Tulsa: The American Dream Turned Nightmare
Tulsa: The American Dream Turned Nightmare
Date: Sunday, June 23, 2002 2:31 PM
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This article illustrates a new variation of visa fraud. John Pickle
promised
a group of Indian welders that they would receive H-1B visas if they
came to
Tulsa to work at his company.
What these workers didn't know is that Pickle brought them here by using
B1
visas. He claimed that the welders were business visitors in a training
program. This allowed Pickle to circumvent the fact that Tulsa has an
abundance of unemployed welders that needed jobs.
These workers got a rude surprise when they arrived in Tulsa. They found
out
that that they were never going to get H-1B visas. Worse yet they were
forced to live and work in Pickle's slave labor camp. Pickle's con game
was
finally discovered but so far his factory is still operating.
Pickle believed he was being a good American businessman by keeping
costs
low. An FBI agent said "What happened at the Pickle Company is starting
to
happen everywhere -- especially in remote areas of the heartland."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5747
Tulsa: The American Dream Turned Nightmare
Indian Workers Allege Abuse By Oklahoma Company
Russell Cobb is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas.
They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese,
Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. They live on rice and beans, the
businessmen
said. They wouldn't know what to do with good wages. Why, look how they
live. Why, look what they eat. And if they get funny -- deport them ...
-- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
It takes "an effort of the intellect and the will" just to recognize
that
the poor exist in America, writer Michael Harrington once remarked.
Harrington's 1962 book, The Other America, introduced many Americans to
the
overlooked poverty in their midst. Indeed, the most desperate people in
the
most affluent society on Earth are often kept out of view, no less now
than
when The Other America was published.
A recent example comes straight from the American heartland -- Tulsa,
Oklahoma -- where 53 Indian men spent months working under conditions
that
their attorneys have called "virtual slave labor." Their employer was
the
John Pickle Company, a manufacturer of oil pipelines and pressure
vessels on
the desolate western limits of town.
Although each worker tells a unique story of broken dreams and
humiliation
at the Pickle plant, the collective experience of the men goes like
this:
Lured away from good jobs in India for a chance to work at the Pickle
Company, the men were ill fed, packed into a cramped, unsanitary
dormitory
only yards away from industrial machinery, and forced to work 12- to
16-hour
days, six days a week, at wages well below the federal minimum wage.
When
they complained about conditions within the factory, they were
threatened
with deportation, locked inside their barracks and patrolled by armed
guards.
While the men wait for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to
decide
their immigration status, many people in Oklahoma are beginning to ask
how
slave-like conditions could develop right under their noses.
The American Dream Turned Nightmare
Toofan Mondal, one of two cooks in the group, had worked for 20 years as
a
chef in Calcutta, supporting a family and struggling to make ends meet.
Then
he heard about job openings at the John Pickle Company through an agent
with
Al-Samit International, a travel agent and employment recruiter based in
Bombay. The Indian workers don't know much about the management of
Al-Samit,
nor do their two American attorneys, or anyone in the United States,
including the FBI, which has purportedly been in India investigating the
company. Pickle Company documents -- including e-mails and employment
contracts -- refer only to a "Mr. Gulam" as company president.
"No one seems to know Gulam's last name," one of the Indian men's
attorneys,
Kent Felty, told me in a telephone interview. "All we know at this point
is
that he is powerful, rich, Muslim, and a very big man, well-connected
with
the Indian Consulate in Houston."
FBI Special Agent Gary Johnson would not provide details on the Bureau's
investigation of either Al-Samit or the Pickle Company, except to say
that
"several government agencies," including "the INS and the Department of
Labor" were looking into the men's allegations. The Pickle Company
denies
any wrongdoing.
What happened at the Pickle Company is starting to happen everywhere --
especially in remote areas of the heartland."
But even as the government refrains from commenting, the men's sworn
testimonies and the Pickle Company's own documents paint a picture of
human
trafficking and exploitation that is usually associated with
foreign-operated sweatshops in the developing world. People following
the
new wave of Central American and South Asian immigrants to the American
South and Midwest, however, are beginning to note abuses throughout the
region.
"What happened at the Pickle Company is starting to happen everywhere --
especially in remote areas of the heartland," says Barbara Moore,
Director
of the Asian-American Community Service Association in Tulsa. Moore
cited
the booming big-poultry industry in nearby Arkansas and the migrant farm
worker experience throughout the Midwest as areas where labor abuses
have
become more common in recent years.
Al-Samit began recruiting Indian workers for Pickle two years ago,
selecting
qualified welders, electricians, and fitters for a so-called "training
program." When Toofan Mondal met the Al-Samit agent, she told him that
Pickle was expanding his guest worker program and would be taking two
cooks
with him for the first time. All the workers Al-Samit recruited for
Pickle
were experienced -- many were over-qualified -- and they were told they
would receive H1-B temporary work visas for skilled workers.
For its services as an intermediary, Al-Samit charged each worker
roughly
$2,500 in fees, which most of the men paid through high-interest loans
in
India. The men planned to work off their debt to Al-Samit and then begin
sending money home to their families.
Upon boarding the plane to the United States, however, it was revealed
that
they actually had been issued B-1 visas for temporary business visits.
Pickle may have preferred this approach because it would give him the
option
of either returning the workers to India after six months or sending
them on
to his new plant in Kuwait.
According to social workers and attorneys involved in the case, there
was
another advantage for Pickle in securing B-1 visas for business visits:
doing so allowed Pickle to bypass an important INS prerequisite for the
H1-B.
"For Pickle to employ the men, he first would have had to prove to the
INS
that there was a shortage of welders in Tulsa," said Moore in an
interview.
Instead, "the men were technically employees of Al-Samit. But there was
not
a façade of training at the plant -- they were paid Indian wages by an
Indian firm."
These wages were far below the federal hourly minimum wage of $5.15 --
the
Tulsa World and the Associated Press reported that the welders received
between $2.31 and $3.17 an hour. Their actual wages may have been even
worse -- according to their offer letter from Al-Samit and the Pickle
Company, the welders received a $500 to $550 monthly salary. Since the
men
report 12- to 16-hour workdays six days a week, that means their hourly
wage
was more like $1.20 to $1.76 an hour.
The technical trades of welding and vessel fitting in the petroleum
industry
are well-established in Tulsa and have been ever since the town's
halcyon
days in the 1920s, when Tulsa was the self-proclaimed "Oil Capital of
the
World." For Pickle to prove to the INS that there was a shortage of
skilled
workers in a city and state whose economic lifeline still runs, for
better
or worse, in black gold, would have been difficult. But by claiming the
workers were business visitors in a training program, Pickle had found a
way
around potential INS roadblocks to cheap labor.
John Pickle was openly proud of his operation until only recently.
According to a letter he wrote to "customers, suppliers and business
partners" on February 8, Pickle claimed to have already completed "two
cycles of training ... with 25 individuals now successfully on the job
at
JPME [his Kuwait plant]." After years of struggling to find cheap,
reliable
labor in Oklahoma, he had found a way to undercut his competitors
without
closing up shop and moving overseas. In a 1997 interview with the Tulsa
World, Pickle admitted his frustration at not being able to attract and
keep
workers. "I train them [the welders] and then they go somewhere else for
the
bigger money," he said. Pickle, in other words, believed he was being a
good
American businessman by keeping costs low. Furthermore, he believed he
was
doing the local economy a favor. During the oil bust of the 1980's, he
claimed, he could have shipped his entire operation to the Middle East,
"where most of the oil action is," but he chose to stick it out in
Tulsa,
where the economy had ground to a halt.
John Pickle's wife seized the men's passports and visas and the first 30
workers were escorted to a makeshift dormitory built for 10 men.
While still in Calcutta, Mondal was excited about the opportunity to go
to
America, and this seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Like the
other 52 men, Mondal was offered free food, travel, accommodation, and
medical insurance. Granted, the pay would be low by American standards
$900 a month would supposedly be his base salary -- but there would be
overtime and frequent raises. There were promised fringe benefits as
well:
Pickle would provide a car for every four employees, a cell phone for
every
two employees, and everyone would live in American-style apartments with
a
swimming pool. Mondal's statements, made in a sworn affidavit, were
corroborated in separate interviews I conducted with five other workers.
Neither the Pickle Company nor its attorney responded to my requests for
comment.
It didn't take long for Mondal's dream to turn into a nightmare.
Upon arriving in Tulsa, John Pickle's wife, Christina, seized the men's
passports and visas. The first 30 men to arrive were transported to a
makeshift dormitory located between the factory and the office. It had
facilities for 10 men, according to Mondal.
Pickle then quickly put the men to work constructing a new dormitory
within
the factory complex itself, an ominous, bleak compound that covers over
60
acres in a run down area of Tulsa. That dorm would eventually house all
53
workers. According to Mondal's affidavit and my interview with another
worker, A.K. Shaji, the new kitchen was constructed dangerously close to
industrial equipment and radiation-emitting X-ray machines, which they
blame
for making many of the men ill. When Mondal complained about having
inadequate utensils for cooking, Pickle instructed the men to weld a vat
out
of stainless steel from the factory.
Negligence and Threats Escalate
Pickle took a hands-on approach to every aspect of the men's lives. When
one
of the welders, Marshall Suares, dropped a 35-pound steel spool on his
toe,
Pickle and his wife brought him over-the-counter medicines instead of
taking
him to a hospital to have the toe X-rayed. Suares is still receiving
treatment for the injury.
Mondal claims that at one point he became so sick that an American
worker at
the factory offered to take him to a doctor, but that Pickle stopped
them.
"You want to go to a doctor?" Mondal says Pickle asked. "I am your
doctor."
Meanwhile, the welders and vessel fitters were working long hours for a
pittance -- all the while being charged $50 per month for their board.
They
worked diligently and ahead of schedule. The local workers -- there were
anywhere from 15 to 30 at the factory when the Indians arrived,
according to
Moore and the Indians -- were soon laid off. Yet even as the workers
completed their tasks to Pickle's specifications, conditions in the
dormitory deteriorated.
"Mr. Pickle began to ration the food," Mondal states. "Only one small
glass
of milk was to be given every three days." In early November, Mondal
noted
that many men were losing weight and refusing to eat the food, often
bought
after its expiration date. In every conversation I had with the men,
food
was a recurring topic.
"We went to the supermarket and I put a bag of rice in the cart and
Pickle
took it out and said 'that one's too expensive.' He grabbed another one
and
put it in the cart. It was 50 cents cheaper," Shaji told me. Pickle then
refused to buy spices and finally decided that the men would eat only
beans.
"Indian men were not used to beans. I asked for mutton. Pickle began to
curse at me," writes Mondal.
As conditions worsened and the men grew desperate, Pickle began to
threaten
them with deportation. His temper grew shorter and he began to call
frequent
meetings between the workers and management. Pickle and other managers
shouted at and insulted the men. After some of the men requested
permission
to leave the factory on their day off to go to church, Pickle became
enraged.
"He said, 'you son of a bitch, you go back to India,'" Shaji recalled to
me,
stuttering to articulate the unfamiliar, shameful words.
Ray Murzello, the Pickle Company's director of international business
development, was especially harsh with the men. On December 14, he sent
an
e-mail to an Al-Samit official in Mumbai in which he proposed that the
mysterious Gulam "put pressure on the families" in India.
"Knowing Gulam as well as I do," Murzello continued, "if this fails ...
Gulam has further recourse and can file a case quickly against these
individuals with the Mumbai police."
In a conference call with Pickle workers, Gulam reportedly threatened to
"put them in a dark room and cut off their legs."
Murzello was especially worried since two men he had sent to the Tulsa
airport accompanied by armed guards to be deported back to India had
"absconded" in Atlanta. Murzello seemed particularly worried about the
two
missing men, whom he was afraid might "be the reason why we sour our
relations with the U.S. embassies and INS, so assiduously cultivated
over
the last several years."
In his e-mail, Murzello laments that "we cannot send them (the men, that
is)
airfreight or FedEx, which would assure a quick, guaranteed delivery!"
The
John Pickle Company, Murzello said, would "provide the cuffs" for
someone to
escort them back to India.
According to Mondal's statements and my interview with Shaji, Gulam then
responded to Murzello's requests by making a conference call to some of
the
Pickle workers at the plant, threatening to "put them in a dark room and
cut
off their legs" when they were returned.
According to Joe McDoulett, the Indian men's attorney working on the
immigration side of their case, the Pickle Company never had the
authority
to "deport" the men in the first place.
"When you enter the United States as an alien, you're under the control
of
the INS. You get permission to stay for a period of time. Being outside
of
the control of the John Pickle Company doesn't make you subject to
deportation," McDoulett said in a telephone interview.
McDoulett has filed suit on behalf of the men to change their visa
status to
a "T visa," which is given to victims of human trafficking and would
extend
their work permit for a three-year period. According to Mondal's
statements,
the INS never even questioned the men about their work or place of
residence
when they arrived in Atlanta from India.
"Mr. Pickle led the way. Mr. Pickle spoke to a tall official who
directed us
to form two lines. The immigration officer in my line did not ask me
anything," Mondal states.
So where was the INS when Pickle was importing his laborers?
"They were looking for people who were coming to blow up buildings,"
said
Kent Felty, the men's attorney who is pursuing a civil case against the
company. "The FBI is totally swamped and the INS is even worse."
It is worth noting that Pickle was able to easily transport the 53 men
through immigration in Atlanta only weeks after the 9/11 terrorist
attacks
without so much as a peep from immigration officials. Ironically, while
U.S.
Attorney General John Ashcroft was swiftly rounding up immigrants and
suspending their habeas corpus, Pickle was able to restrict his workers'
movements -- even locking them in the factory barracks over Thanksgiving
and
Christmas. He frequently used the terrorist attacks as a pretext,
claiming
that it was for their own good that they stay in the factory.
"He said we would be shot if we left the grounds," Shaji said.
Still In Limbo
The Pickle Company has refused to address its alleged minimum-wage
violations, but in a statement issued to the press in February, the
company
defended the wages by saying they were "commensurate for training
programs
such as this."
While the case of the Pickle workers may be one of the worst violations
of
workers' and immigrants' rights in recent memory, it is not the only
one.
About a year before the Indian workers decided to escape from the Pickle
factory, another case of involuntary servitude was coming to light in
American Samoa, where approximately 270 mostly Vietnamese garment
workers
had been held against their will and paid less than the minimum wage by
a
South Korean factory owner.
According the Barbara Briggs, a senior associate at the National Labor
Committee who helped break the story to the press, government agencies
such
as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the
Department of Labor failed to recognize or stop the abuses by management
until the workers stories were publicized in newspapers around the
country,
including The New York Times.
The story of the Vietnamese workers in Samoa, however, has a somewhat
happy,
perhaps bittersweet, ending: the factory was shut down and its owner
arrested in Hawaii in March 2001. A year later, in April, a court
ordered
him to pay the workers $3.5 million in back wages and damages.
Who is responsible? One worker says, "Maybe it's this globalization
thing."
Despite threats to the Indian men and their families, some of the
workers
began slipping under a gate near the back of the Pickle factory in order
to
attend the Hale Station Pentecostal Church across the street. Although
only
a few of the men are Christian, the church provided a temporary
sanctuary
from the hell of the Pickle plant. It was there that they met Mark
Massey, a
member of the church who offered to put them up in his house.
By this time, Pickle was tapping the men's phones and reading their
e-mails.
When he learned of the church-going group's plan to leave the plant, he
called the Tulsa County sheriff's department. Three deputy sheriff's
cars
promptly arrived at the factory and escorted the group first to the Gold
Bank to close their checking accounts, and then to the Tulsa airport for
a
flight to Bombay via Atlanta. At the airport, they were handed envelopes
with their passports and back wages. Shaji says that when he opened his
envelope, he found only $7.
As the men were departing, they made a frantic call to Massey, who faxed
the
INS in Atlanta and requested that the men be returned to Tulsa.
Immigration
officials in Atlanta then checked the men's visas and informed them that
they were free to stay in the United States. Afraid of the shame of
returning to India empty-handed and defeated, most of the men returned
to
Tulsa the same day. Shortly after the group returned from Atlanta, the
rest
of the men left the factory en masse to stay with Massey and his family.
Massey owns a farm house in the unincorporated town of Pretty Water,
Okla.,
and 45 of the men -- now known throughout the area simply as "the Pickle
workers" -- are living there. They mill about, some playing volleyball,
some
watching TV, some praying. In the three months since their liberation
from
the Pickle factory, Massey has become their de facto caretaker, donating
the
house for their use and organizing relief efforts that include perpetual
garage sales to raise money for the men and their families until the
October
court date.
Back in Tulsa, the John Pickle Company's factory still churns out
pressure
vessels, many of which sit rusting near the factory gates. A preliminary
court date for a civil suit against the company is set for October 21.
No
one seems willing to speculate on what the future may hold for them, but
they are determined to stay in the United States, which could happen if
the
INS determines that they were victims of "involuntary servitude." Until
then, they remain in limbo. They cannot legally work for money so they
volunteer, "to give back to the community," as Massey puts it.
I ask one of the men, Jonathan Moraes, who he thinks is ultimately
responsible for their plight. Is it Mr. Gulam, John Pickle, or the
United
States or Indian governments?
"I don't know," he shrugs. "Maybe it's this globalization thing."
Published: Jun 11 2002
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