RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVERMarch 10, 2007
Workers: Promise became a prison
As a farmer in Thailand, Muangmol Asanok often made less than $500 a year. So he couldn't believe his good fortune when a recruiter came to his village offering three years of farm work in North Carolina at a rate of more than $8 an hour. He mortgaged his farm to get the recruiter's $11,000 fee, said goodbye to his wife and infant son and headed to Johnston County -- where he says he became a prisoner in a storage building beside a rural highway. Asanok is one of 22 Thai men suing the former owners of a Wayne County labor contracting company, saying the owners stole their money, failed to pay them for their work and held them captive with threats of violence. The vast majority of North Carolina's farmworkers still come from Mexico, state officials say. But a few new farm labor contractors have moved into the state in the past few years, offering laborers who have never worked in the United States and using temporary visas for farmworkers to bring them in legally. "These companies promise the moon to farmers, saying, 'Sign here, and we'll bring you all the workers you need,' and 'Don't worry, we'll charge them,'" said Libby Whitley, who runs másLabor, a farm labor contracting business in Virginia. "They're proliferating." Bubba Grant of the Employment Security Commission in Raleigh, who handles migrant farmworker applications for temporary work visas, said he has seen only a handful of applications from countries outside Mexico, but he said he couldn't provide exact figures. Lawyers with Legal Aid of North Carolina, a federally funded agency that advocates for the poor, say they know of at least 115 workers whom contractors brought to North Carolina from the Far East between 2004 and 2006. "There's a desire for a work force that's not going to speak up," said Kate Woomer-Deters, a lawyer with Legal Aid. "Any time you can get people who are more vulnerable than Hispanic workers, unfortunately, that's an attractive work force." Legal Aid filed suit last month on behalf of the Thai workers. The group also sued on behalf of three Indonesian workers who say they were charged $6,000 apiece to come to the United States as farmworkers, then held captive in an industrial workshop in Charlotte. The suits demand repayment of the fees plus an undisclosed amount in damages and lost pay.
Debt for the future Asanok, 28, comes from one of Thailand's poorest regions, a place where men routinely travel to other countries for the promise of better-paying work. In his early 20s, he worked three years in a clothing factory in Taiwan. But in the spring of 2005, a recruiter from a company called Million Express Manpower offered something he never imagined possible: three years of work in the United States. His earnings would be enough to start a business and pay for the education of his children, born and unborn, he said in a telephone interview this week. The fees were steep, and he said he had to mortgage his land, take a bank loan, take another loan from a neighborhood loan shark and borrow from his mother. He figured he would pay it all back in the first year of work.
Cheaper labor For the owners of Million Express Manpower, the Mount Olive labor contractor that recruited the men, Thai workers were a novel product that they offered to farmers around the state, according to the lawsuit. They knew that some farmers were disgruntled with the Mexican laborers who picked their crops, the lawsuit says. The majority of the state's legal farmworkers, who come to the United States on temporary visas each growing season, had formed a union. They started demanding rights beyond their federally mandated wages, which this year will be more than $9 an hour. Billy Carter, who grows tobacco and produce in Moore County, said that since the union formed in 2004, a few of his workers have started complaining about 65-hour work weeks. In the past, he said, his workers wanted as many hours as they could get. "They just have a completely different attitude," Carter said. "They're more Americanized, basically." Carter says he never got an offer from Million Express, and he stuck with his Mexican workers. But he said talk spread in farm country that it might be time for a new crop of farmworkers. The owners of Million Express arrived at some farms with promises of workers so indebted that they would abide almost any working conditions, the lawsuit said. One owner, Roy Raynor of Dunn, said in a deposition that he offered farmers a "new breed." Raynor declined to comment to The News & Observer. He found at least a few takers, who signed documents allowing Million Express to get temporary visas for 30 Thai men, including Asanok.
Poor treatment When they arrived in the United States in August 2005, the labor contractor confiscated the Thai men's passports and return plane tickets, the lawsuit says. They got only two or three days of work a week on farms. And after about a week living in a motel in Benson, they were moved to a small storage building in Dunn, behind the home of Seo Homsombath, a native of Laos who is president of Million Express, the lawsuit says. There, the 30 men slept on blankets spread on the floor and shared a single bathroom, Asanok said. Homsombath took them to work, and otherwise didn't allow them to leave the property. Homsombath did not respond to requests for comment. Homsombath at first contained the men by telling them that, without passports, police would arrest them if they left the property. Later, he showed them a gun, according to both Asanok and the lawsuit. A relative or employee was always at the house to guard them, Asanok said. Homsombath delivered food, but it often wasn't enough for all 30 men, Asanok said. They had no kitchen, so they cooked outside on a portable gas burner. By mid-October the farm work ran out, and Homsombath took the workers to New Orleans, the lawsuit says. They spent a few weeks in a condemned hotel, badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina, without electricity or clean water. During the day, the lawsuit says, they demolished parts of the hotel they lived in. Asanok said he spent his days tearing down walls and hauling piles of destroyed carpet out of the hotel. The Thai workers, including Asanok, say they were never paid for their work in New Orleans. Some were so broke, the suit says, that they trapped and ate pigeons.
Change from Mexico Until a few years ago, virtually all of North Carolina's temporary agricultural workers with legal visas were brought in by the N.C. Grower's Association. Farmers pay the group a fee to recruit workers in Mexico, arrange their travel and fill out paperwork. Recently, the group has been weakened by frequent lawsuits claiming that it mistreated workers. In 2004, the association agreed to a worker union and raised fees for farmers. New labor contractors moved in, seeing opportunity. Regina Luginbuhl, head of the state Labor Department's Agricultural Safety and Health Bureau, said farmers should question recruiters who offer low prices for workers from across the world. The law requires farmers to pay their workers' travel expenses. If the recruiter were following the law, transportation alone would cost farmers thousands of dollars per worker. "The whole idea of bringing people thousands and thousands of miles to do farmwork is suspicious," Luginbuhl said.
Finding help After a few weeks in New Orleans, the Thai workers bought cell phones and got in touch with a relief group, Boat People SOS, that helps refugees. In November 2005, seven of the men, including Asanok, left their jobs and moved into free housing provided by the relief group in Washington, where they remain. The other men spoke with officials from the Thai embassy in Washington, but got no help, said Woomer-Deters, the Legal Aid lawyer. Those men later moved to the Boat People SOS housing as well. The News & Observer's phone calls to the embassy were not answered. Million Express has gone out of business, Legal Aid officials say. The men's temporary visas have expired, but they are applying for visas available to victims of human trafficking. Asanok said his wife and son are scraping by in Thailand. If he can't find a way to pay back the $11,000 he borrowed, he could lose his land and his home. He says he wants nothing more than a fulfillment of the recruiter's promises. He wants to work.
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