Alabama-based oil rig company to pay $20 million to Indian workers they treated like sharecroppers

Signal International is an oil rig and ship repair company. Back in 2006 they got a nice contract to help fix oil platforms and ships damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Having so much work they needed workers. Citing short supply of workers (possibly due to displacement from the Hurricane), Signal began importing workers from India.

The worker program soon became a headache for Signal executives soon after the first wave or workers arrived in November 2006. In 2008, workers filed the first of what would become nearly a dozen lawsuits filed against the company by Indians alleging they were lured into coming to the U.S. by false promises from the company and subjected to harsh living conditions in company-run "man camps."

Testimony began Tuesday (Jan. 13) in the first case to go to trial, involving five workers who arrived at Signal's plant in Pascagoula, Miss., in the fall of 2006. Believing a job with Signal would lead to a green card and permanent residency in the U.S, the men say they took crushing debts to pay Signal's recruiters. They claim they were forced to keep working for Signal, a company that eventually would bring nearly 500 workers from India to staff their plants in Mississippi and Orange, Texas.

The "headaches" that the executives were having had to do with things like this:

Lawyers for the plaintiffs described cramped quarters in the "man camps," nearly 300 men -- all Indians --  lived in a fenced-in compound of trailers. Signal guards would not allow them to bring guests or alcohol. Workers were charged $1,050 a month to live in the camps, and weren't allowed to move off what Signal managers referred to as "The Reservation."
[...]
Howard said workers were referred to by the identification number, and that top executives felt the camp conditions were an improvement on living conditions in India.

These Indians just didn't know how good they had it. Luckily, a jury didn't agree with Signal's lawyers.

After a four-week trial, the U.S. District Court jury ruled that Alabama-based Signal International was guilty of labor trafficking, fraud, racketeering and discrimination and ordered it to pay $12 million. Its co-defendants, a New Orleans lawyer and an India-based recruiter, were also found guilty and ordered to pay an additional $915,000 each.

That was back in February. Signal decided to apply for bankruptcy protection a couple of weeks ago. This was in part because there were still about 200 more Indian plaintiffs ready to get justice for the human indignities they had to endure working for Signal.

Signal International will pay $20 million to settle lawsuits alleging fraud and labor trafficking by the Alabama-based oil- rig repair company, which brought hundreds of Indian men to work on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, attorneys for the plaintiffs said on Tuesday.

The settlement, which included an apology by the company to about 200 guest workers involved in the suits, must win the approval by a bankruptcy court in Delaware, where Signal has filed for Chapter 11 protection.

So much of what passes for being "good at business" in this country is not getting caught cheating and being terrible at business.

It was estimated that Signal saved $8 million dollars treating their workers like animals. Glad to see that worked out the way it did for them.