WASHINGTON (Washington Post) - Foreign workers for defense contractors on at least four U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf are trapped in their jobs by abusive employment practices that they say prevent them from returning home or even looking for better work in the region, more than 30 current and former workers said in interviews.
Many of the thousands of migrants employed on Persian Gulf bases have had their passports confiscated, been saddled with onerous debts after paying illegal recruitment fees or been denied “release papers” required under local laws, according to the interviews as well court records and government documents showing that such abuses, which appear to violate U.S. regulations, have been repeatedly flagged in recent years.
The companies that provide food, repair vehicles and supply other services to the U.S. military routinely turn down requests from civilian employees for release papers they need to leave their jobs, more than a dozen workers told The Washington Post and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Under the strict labor laws of most countries in the region, employees who leave jobs without permission have been jailed for “absconding.” In some of these countries, notably Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, defense contractors hold onto their workers’ passports, often restricting the employees’ movement, workers said.
Employment agencies in the workers’ home countries, meantime, frequently charge steep fees to place them in jobs overseas. The fees can run into the thousands of dollars and are often financed with high-interest loans, requiring migrants who are paid as little as $1 an hour to work for several years before they’ve paid off their debts, according to 19 workers for nine contractors and subcontractors in the Persian Gulf.
These practices are widespread among private employers in the Middle East, where the legal status of migrant laborers is routinely tied to that of their employer.
But the abuses described by the workers would appear to violate U.S. regulations against human trafficking by government contractors and subcontractors. These federal acquisition regulations ban the kind of recruitment fees detailed by workers at U.S. military bases, seek to bar involuntary servitude, which includes confiscation of passports, and requires contractors to police their subcontractors.
The workers interviewed for this story are among the armies of men and women from Asia and Africa who do the manual and semiskilled labor that keeps U.S. military bases abroad running day after day.
The U.S. military operates from more than a dozen bases and other installations in the Persian Gulf and neighboring Iraq and has used these locations to wage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The military has grown deeply dependent on defense contractors and their legions of migrant hires. These workers travel to the Persian Gulf seeking employment opportunities vital for supporting relatives back home, though the pay is often relatively low and the hours long.