Prosthetic Conscience

US Embassy in Baghdad being built with slave labour

From CorpWatch:

Owen also says that managers regularly beat workers and that laborers were issued only one work uniform, making it difficult to go to the laundry. “You could never have it washed. Clothing got really bad – full of sweat and dirt.”

And while he often smuggled water to the work crews, medical care was a different issue. When he urged laborers to get medical treatment for rashes and sores, First Kuwaiti managers accused him of spoiling the laborers and allowing them simply to avoid work, he says.

State Department officials supervising the project are aware of many such events, but apparently do nothing, he said. Once when 17 workers climbed the wall of the construction site to escape, a State Department official helped round them up and put them in “virtual lockdown,” Owen said.

There’s a lot more, and it’s ugly. Some people would argue that this isn’t technically slavery, since the workers are being paid (although their pay is often reduced by arbitrary and unexplained “deductions”). But it’s clear that many of the workers are there against their will (most of them thought they were going to be working in Dubai, not Baghdad), and that they are treated as property by the contractors they work for.

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