U.S. Blocks Human Trafficking Of Thai Workers

Apr 21 2011           Jump To Discussion

BEVERLY HILLS – A Beverly Hills employment agency has been charged with human trafficking.

Global Horizons Inc., a personnel placement company located in posh Beverly Hills, has been accused of tracking Thai workers.

According to the U.S. government, who filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit on behalf of the workers, the company was engaged in “importing” Thai workers and put them to work under horrible conditions on farms in Hawaii and Washington.

The workers were allegedly abused, forced to work hard labor for extended hours and live in deplorable, rat infested houses.

Court papers filed by the U.S. government on behalf of the workers stated that Global Horizons Inc. ”subjected the claimants to uninhabitable housing, insufficient food and kitchen facilities, inadequate pay, significant gaps in work, visa and certification violations, suspension, deportation, and/or physical violence”.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission stated that the workers received from $8.50 to $9.50 an hour compensation for their grueling work but that many of the workers were forced to pay $25,000 recruitment fees, which was offset against the workers wages.

Additionally, workers were charged for food and housing while “employed” at the farms, forcing many to take out high-interest loans granted by the company.

Such practice guaranteed the agency that individuals would not be able to ‘get out’ from under their huge pile of debts and assured the company a continuous supply of workers and income.

“They were nickeled and dimed to the point where they really didn’t have any pay,” said Anna Park, regional attorney for the EEOC Los Angeles office.

The workers had been brought in the U.S. on work visas but because of inhumane working and living conditions that resembled enslavement and because workers on the same farm from other nationalities were not subjected to the same treatments, the EEOC considers the case as human trafficking.

Additionally, the workers’ visas were taken from them and they were told that if they complained they would be deported.   Fear tactics is a common method used in human trafficking to keep victims ‘in check’.

According to the EEOC the company managed to traffic about 400 Thai workers.  Since the case broke, some of them have been returned to Thailand and some have been given visas for being victims of human trafficking.

A similar human trafficking case unfolded in Mississippi were Signal International LLC, a Gulf coast marine services company, is accused of illegally engaging the labor power of some 500 Indian workers while placing them in segregated facilities and subjected them to discriminatory treatment.

Allegedly, the Indian workers had to pay a $20,000 recruitment fees to come to the United States, and after they arrived they were forced to pay rent for crowded housing in fenced camps.

 

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