Houston attorney Tammy Tran has filed suit in federal court against two companies affiliated with the Vietnam government for participating in a human trafficking scheme that put 50 welders in indentured servitude in the United States. The suit comes after a $50 mil. settlement against two American labor agencies proved to be uncollectable because they have no assets.
The workers claim they were left destitute after only ten months of work though they had been promised two and a half years of work at $15 an hour in exchange for paying $6,500 to $15,000 fees to the Vietnamese state-controlled worker recruitment firms.
The workers claim that they were brought to the U.S. under false pretenses, kept in inhumane conditions in virtual isolation, then left without work before they could even pay off the debt they incurred to come here.
“They want to use our labor as a business, and they want to rip us off,” one worker was quoted as saying in a New York Times article.
The men were recruited through Vietnam’s state-sanctioned system for exporting labor. A 2010 State Department report had concluded that the arrangement leaves workers “highly vulnerable to debt bondage and forced labor.”
The four companies involved — two in Vietnam, two in the U.S. — have all denied wrongdoing. Officials of the Vietnamese labor-export corporations accused the men of lying this month and denied they had been deceived or exploited. Lawyers for the two American companies who agreed to the settlement also disputed the welders’ assertions that they were underpaid or were kept from leaving their lodgings.
Tammy Tran and Tony Buzbee, who represented the welders in the settled state court action in Houston, alleged the men were forced into indentured servitude because they were forced to incur debt through the high fees paid to the Vietnamese companies and were charged extortionate prices by the American labor agencies for substandard housing and even transportation to work. Furthermore, the agencies took the welders’ passports and kept them isolated with threats of being arrested and deported if police discovered them.
Coast to Coast Resources Inc., the Texas company that brought them to Houston and hired them out to a shipyard, let them go in February 2009 after only eight months of work because their work visas had expired and the U.S. Labor Department would not renew them, according to court documents. The workers rejected an offer by the owners of ILP Labor Agency offered to buy them plane tickets home. A few sought help from a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who had come to their door and left a business card. Some ultimately retained Tammy Tran, a prominent Vietnamese-American lawyer in Houston.
In addition to filing suit against the two American companies in state court for breach of contract and other claims, Nguyen secured help from local churches and the Vietnamese community to help provide housing, food and clothing for the workers.
In February Coast to Coast Resources and ILP Agency agreed to a $60 million settlement with the welders. However, the companies have no assets and the agreement did not hold the owners of the companies personally liable. Consequently, the workers are unlikely to collect any part of the settlement.
The workers are being allowed to stay in the U.S. on claims that they had received threats from the government-owned corporations that recruited them.
Scott Funk, a lawyer who represented Coast to Coast in the state suit, said a district court judge did not find the men had been manipulated or exploited. Also, he noted, the owner of the company, Kenneth W. Yarbrough, was not found liable.
Several welders said that they worked mostly at night on the hulls of ships at Southwest Shipyard Inc.but were paid by Coast to Coast, which had contracted with ILP Agency to obtain workers from Vietnam and to oversee them.
The welders acknowledged that even after the various deductions for housing and transportation they earned $300 to $400 a week. Some managed to wire money home through a Vietnamese woman living in the same complex.
“These were legitimate workers who were here on legitimate visas and made good money, and they were disappointed they couldn’t continue to make good money,” said David J. Quan, a lawyer who represented ILP Agency in the state suit.
Quan said the contracts promised only 10 months of work, with a possible extension that depended on a visa. He added that the lodgings were spartan but adequate, and that the workers had made a fair wage.
But the welders maintain they were restricted to the apartment complex and the worksite because of the deportation warnings by ILP’s owner, Hung Quoc Vu. “It was like being confined in prison,” said Trang Nha, 29.
Han Thanh Phan, 30, a welder who left his infant daughter and wife behind, said the debt he owed to relatives kept him from trying to escape. “I felt that because the money I was making was so little, I had failed,” he said. “I owed my family. I did not give them what I promised.”
