Plaintiffs: Kurian David, Sony Vasudevan Sulekha, Palanyandi Thangamani,
Maruganantham Kandhasamy, Hemant Khuttan, Andrews Issac Padaveettiyl, and Dhananjaya Kechuru, on behalf of other similarly situated individuals, and Sabulal Vijayan, Krishnan Kumar, Jacob Joseph Kaddakkarappally, Kuldeep Singh, and Thanasekar Chellappan
Defendants: Signal International LLC, Malvern C.
Burnett, Gulf Coast Immigration Law Center, L.L.C., Law Offices of Malvern C. Burnett, A.P.C., Indo-Ameri Soft L.L.C., Kurella Rao, J & M Associates, Inc. of Mississippi, Global Resources, Inc.,
Michael Pol, Sachin Dewan, and Dewan Consultants Pvt. Ltd. (a/k/a Medtech Consultants)
Date(s) of Disposition:
none.
Complaint
: Signal complaint
The Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit on behalf of hundreds of guestworkers from India who were lured by false promises of permanent U.S. residency and paid tens of thousands of dollars each to obtain temporary jobs at Gulf Coast shipyards, only to find themselves forced into involuntary servitude and living in overcrowded, guarded labor camps.
The class action lawsuit charges that Signal International LLC and a network of recruiters and labor brokers engineered a scheme to defraud the workers and force them to work against their will in Signal facilities in Pascagoula, Miss., and Orange, Texas.
Several of the workers were illegally detained by company security guards during a pre-dawn raid of their quarters after some began organizing other workers to complain about abuses they faced.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, the complaint claims defendants engaged in forced labor, human trafficking, fraud, racketeering and civil rights violations. Signal is a marine and fabrication company with shipyards in Mississippi and Texas. It is a subcontractor for global defense company Northrop Grumman Corp.
Read related stories:
Indian guestworkers defrauded by recruiters, forced into slave-like conditions
Testimony of Mary Bauer: H-2B guestworkers facing rampant abuse
20,000 sign SPLC petition urging Congress, President to stop guestworker abuse
New report: Foreign guestworkers routinely exploited by U.S. employers
