21st Century Indentured Servants

During the 1600s people who migrated to British Colonies in the New World frequently made the trip as indentured servants. Because these individuals didn't have money to pay for passage across the Atlantic, they would enter into contracts as laborers for two to seven years once they arrived in the Colonies. Typically a master would have to house, clothe, and feed their servants for the duration of their contracts. More often than not indentured servants were treated very poorly by their masters.

Here we are in the 21st Century and I see many parallels between indentured servitude of the Colonial years and the way this company is treating our Malaysian employees.

Malay are arriving in larger and larger numbers here Stateside to train on our instrument lines. While they are here the company continues to pay them their Malaysian wages, which are a small fraction compared to what we make. If an American assembly worker takes home $3,000 a month a Malay doing the exact same job only makes $200 a month. The Malay are also expected to work long hours. We work five days a week, eight hours a shift plus overtime if we want it. Malay employees have to work a mandatory six days a week ten hours a day minimum. Because they take home such small salaries they're hungry for overtime so many of them end up working longer shifts than ten hours a day. Part of the deal Malaysian employees get while they are living and working here is the company provides them with apartments nearby our factory. They also have someone assigned to transport them back and forth from work as most of them don't drive a car.

Some of the Malay I've talked with have expressed an interest in staying here in the US. Their efforts to immigrate have been blocked by management at almost every step of the way. No employee transfers from Malaysia to the US are allowed. If a Malaysian employee quits the company and comes to America seeking a job in one of our divisions, they are automatically disqualified from being hired back in. In the meantime while they are working with us here the company has been exploiting loopholes in the work visa system to keep Malay employees Stateside for much longer periods of time than are normally allowed. It's pretty dirty.

In Singapore some fairly shifty things are going on with work visas as well. Malay employed there have been told to lie to Singapore authorities when crossing the border to go to work each day. If Malay are stopped at the border and questioned about their business, managers have ordered them to lie and say they are going to our factory for a "meeting" rather than tell the truth which is they're going to slave away on instrument lines. Every day the same scene plays out. Malay get on buses to go to Singapore for "meetings" at our site. This allows the company to arrange for a different class of work visa that requires less red tape and probably carries a smaller fee than a proper one.

I've been hearing about some other questionable practices going on at the Singapore site, but I haven't been able to confirm those rumors yet. Regardless, I am concerned. Currently Singapore is the only US Government approved site in Asia for instruments purchased by branches of the military. Until recently all Government rated orders had to be 100% built and tested in the US, but now that's changed. The situation now is that 51% of a military ordered instrument has to be built in Singapore and the rest can be done in Malaysia, but that isn't what is going on. Malay employees have been telling me that 100% of US Government ordered boxes are built and tested in Malaysia, then they are shipped across the border to Singapore where they change serial numbers on products. They're trying to make those units look like Singapore built them. If this is true, we're doing some hectic illegal shit. I'm attempting to locate some sort of hard evidence that this is what's really going on over there.