Workers' quest for justice enters last round

A US judge has given an Oklahoma company till October 31 to submit concluding arguments on whether it denied minimum wages to 52 Indian workers employed by it.

The skilled Indian workers including welders, fitters and electricians, have also complained that they were confined in the factory premises of the John Pickle company and given substandard food. The company claims they were temporary trainees destined for its plant in Kuwait.

If the court decides they were full time employees, then the issue about their alleged denial of minimum wage would be taken up.

The defence rested the case on Thursday after producing only two witnesses.

The John Pickle Company, which manufactured specialized oil equipment, has since shut down, citing bad publicity generated by the case.

The workers allege they were given two or three dollars an hour in 2001, much lower than the federal minimum wage of five dollars and fifteen cents.

'They can easily be given a place to live, little bit of food, they might not know what they were missing and that's exactly what happened to the folks coming from India,' attorney Robert Canino said.

The company had been using an agency in Mumbai to recruit workers and after six months they were either sent to Kuwait or returned to India.

John Pickle had argued that the foreign workers were paid wages that were considered fair by Indian standards, but federal officials rejected that argument. The officials contended that no matter who pays, a person working in the United States is entitled to the minimum wage of five dollars and fifteen cents.

When the investigation began, AsiaWeek had quoted Joe Reeble, executive vice-president for John Pickle Co, as saying that the Indian recruiting company might have misrepresented the nature of the jobs by telling the recruits they could expect high wages and the chance to remain in the United States permanently.

Reeble also said the company kept close watch over the Indian workers, even telling them not to leave the dormitory for an extended period of time without notifying a supervisor. The precautions, he was quoted as saying, were necessary because John Pickle Co had a contractual agreement to return the workers to the recruiting company in India. Some workers had left the factory to seek other jobs, apparently with the intention of never returning to India.

'So we have to be a little more restrictive in not letting these guys go out on their own,' Reeble said.  He said the restrictions did not include locking the workers inside their dormitory. The company provided buses to take the workers to area churches and shopping malls, he said.

'We're not a jail,' Reeble had said.