Delegation visits New Orleans, as Filipino workers fight Labor Abuses in Oil Industry

A delegation of Filipino groups from across the country visited Louisiana this weekend to show solidarity with a local labor struggle against the oil industry, with national and international implications. A group of former workers at Grand Isle Shipyard (GIS), all guestworkers from the Philippines, have filed a class action lawsuit against the oil company for a range of labor abuses. The workers have spoken out about being lured to the United States by false promises from recruiters, then facing conditions at GIS they've called "slave like" – including working up to 400 hours per month (sometimes for 24 hours at a time); only being paid for a fraction of those hours; being charged between $1000 - $3000 a month for a bed in a bunkhouse; and being surveilled and sometimes locked into their bunkhouses at night.

Organizer Katrina Abarcar says the workers are no longer speaking about the details of their time at GIS, due to recent developments in their case, but their story has been well documented for WWL-TV by investigative reporter Brendan McCarthy.

Initially filed by 17 wokers last year, the class action law suit now includes more than 100 current and former GIS employees, all skilled laborers – pipefitters, welders, and scaffolders – from the Philippines. The conditions of migrant workers at Grand Isle Shipyard came to public light in November 2012, when three Filipino workers employed by GIS – Elroy Corpora, Jerome Malagapo, and Avelino Tajonera – were killed by an explosion on the Black Elk Energy platform, and three others were seriously injured. 

A delegation of over 50 Filipino and migrant rights advocates from around the country, including the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON), International Migrants Alliance-USA, and the National Guestworker Alliance, visited New Orleans last weekend on a "Solidarity and Fact-Finding Mission." At a public forum at Loyola University on Saturday, February 23rd, members of the delegation said that the wage theft, inhumane working and living conditions, and human trafficking are all too familiar.

Photo: Former GIS worker Rodelio Maligo (left) and other members of the newly formed Filipinos Against Slavery and Trafficking took the stage at Loyola University on Saturday.

Katrina Abarcar, a Baltimore, Maryland-based advocate with the Filipino and human rights group Katarungan, told Bridge The Gulf, "The stories are eerily similar – what Filipino workers face, what guestworkers of other nationalities face. It's like employers are working out of the same playbook. That's what's really scary – how widespread it is."

She says she's concerned about national immigration reform plans that would expand guestworker programs, rather than asking, "Why is it that in its implementation you have so many violations of rights?"

In Louisiana, guestworkers on the Walmart supply chain have spoken out and sued over similar abusive conditions in a crawfish plant. Harold Butanas testified at the forum about being trafficked to Mobile, AL in 2007, along with 68 other Filipinos - to so the same jobs offshore work as the GIS workers, as welders, pipefitters, and scaffolders.

Daniel Castellanos, who came to New Orleans as a guestworker in 2006 and then became a founding member of the National Guestworker Alliance (NGA), said of the current guestworker system, 'It's not fair for us, it's not fair for the American workers, its not fair for anybody. The system is using us to decrease the standards for all the workers... Black, poor workers are discriminated from the workplace too… [At the NGA] we want to join all the people to get power and change the situation. We don't want to compete with each other across different countries for who is the [cheapest] worker in the system."

The former GIS workers have already won a victory in their campaign – they've been granted "T Visas", a designation for victims of human trafficking  (which the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services defines as "a form of modern-day slavery in which traffickers lure individuals with false promises of employment and a better life"). These visas will allow them to live and work in the United States legally for at least four more years.

Advocates at the public forum said this recognition from the federal government vindicates the workers' story – but they still have a broad range of unmet demands, including having their stolen wages returned; stronger workplace protection for all workers; and ending the modern day slavery of migrant workers. 

The former GIS workers announced on Saturday that they have formed a new organization: Filipinos Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST). Rodelio Maligo, a former GIS worker and founding member of FAST, said, "My father always told me, in The Bible, 'Do not be afraid' was written 365 times. And this is the message I would like to express to all of you. We should not be afraid. To all our workers, to all our co-workers, and everyone else, we should not be afraid, and we should keep on struggling."

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Ada McMahon is a Media Fellow at Bridge The Gulf (www.BridgeTheGulfProject.org), a community journalism project for Gulf Coast communities working towards justice and sustainability.  She previously worked as a blogger and online organizer at Green For All, a national non-profit that fights pollution and poverty through "an inclusive green economy".  She is from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and currently lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.