Hundreds of guestworkers from India, lured by false promises of permanent U.S. residency, 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, according to a class action lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
It was supposed to be the start of another school day for 15-year-old Marie Justeen Mancha as she sat in her bedroom, waiting for her mother to return from an errand in town.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) today submitted to Congress and President Bush the names of more than 20,000 people who signed a petition demanding an end to the shameful exploitation of foreign guestworkers lured to this country by U.S. companies.
Migrant workers who flocked to New Orleans to rebuild the city after Hurricane Katrina were routinely cheated out of wages and faced other abuses while the U.S. Department of Labor made little effort to police the contractors employing them, a Southern Poverty Law Center attorney told a House subcommittee today.
Mary Bauer of the Southern Poverty Law Center testified on June 7 before the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor about the widespread abuse of foreign guest workers, who are systematically cheated out of wages and denied the most basic protections of the marketplace, such as the right to change jobs.
In an ongoing campaign against exploitation of migrant workers, the Southern Poverty Law Center has filed a class action against one of the Southeast's largest employers of foreign guestworkers.
A federal judge has held Candy Brand and its individual owners accountable for routinely cheating migrant farmworkers out of wages. The court also held that the company’s failure to pay overtime wages and reimburse workers’ expenses was a breach of Candy Brand’s contract with each worker it exploited. As a result, the company and owners will be required to satisfy any judgment, which could be over $2 million dollars.
A landmark decision in a federal lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center will provide relief to thousands of legal, foreign guestworkers who typically are forced to pay exorbitant fees to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs in the United States.
Guestworkers who come to the United States are routinely cheated out of wages; forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs; held virtually captive by employers who seize their documents; forced to live in squalid conditions; and denied medical benefits for injuries, according to a new report released by the Southern Poverty Law Center today.
One of Florida's largest fruit and vegetable wholesalers has agreed to pay $215,000 to settle allegations of sexual harassment in one of the few such lawsuits ever brought on behalf of farmworker women in the United States.
