecute the marine construction company Signal International for its use of human trafficking and working conditions which unmistakably amount to indentured servitude and modern day slavery in the 21st Century.
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