Immigrant shipyard workers stage walkout

More than a hundred immigrant workers at Signal International, a small shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., staged a heroic walkout on March 6. The workers shut down the factory to expose the illegal and inhumane working and living conditions at Signal.

They plan to report themselves to the Department of Justice as victims of trafficking, and demand federal prosecution of Signal. They were brought to the United States from India by a Signal International recruiter to compensate for the labor shortage following Hurricane Katrina.

Enticed by promises of permanent residency and employment with just wages, the Indian citizens paid as much as $20,000 to the company. Instead, they received a 10-month work visa and were forced into dilapidated housing and paid low wages.

Hurricane Katrina, coupled with the government’s criminal response, devastated Pascagoula. As usual, the poor and working class were hit particularly hard. While working people risked their lives searching for loved ones, Signal International saw an opportunity to increase its profits by bringing in low-wage workers and indentured servants.

This practice has become a standard procedure for corporations seeking to profit from human suffering. The reconstruction of Iraq follows a similar model: Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, for instance, made it to the pages of the Washington Post in July 2004 for helping create an underclass of low-cost workers coming from 38 different countries.

Many of Signal’s workers were unable to pay the fee upfront; they took out loans from the company and were brought to the United States as indentured servants. Instead of green cards they received H-2B work visas, which allow the workers a temporary stay in order to satisfy the needs of the employer, only to then be discarded and promptly sent home.

This is the real intention behind the guest-worker program: to allow corporations to control the movement of human beings, allowing immigration only when it can boost profits.

Workers are housed “like pigs” in dormitories and trailers with 24 people to a room. Signal deducts $1,050 from wages each month for housing. Workers described the Signal-run facilities as “work-camps,” much like the World War II internment camps. The company promptly recoups the wages it pays through the fees imposed on the workers.

Despite the racist, anti-immigrant sentiment echoed by politicians, bankers, and militarists alike, capitalists need a steady flow of immigrants to provide cheap labor, which effectively drive down wages and pits workers against each other in a race to the bottom. By fostering anti-immigrant attitudes, they prevent U.S. workers from uniting in struggle with their immigrant sisters and brothers against their common enemy, the capitalist ruling class.