Indictment Accuses Firm of Exploiting Thai Workers

Some things apparently do not change.  Remember in 1995 when Thai workers were freed from forced labor in a Los Angeles suburban sweatshop, where they worked behing razor wire?  Now, Julia Preston of thr N.Y. Times reports that a federal grand jury has indicted six labor contractors from a Los Angeles company on charges that they imposed forced labor on some 400 Thai farm workers, in what justice officials called the biggest human-trafficking case ever brought by federal authorities. The charges filed by Justice Department civil rights lawyers were brought against Global Horizons Manpower, which recruits foreign farm workers for a guest worker program. The indictment accuses Global Horizons executives of working to “obtain cheap, compliant labor” from guest workers who had been forced into debt in Thailand to pay fees to local recruiters. The company, according to the indictment, sought to “to compel the workers’ labor and service through threats to have them arrested, deported or sent back to Thailand, knowing the workers could not pay off their debts if sent home.”

KJ