US agency to indict after Thai workers suffer abuse

A US federal agency has filed lawsuits claiming Thai workers were physically abused and forced to live in rat-infested housing after being recruited by a California-based labour contractor to work on farms in Hawaii and Washington.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said it was its largest human trafficking case to date against the agriculture industry.

The two lawsuits were filed on Tuesday in Washington state and Hawaii against Beverly Hills-based Global Horizons along with six farms in Hawaii and two in Washington.

''Global Horizons subjected the claimants to uninhabitable housing, insufficient food and kitchen facilities, inadequate pay, significant gaps in work, visa and certification violations, suspension, deportation, and/or physical violence,'' the lawsuit states.

Global Horizons lured Thai workers to the US between 2003 and 2007 with promises of steady jobs and agricultural visas, then confiscated their passports and threatened to deport them if they complained about conditions, commission officials said.

The workers lived in dilapidated, rat-infested rooms _ where many didn't have beds _ and were often threatened and physically abused in the fields.

''Once they arrived here in the United States, the story of discrimination began,'' Anna Park, regional lawyer for the EEOC in Los Angeles, said on Wednesday at a news conference announcing the legal action. The EEOC is seeking back pay and up to $300,000 (1 million baht) in damages for each of the workers. Lawyers expected the number of workers in the case would increase.

Global Horizons recruited Thai workers under the federal government's agricultural guest worker programme, known as H-2A.

Chanchanit Martorell, executive director of the Thai Community Development Centre, said her organisation received its first report of abuse from a worker who escaped from a farm in Hawaii in 2003.

Workers said they had undertaken exorbitant debts in Thailand, with many using their family's land as collateral to guarantee recruitment fees they had to pay in the US. On one Hawaiian farm, workers were so hungry they ate plant leaves, she said. About 1,100 Thai workers were brought into the country by Global Horizons, she said.

Six Global Horizons recruiters and two Thai labour recruiters were previously indicted in federal court in Hawaii on charges of luring 600 workers from Thailand with promises of lucrative jobs before confiscating their passports and failing to honour their contracts.

Defendants cited in the latest EEOC lawsuits include Captain Cook Coffee, Del Monte Fresh Produce, Kauai Coffee, Kelena Farms, Mac Farms of Hawaii and Maui Pineapple, all in Hawaii, along with Valley Fruit Orchards and Green Acre Farms of Washington.

Sutassanee Suebwong, director-general of the Employment Department, yesterday said many Thai workers had lodged complaints with the department against two Thai job placement firms supplying workers to Global Horizons in 2005. However, the workers later withdrew the complaints after the Thai companies agreed to compensate them.

Her department will now educate workers on their legal rights.