From Newsday

"Federal prosecutors Demetri Jones and Mark Lesko have said the Sabhnanis deprived the two women of an adequate diet, forced them to sleep on mats, gave them no time off and no direct pay, and tortured them, principally Samirah, with a variety of objects, including two brooms, a rolling pin, an umbrella and the point of a knife."

FROM:

 

slave play_w("S0466200") (slv)

n. 1. One bound in servitude as the property of a person or household. 2. One who is abjectly subservient to a specified person or influence: "I was still the slave of education and prejudice" Edward Gibbon. 3. One who works extremely hard. 4. A machine or component controlled by another machine or component.

Definition #1 The Sabhani case

From: IndiQuil

A few short weeks ago, Varsha and Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani were the epitome of the Indian immigrant success story. Varsha, 45, an Indonesian of Indian descent, and Mahender, 51, an Indian, ran a multi-million dollar perfume business from their Long Island home, pictured below. The Muttontown mansion, located in one of the wealthiest areas of New York, was a fitting testament to their success.

That was then. Now, the police allege that this luxurious two story house and the couple who own it form the center of a gut wrenching tale of modern day slavery – the Sabhnanis stand accused of brutally mistreating two Indonesian women, hired as maids but treated as chattel, to be beaten and misused to the extent that they were often hidden away from sight, in the garage, basement, various cubbyholes and compartments like the one under the stairs, pictured below.

Definition #2 - abjectly subservient to a specified person or influence

FROM:

Excerpt From post by Gregory A. Butler (author and 608 Carpenter NYC)

" deunionizing apartment building construction in New York City

Currently, New York City is experiencing a residential construction building boom.

All over Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, new low rise apartment houses are going up - in some areas, it's not at all unusual to see two or even three twelve story buildings going up on the same block!

What is remarkable - and very sad - is the fact that every single one of these low rise apartment houses is being built non union.

And these aren't just any scab contractors.

These companies typically pay sweatshop wages - their skilled carpenters and masons get $ 7/hr and their unskilled laborers and helpers recieve $ 4/hr.

Yes, reader, you read correctly - that is not a misprint!

I said FOUR DOLLARS AN HOUR!

For a 10 hour straight time day, and a 6 day workweek, with no overtime paid.

Of course, such illegally low wages (a full $ 3.25/hr below minimum) are paid in a less than legal manner; off the books, in cash, with no taxes, unemployment insurance, social security, workers comp or disability withheld.

Virtually all of the workers in this sector are minority - some are American Blacks or Puerto Ricans, others are immigrants from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Cuba, El Salvador, India, Pakistan, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua, Barbados, Senegal, Haiti, Russia, Poland, the Ukraine, China, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, Hong Kong or the Republic of Georgia."

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Now you would think that there would be an uproar , but there isn't , never mind the fact that how can a legitimate company compete against these type of conditions , the labor on these jobs not adding anything to the citys tax base , and the inhumane way in which the workers are treated , where is ICE in these instances , isn't part of their job to protect the "legal" and "illegal" citizens ? Why is it the only time that anything is done to these contractors is in the name of Tax evasion ? Why aren't the correct agencies enforcing the laws that are on the books ? Why is it that one of the only times when you see ICE doing it's job is in places like Smithfield Pork where the workers were almost ready to become union members ?

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FROM:

"Smithfield isn't alone. Workplaces with union contracts or organizing drives have been hit by a wave of immigration enforcement over the last year. At the CINTAS industrial laundry chain, 400 workers were picked up for deportation from multiple plants during a national drive by the hotel union UNITE HERE. In the Woodfin Suites hotel in Emeryville, California, managers terminated workers for allegedly being undocumented, after they tried to enforce the city's living wage ordinance."

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Slavery Immigrants and Homeland Insecurity

A view of the hole created by the explosion at Lexington Avenue near Grand Central Station. (Photo: Peter Foley/European Pressphoto Agency)

We have known about the slavery trade here in the US for quite some time , But the rich and the Government are making sure that nothing meaningful is being done to change it . Yes as far back as 12 years ago ...

FROM:

Sex Slavery, Thailand to New York; Thousands of Indentured Asian Prostitutes May Be in U.S.

She was halfheartedly helping out in her parents' grocery store in Bangkok, daydreaming of an office job that would let her wear pretty clothes, when evil entered her life in the form of a man who made her an irresistible offer: He would arrange her passage to the United States and a job as a bar hostess, he said, and it wouldn't cost her a cent, because her future employer would pay his commission.

Within days, the 23-year-old Thai woman, who asked that she be identified only by her nickname, Na, was in New York.

In New York, and caught in a nightmare of sexual slavery, an ordeal so hideous that even months later, as she described it in the downtown Manhattan office of the immigration agents who helped save her, her head drooped in shame, and she doodled unconsciously right on the Government tabletop.

Almost as soon as Na arrived last September, she was informed of the real, Faustian terms of her passage to New York. To pay off the people who had bought her ticket and arranged her visa, she was expected to have sex with more than 300 men. She would be held captive behind the locked doors of a Chinatown brothel where, she later learned, the Thai women were known by numbers instead of names, bars covered the windows and buzzer-operated gates controlled the doors. She would not be allowed to leave the building until she had worked off her debt.

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