Exploited "Guest" Workers

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert reports today on a study released by the Southern Poverty Law Center that shows low wage guest workers in the United States are being exploited by their employers. ( This is typically not the way one treats a "guest," dare I say.) Some of these people work in the hospitality business but many more are brought in to work  in agriculture and in seafood processing.

According to Herbert, "One of the guest workers profiled in the report was a psychology student recruited in the Dominican Republic to work at a hotel in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The woman had taken on $4,000 in debt to cover “fees” and other expenses that were required for her to get a desk job that paid $6 an hour.

Herbert continues:  "The woman and her fellow guest workers had hardly enough money for food. “We would just buy Chinese food because it was the cheapest,” she said. “We would buy one plate a day and share it between two or three people.” She told the authors of the report: “I felt like an animal without claws — defenseless. It is the same as slavery.”