Beverly Hills firm accused of human trafficking

[marmar]

By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times
April 21, 2011


In its largest farm labor trafficking case ever, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Wednesday charged a Beverly Hills-based firm and eight farms with severe abuse and discrimination involving more than 200 Thai farmworkers.

Federal attorneys alleged that Global Horizons Manpower Inc., a labor contracting firm headed by Israel native Mordechai Orian, subjected workers in Hawaii and Washington to violence, inadequate pay and nutrition, rat-infested housing, and other illegal conditions based on their national origin and race.

Global Horizons recruited Thai men to the farms under a legal farmworker program from 2003 to 2007 with false promises of steady, high-paying jobs — then confiscated their passports and threatened them with deportation if they complained about work conditions, according to two civil complaints announced Wednesday in Los Angeles. To secure the jobs, the workers were charged recruitment fees as high as $25,000, forcing many of them to take on staggering debt, according to Anna Park, regional attorney for the commission's Los Angeles office.

"Human trafficking remains one of the worst forms of discrimination in this day and age," Park said. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0421-thai-trafficking-20110421,0,6167205.story

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1. There are no words for this and all the other

immoral, inhumane and illegal activity done both in the private sector and our government.

It's so freaking depressing. I now find I can completely relate to the painting, 'The Scream'.

:mad:

:argh:

[marmar]

2. That's one of my favorite paintings......

...... little did I know how often I'd be imitating it.

[madmax]

4. I hear that. Doing the same thing - glad my

neighbor works and goes out a lot.

[crickets]

3. Call it by its real name:

Slavery.