$1.2 Million to 50 Indian Workers Caught in Virtual Slavery

Press Trust of India

Thursday 25 May 2006

US federal judge has awarded $ 1.2 million to a group of 50 Indian workers after finding the company that hired them guilty of fraud, false imprisonment and violations of civil rights.

The verdict comes after more than four years of the workers walking off the John Pickle Company, an oil equipment factory in West Tulsa, Oklahoma, protesting long hours of work and poor compensation.

The workmen accused the company of "virtual slavery" - forcing them to live in a makeshift dormitory and refusing permission to leave factory premises even on off duty hours. The company had denied the charges saying it only brought the workers from India for training and did not mistreat them.

Federal judge Clair V Egan's ruling described an environment of threats and intimidation, daily harassment and open hostility from the management at the John Pickle.

"Defendants recruited Indian workers in India, brought them to the United States, housed and fed them separately from the non-Indian JPC employees, identified them as Indians and made numerous discriminatory comments about their ancestry, ethnic background, culture, and country," he wrote.

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