100 Nepalese workers go missing from Huntsville, AL company

[eppur_se_muova]

Finger-Pointing Continues Over Missing Foreign Workers at Cinram (WAAY)

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAAY) -- The Department of Homeland Security is looking for more than 100 workers from Huntsville's Cinram plant who have turned up missing. The group of workers from Nepal simply disappeared without any warning, creating a potential security risk.

Before leaving, some of the Nepalese allegedly stole furniture and television sets from their furnished apartments. Cinram spokeswoman Lyne Fisher says the missing workers do not pose a security threat.

"Some of them may have wanted to stop in some of the major attractions you'd want to see if you were visiting the U.S., for example, New York City or something like that."

The Nepalese workers were recruited by officials at Blair staffing agency. A Blair spokesperson referred us to the company president who told us he wasn't ready to talk on camera.

The question of who, if anyone, is responsible for the workers remains unclear. Fisher placed the blame on the workers.
***
more: http://www.waaytv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7795914

Isn't Nepal being run by Marxists now? Thank goodness there's no danger of Communists running loose in this country nowadays! It's only Islamofascists we're worried about!

[DrDan]

1. 100 workers seem to have stolen furniture etc . . . and have taken off

but there is not a security risk.

I wonder what she bases that conclusion on.

[elusivecat]

19. 100 workers seem to have stolen furniture; What is the real story behind it?

The real crook behind all this issue is the head of this company itself according to those Neplease and they told that the owner send a team to Nepal ,to recrute the nepali workers. he is the one who demanded such a huge amount of money from the workers,17 lakhs per head(almost 2 million Nepali local currency and around $30,000 ). of course he didnt asked directly, but through the consultancy on the commison base. some even told that the owner has a swiss bank account to blind fold the government. he was just interested in making a quick money. he is a great master mind behind this.

couple of month ago there was an article on the huntsville times about sindram ,critising about its step to bring foreign workers. the artical said that, there are already hundreds of unemployed or part time employed people in huntsville . it is absolutely unnecessary to bring foriegn workers. therefore it is clear that there is a different motive behind bringing all there workers .

another thing that concerned me is that....the news is stating about missing of thousand of dollars worth of furniture, which i think is absolutely bull shit. in fact there arent such kind of expensive furniture which can be lifted and sold. there workers dont even have a ride to carry all this furnitures. i think that this is all conspiracy by the land loard because these workers ran away before the appartment lease was over.

[DrDan]

20. I agree that the scumbag that made an obscene profit by bringing

these workers here in the first place is at blame.

But - I still cannot shake the thought that 100 workers having escaped employer oversight will create an additional risk for those living in the area.

[Mountainman]

2. Did they hire these workers instead of Americans because they work cheaper?

[Kittycat]

3. So 100 workers decided to go on an unannounced "vacation", and

steal TVs & Furniture in the process... According to Lyne Fisher



"Some of them may have wanted to stop in some of the major attractions you'd want to see if you were visiting the U.S., for example, New York City or something like that."


Sure! They went to NY.

[tnlurker]

4. They had 240 of them working in this plant

With H1B visas. They could not find 240 Americans that wanted to work in Alabama that they had to import people from Nepal?
If companies can't export our jobs overseas I guess that they can just import overseas workers here (at very low wages I bet).

What is wrong with the businesses in the country?

[eppur_se_muova]

7. H'ville is AL's high-tech area, Marshall Space Flight Center & Redstone Arsenal ...

lots of engineering firms, high proportion of college graduates -- used to have metric speed limit signs!

[xchrom]

5. so um uh -- how much of this is actually overstated? nt

[ThomWV]

6. Hold it a minute. What kind of company just happens to have hired 100 people from Nepal?

Have you ever so much as met anyone from Nepal? What is their special talent that got them into whatever this unknown work is, mountain climbing?

[Gormy Cuss]

11. A company that looks for the cheapest workers to import, apparently.

This company has more than 1300 H2B visa workers from Nepal, Jamaica, Bolivia, Ukraine, etc.
H2B visa holders have no special talent for the work-- it's specifically for unskilled, nonfarm laborers.
http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/news/1195208225225150.xml&coll=1

[ThomWV]

14. Its gotta be cheaper to let a Mexican walk into the country than to ship a Nepalese half way round

Like cheap labor was hard to find in the US.

[eppur_se_muova]

15. Are you condoning the hiring of ILLEGAL immigrants?!?

Shame! :sarcasm:

Can't have that -- only corporacracy-approved "guest" workers are consistent with our democratic principles!

[Gormy Cuss]

18. Ah, but H2Bs are perfectly legal

as long as you demonstrate there aren't enough local workers at the wage you're offering. That and the fact that their visa limits their employment to your company make them a win-win, until they get the idea to disappear.

The Nepalese disappear simultaneously smell funny to me. I wonder whether something in the plant made them flee.

[AZ Criminal JD]

22. It is cheaper but it is a company with high level government

contracts. Its workers have to be legal so price is not a consideration there.

[eppur_se_muova]

16. Many Nepalis are desperate to escape the turmoil in their country ...

Marxist revolutionaries have been fighting gov't forces there for years, and only recently concluded a shaky peace treaty. Imagine fleeing VietNam in the '70s.

Remember, it was a group of a dozen or so Nepali laborers who were murdered in Iraq -- they had been hired by Halliburton on the condition that the one place they would not go was Iraq -- once they were in Jordan, away from their families, surrounded by strangers, and unable to speak the language, then they were informed that they were going to Iraq -- basically kidnapped by Halliburton, who then allowed them to be kidnapped from an unprotected convoy.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12675

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-0510100110oct10,0,7110057,full.story

[onethatcares]

21. many Americans are anxious to escape the turmoil in their country, but

they ain't gonna go to Nepal to work for 4bucks an hour/12 hrs a day. Who owns this company they worked for anyway?

[SoCalDem]

8. Looks like 100 Alabamans have an employment opportunity..

I wonder if they will be lining up to take those jobs at the same wages the Nepalese workers got..

Somehow I don't think these workers were "security risks".. I think they just maybe got fed up with the working conditions they had, and with the discrimination they may have felt..

Anyone needing work there??

Here's the address & phone number..

It's apparent that there are now 100 openings:)

Cinram Inc.
4905 Moores Mill Road
Huntsville, Alabama U.S.A.
35811

Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

[NavyDavy]

9. yeah their going to need to drag any lakes and rivers for

some bodies......it is kkk country after all!

[SoCalDem]

10. The shifts are long (12 hours) and the pay is low ($ 8/hr.)

Left In Alabama:: Cinram/Huntsville Importing Workers While Taking ...
Cinram manufactures and distributes DVDs at their plant in a Huntsville industrial park. The shifts are long (12 hours) and the pay is low ($ 8/hr. ...
www.leftinalabama.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=750 - 55k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
More results from www.leftinalabama.com »


from the blog:


Cinram/Huntsville Importing Workers While Taking Tax Breaks
by: mooncat
Fri Nov 16, 2007 at 19:30:38 PM CST

Cinram manufactures and distributes DVDs at their plant in a Huntsville industrial park. The shifts are long (12 hours) and the pay is low ($ 8/hr.) The company says they are unable to find willing workers locally and are importing about 1350 workers from Jamaica, Bolivia, Nepal, Ukraine and the Dominican Republic under H-2B visas. Cinram certainly may have trouble hiring locally. A friend of mine interviewed for a job there a little over a year ago. The long hours, physically demanding work and low pay led my friend to turn down a job offer -- instead choosing a job in retail with better hours (2 to 10 pm, as I recall) and benefits and similar pay. However, there are people in the region more desparate for a job (not mention more physically capable) than my friend. From the Huntsville Times (emphasis mine): "Companies are going overseas while we've got people here," said Rev. Dante Moss, who runs a county program that helps ex-convicts find jobs.

Moss said he has 193 candidates looking for work, and that he has found employers in construction and other fields. But he said Cinram and five other area manufacturers declined an invitation to talk about potential workers. "They're not taking anybody from our program," Moss said. "If this is going to go on, and they won't even try to take an employee or two that can prove themselves, then I'm protesting." Moss said the companies benefit from tax breaks while local residents see little benefit in return. According to Madison County Tax Assessor's Office, Cinram, which employs about 2,500 people, leases its 161-acre campus on Moores Mill Road from the city's Industrial Development Board.Although it does not own the land, Cinram pays property taxes on personal property and equipment. For that, Cinram is partially exempt. The company will pay more than $500,000 in taxes in 2007, mostly toward schools. But the company is exempted from about $330,000 worth of other taxes this year.


snip

[eppur_se_muova]

17. Thanks for link leftinalabama.com ! nt

[eleny]

12. K&Recommended!

[Javaman]

13. There was a bizarre story out of, I believe, Georgia recently regarding the hiring of

foreign workers in US plants. This is akin to what contractors are doing in Iraq with bait and switch tactics.

Only this time, some nut job rightwing loon, hired on, I believe they were also Nepalese, to work at his plant.

He then went on to treat them like slaves. housing them in substandard living conditions, and the promise to feed them quickly vanished.

It wasn't until one of the poor people finally got the attention of the local authorities that the whole scam was busted up.

Of course, the remorseless bastard that tricked these poor people, crowed on and on about how he was giving them a better life then the one they had in their home land.

he was eventually prosecuted.

given the fact that the owners of this particular company didn't want to talk to reporters, "A Blair spokesperson referred us to the company president who told us he wasn't ready to talk on camera", I suspect there is a whole lot more to this story than meets the eye.