Hundreds of marginalized staff from India had been recruited construct a large Hindu temple in New Jersey the place they had been pressured to work lengthy hours for low pay in violation of US labor and immigration legal guidelines, in line with lawsuit filed on Tuesday.
The grievance, filed in US District Court in Newark on behalf of greater than 200 Indian building staff on the temple, alleges “stunning violations of probably the most fundamental legal guidelines relevant to staff in this nation, together with legal guidelines prohibiting pressured labor.”
The suit, filed by five of the workers, accuses their employer, Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, or BAPS, and related entities of recruiting them in India, bringing them to the United States and forcing them to work on the temple for more than 87 hours a week for $450 a month, or about $1.20 an hour.
New Jersey’s minimum wage is $12 an hour and US law requires the pay rate for most hourly workers rise to time-and-a-half when they work more than 40 hours a week.
The suit says the workers were kept under constant watch and were threatened with pay cuts, arrest and return to India if they spoke to outsiders. On Tuesday, FBI agents visited the sprawling ornate temple in rural Robbinsville, just east of Trenton.
“We were there on court-authorized law enforcement activity,” Doreen Holder, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation area workplace in Newark, confirmed by phone.
Holder declined to say what number of brokers had been on the premises or elaborate on their mission.
A spokesman for BAPS, which describes itself as a socio-spiritual Hindu group, issued a press release saying, “We had been first made conscious of the accusations this morning, we’re taking them very critically and are completely reviewing the problems raised.”
The suit said the BAPS entities own the land where the temple was built and arranged for its construction. The temple has been open for several years, but work on extending it is ongoing.
The plaintiffs, who claim to have worked on the temple as stone cutters and other construction workers as far back as 2012, said that in India, they belonged to the Scheduled Caste, formerly considered “untouchables” and socially ostracized.
Once on their building jobs, the grievance stated “they had been pressured to reside and work in a fenced, guarded compound which they weren’t allowed to go away unaccompanied by overseers affiliated with (BAPS).”
The suit, which also claims the workers were falsely classified as religious workers and volunteers when they entered the country, seeks “the full value of their services” in addition to unspecified damages and different compensation.
Read all of the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News right here
