milu's Blog

Today, the National Labor Committee is releasing a new report "Guest Workers Trafficked to Kuwait, Stripped of their Passports and Forced to Work Seven Days a Week at a U.S. Military Base, while Cheated of Half their Wages." Full report: http://www.nlcnet.org/reports.php?id=601

Hundred of thousands of foreign guest workers-among them 240,000 Bangladeshis-have been trafficked to Kuwait. Seventy-seven-hour work week at U.S. military base: At least 310 of the Bangladeshi guest workers trafficked to Kuwait were assigned to a U.S. military base, Camp Arifjan, where they were forced to work 11 hours a day, seven days a week cleaning tanks, rocket launchers and missiles, as well as office and living spaces. The guest workers were stripped of their passports and cheated of nearly half the wages due them, earning just $34.72 for working 70 hours, when they should have earned at least $63. In just the first seven months of 2008, while working at the U.S. base, the guest workers were cheated of over $250,000 in wages. The Kuwaiti companies working under contract with the U.S. military base also illegally withheld three months of the workers' wages. Supervisors threatened to beat the workers if they asked for their proper pay. The workers are housed in squalid dorms, with eight workers crowded into each small 10-by-10-foot room, sleeping on narrow, double-level bunk beds. Because of the underpayment of wages, some guest workers at the U.S. military base were so poor that they were forced to take second jobs in order to survive. One worker, Mr. Sabur, was working 131 hours a week and trying to get by on just three hours sleep a day.

In early 2008, food prices soared in Kuwait, pushing the workers even deeper into misery. On July 27, 80,000 cleaning workers-including on U.S. military bases-joined a work stoppage to demand their proper wages and respect for their rights. The strike was overwhelmingly peaceful, though there were limited instances of violence. Workers from the U.S. military base who had not participated in the demonstration were attacked in their dorms by Kuwaiti police, who fired teargas and kicked and beat the workers with clubs. The workers were imprisoned for five days, where they were again beaten, before being forcibly deported to Bangladesh without the $5,000 or more in back wages due them.

"It would be a horrible turn of events if Operation Desert Storm and all the sacrifices made by U.S. troops have in some way freed Kuwait to traffic in hundreds of thousands of foreign guest workers, who are stripped of their passports, forced to work long hours, cheated of their wages, and then beaten and deported when they ask that their most basic rights be respected," said NLC director Charles Kernaghan. Operation Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait cost the lives of 294 U.S. servicemen, 458 wounded and 183,000 Gulf War veterans who are now permanently disabled. ________________________________________