In Depth: Pipeline of alleged human trafficking from Philippines to the Gulf
Platform fire puts focus on company's use of Filipino workers | wwltv.com New Orleans (video)
The most seriously injured workers in Friday's oil platform fire in the Gulf of Mexico were Filipino guest laborers at a Galliano oilfield construction company.
Filipino workers have said they were recruited from their homeland with the lure of a fat paycheck and a better life. But they said they later found themselves living in substandard conditions, working far out in the Gulf, making only modest wages.
Grand Isle Shipyard's use of the foreign workers – along with the recruiting agencies that helped bring them to Louisiana – has been criticized for more than a year.
Those criticisms are outlined in a lawsuit that claims the company conduct “rises to the level” of human trafficking, involuntary servitude and forced-labor offenses.
The alleged practices already attracted the attention of the Embassy of the Philippines. Now, in light of last week's disaster, the company is under even more scrutiny.
"We need to know more details,” Jose L. Cusia Jr., the ambassador of the Philippines to the U.S., told Eyewitness News. “Their contracts for example, how were they brought to the U.S.?”
wwltv.com
Posted on November 19, 2012 at 6:15 PM
Updated Tuesday, Nov 20 at 9:15 AM
Brendan McCarthy / Eyewitness NewsEmail: bmccarthy@wwltv.com | Twitter: @bmccarthyWWL
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