Thread: Business faces immigrant work lawsuit

Business faces immigrant work lawsuit
3/20/2007 7:44 PM
By: Brad Broders

CHARLOTTE -- Last fall, four Indonesian workers came to America for temporary work. Now they are part of a lawsuit that claims a Charlotte business and two other North Carolina farmers violated labor laws, but one of the defendants say those allegations are untrue.

Owners of the Charlotte business on North Graham Street usually make digital signs, but last year, GTN Employment Agency also worked as a middleman to help foreign workers get temporary jobs which one law firm believes they did illegally.

“It was all a scam,” Lori Elmer of the firm, Legal Aid of North Carolina, said in a telephone interview. “These are honest men. They wanted to come to the United States with a visa, they were going to work very hard, and they were told that they were going to get three years of work in the United States under this visa."

A lawsuit filed last month by Raleigh-based Legal Aid of North Carolina charges that the owners of the business, two North Carolina farms and two Indonesian labor recruiters broke labor laws. The suit claims at least three Indonesian workers shelled out thousands of dollars and were promised years of work, but when they got to North Carolina, only one person logged any actual hours.

"It immediately puts them under a situation of control where the employers really are able to control them,” Elmer said.

Also included in the lawsuit were pictures showing dirty living conditions. The suit claims the workers spent days sleeping at the Charlotte business on a bare warehouse floor and that the co-owners held onto their passports, visas and return plane tickets.

But in speaking with one of the defendants, she strongly denies the allegations. She says her Charlotte business followed the law, and the Indonesian workers were duped only by Indonesian agents and not by anyone in North Carolina.

Off camera, the defendant said they only held onto the workers' passports to make sure they didn't run away and get their business in trouble with immigration officials. The defendant admits the warehouse conditions were poor but said it was the only option as she worked to secure return trips home.

She told News 14 Carolina that the truth and proof will come out in court.

As it stands, there is no scheduled date for when the case will begin at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse.

Legal Aid of North Carolina is in the middle of a similar case in federal court. They have sued Million Express Manpower, claiming that 22 Thai workers were charged thousands of dollars for work in America that didn't turn out as promised.


http://www.news14charlotte.com/content/ ... rID=135771

And why didn't they stay in Jakarta, the wonderful land of Muslim insurrection, tsunamis, head-shrinking volcanic tribes, and some of the worst working conditions on the planet?

SO THEY COULD SUE THEIR WAY TO FAME AND FORTUNE! It's a lot easier than working in their homeland, and further proof that legal work visas for the legions (of uneducated third world) of masses are BAD IDEAS, and worse, POOR LAWS that help no one!