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The EEOC filed suit against Signal International LLC, an oil rig construction company in Gulfport, Mississippi, on behalf of foreign workers recruited for U.S. work on an H-2B visa. The workers were lured to the U.S. to work as welders and pipefitters in Pascagoula, Mississippi and Orange, Texas. The government suit reinforces a similar claim brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2008.

According to the SPLC:

Like our 2008 suit, the EEOC complaint alleges that Signal forced the workers to live in unsanitary and racially segregated labor camps. It also alleges the company subjected them to hostile treatment based on their race and national origin and that it retaliated against two workers for complaining about the discriminatory treatment.

The EEOC lawsuit is the first time a federal agency has taken legal action in support of the claims of these guestworkers. It’s significant because the government is seeking to hold Signal – rather than labor recruiters or other “middlemen” – responsible for the abuses.

A litany of abuses are alleged to have occurred:

Between 2004 and 2006, hundreds of Indian men paid Signal’s recruiters as much as $20,000 for travel, visa, recruitment and other fees after recruiters told them it would lead to good jobs, green cards and permanent U.S. residency. Many of the workers sold their houses and other valuables and took out high interest loans to come up with the money.

When the men arrived at Signal in late 2006 and early 2007, they discovered that they wouldn’t receive the green cards as promised – but rather 10-month guestworker visas. Signal forced them to pay $1,050 a month to live in crowded company housing in isolated, fenced labor camps, where as many as 24 men shared a trailer with only two toilets.

When the guestworkers tried to find their own housing, Signal officials told them they would still have the rent deducted from their paychecks. Visitors were not allowed into the camps. Company employees searched the workers’ belongings. Workers who complained were threatened with deportation, which would be ruinous after mortgaging their futures to obtain the jobs.

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