Low Pay and Broken Promises Greet Guest Workers
rc...@mailinator.com
Low Pay and Broken Promises Greet Guest Workers
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
To a rice farmer from Thailand making $500 a year, the recruiter's
pitch was hard to resist - three years of farm work in North Carolina
that would pay more than 30 times as much as he earned at home.
The pitch was so persuasive that the farmer, Worawut Khansamrit, put
his farm up as collateral to pay the recruiter $11,000 to become a
guest worker. "The amount of money they promised was very attractive,"
said Mr. Khansamrit, a slight, soft-spoken 40-year-old with a 15-year-
old daughter he wants to send to college.
But after he arrived in North Carolina with 30 other Thai workers, he
found there was only about a month's work. He was then taken to New
Orleans to remove debris from a hotel damaged by Hurricane Katrina -
work he says he was never paid for. This month, he and other Thai
workers filed a federal lawsuit asserting that they were victims of
illegal trafficking.
Mr. Khansamrit's tale highlights the abuses that many guest workers
face at a time when President Bush and many in Congress are pushing to
expand the guest worker program as part of an overhaul of the nation's
immigration laws.
Each year 120,000 foreign workers receive visas to do farm work or
other low-skilled labor, usually for three to nine months. These
programs grew out of the World War II bracero program, in which
hundreds of thousands of Mexicans worked on farms and railroads, often
in deplorable conditions.
Labor experts say employers abuse guest workers far more than other
workers because employers know they can ship them home the moment they
complain. They also know these workers cannot seek other jobs if they
are unhappy.
"I'd say a substantial majority of U.S. guest workers experience some
abuses with their paycheck," said David Griffith, a professor in the
anthropology department at East Carolina University and author of the
new book "American Guestworkers: Jamaicans and Mexicans in the U.S.
Labor Market." "It's the recruitment process especially where they get
cheated."
The abuses take many forms. Guest workers often pay exorbitant fees
and are frequently given fewer weeks of work and lower wages than
promised. Many employers fail to make good on their commitment to pay
transportation costs. The Thai workers, who were supposed to be paid
$16,000 a year for three years, ended up earning a total of just
$1,400 to $2,400. Most of the Thai workers had their passports taken
away after they arrived, leaving them trapped.
"The program has been rife with abuses, even during the best of
times," said Cindy Hahamovitch, a history professor at the College of
William and Mary, who is writing a book about guest workers. "There
will never be enough inspectors to check every labor camp, contract
and field."
For decades, farmers, tree-planting companies, and hotel and
restaurant owners have argued that they need guest workers, citing a
shortage of Americans willing to fill jobs in their industries. In
Washington, many supporters of an expanded guest worker program say
they want to strengthen protections to curb abusive treatment.
"The business community supports the idea that these temporary workers
should have the exact same employment protections as American
workers," said Randel Johnson, co-chairman of the Essential Worker
Immigration Coalition, a business group lobbying to expand the guest
worker program. "When an employer can't find an American worker to
fill a job, the economy is helped if the employer can find someone
else."
Critics, including many labor unions and immigrant groups, say
employers exaggerate the labor shortage because they are eager for
cheap, docile, temporary labor from abroad. The critics say there
would not be such a shortage of American workers if employers offered
a living wage for these jobs.
In Congress, proposals to expand protections for guest workers include
a provision to bar employers from retaliating when these workers
protest and one that would let them sue in federal court over contract
violations.
Earlier this month, Mr. Khansamrit and 21 other guest workers sued
several labor contractors and farmers in federal court in North
Carolina, accusing them of fraud, breach of contract, minimum wage
violations and illegal trafficking.
The lawsuit, brought by Legal Aid of North Carolina, asserts that the
contractors received recruitment fees that are illegal under Thai law,
provided far less work than promised, and violated federal law by not
paying transportation costs from abroad and not paying three-fourths
of the wages promised.
"None of them gave us what they promised," said Pradit Wiangkham, 42,
a Thai electrician turned guest worker. Mr. Wiangkham also worked
unpaid in New Orleans, where he said the contractor ordered the
workers to sleep in a foul-smelling hotel that had no electricity,
lights, hot water or potable water. In North Carolina, the living
arrangements were not much better; at times 33 Thai workers slept in a
storage shed behind the labor contractor's house, the workers said.
The workers' lawyers say federal officials should have detected that
something was awry because the contractors were applying to bring in
so many Asian workers to work just three months.
"Why would someone want to bring workers from Asia all the way to the
East Coast for such a short-term, low-wage job?" said Lori Elmer, a
lawyer for the workers. "They couldn't break even unless there was
fraud."
Seo Homsombath, the president of Million Express Manpower, a small
labor contracting company that works closely with recruiters overseas,
did not respond to faxes and a letter to his home in North Carolina.
Roy Raynor, another principal, declined comment.
But in a separate lawsuit, Mr. Raynor testified that Mr. Homsombath
and he were supposed to receive payments from the recruiters in
Thailand. He said he was to receive $1,200 for each worker, ostensibly
for training them to pick cucumbers.
David James, a Labor Department spokesman, said the department was
investigating whether the contractor failed to provide adequate wages
and housing and failed to pay for transportation. He said the
department had no rules regarding the payment of recruitment fees
overseas.
Advocates say the Labor Department should require employers to repay
recruitment fees and transportation costs from abroad when such costs
effectively bring the workers' wages below the minimum wage.
The Thai guest workers are not alone in their complaints. Legal Aid of
North Carolina has also sued on behalf of three Indonesians.
Several of the Indonesians and Thais have applied for special visas
available to workers who have been trafficked illegally. With such
visas, they hope to work in the United States to repay their debts.
"I felt completely defrauded," said Indra Budiawan, who had been a
waiter in Indonesia. "They never gave me any work after I arrived."
Mr. Budiawan, 28, paid $6,000 - 10 times his annual pay - putting up
his in-laws' ancestral land as collateral after a recruiter showed him
a brochure about farm work in North Carolina and about the good
housing and food that guest workers receive. "When I was at the
airport in Jakarta, I felt very happy," he said. "I felt extremely
proud about the job I would have in America, given that there is so
much poverty and unemployment in Indonesia."
But when he arrived, the head of the GTN Employment Agency, Leeta
Kang, told him there were no farm jobs. He was taken to a sign-making
store that was the contractor's main business. There, Mr. Budiawan
slept on the storage room floor, waiting for work that never
materialized.
Mr. Budiawan told Ms. Kang that he wanted to leave. But he said she
demanded $2,000 for a return ticket and for the passport she had taken
from him. After two weeks without work, Mr. Budiawan fled. He is now
living in Miami with two other Indonesian guest workers.
Mr. Budiawan called his father-in-law, whose land was used as
collateral, to explain his predicament. "I felt very ashamed," he
said. "Everyone was depending on me. And now the bank has taken steps
to repossess our ancestral land."
Ms. Kang insisted that it was not her fault there was no work for Mr.
Budiawan. "He showed up way behind schedule," she said. "By the time
he arrived, the farm owner had already canceled everything."
Ms. Kang said a squash farmer had completed his harvest and no longer
needed Mr. Budiawan. She said she had tried in vain to contact the
recruiters in Indonesia to alert them that she no longer needed Mr.
Budiawan and several others.
"The agents in Indonesia were obviously just trying to get money out
of them," Ms. Kang said. "Whatever these people paid, none of it went
to us."
Mike Moore, the squash farmer, said Ms. Kang had asked him to apply
for far more guest workers than he needed. "She told me to take 50,"
he said. "I told her, 'I might need five. I might need 25.' She said,
'That's no problem. Even if you don't need them, we have plenty of
work for them in other places.' "
Some experts say abuses are more likely when contractors, rather than
farmers, bring in guest workers.
"The guest worker program is not for contractors who feel they might
be able to find work for other people," said Mary Bauer, director of
the Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"It's for people who have a compelling need to bring in workers from
abroad. There's an enormous incentive for contractors to bring in as
many people as possible, even when there isn't enough work, because
they often make money from recruitment fees."
Experts say that in some states, contractors bring in less than 10
percent of the guest workers, while in other states, they bring in
half.
Like the other Thai guest workers, Chinnawat Kompeemay, who ran a
grocery store near Bangkok, is in limbo, living in temporary housing
in Virginia.
"All I wanted was to provide my children with a better education and
living standards," he said. "If my children get the education I want
them to have, they won't be tricked the same way. They won't be taken
advantage of like their father."