The pay's lousy, but the slop is
free By David
Phinney
WASHINGTON - Jing Soliman left his
family in the Philippines for what sounded like a
sure thing - a job as a warehouse worker at Camp
Anaconda in Iraq.
His new employer, Prime
Projects International (PPI) of Dubai, is a major,
but low-profile, subcontractor to Halliburton's
multi-billion-dollar deal with the Pentagon to
provide support services to US forces.
But
Soliman wouldn't be making anything near the
salaries - starting at US$80,000 per year and
often topping US$100,000 - that Halliburton's
engineering and construction unit Kellogg, Brown
& Root (KBR) pays to the truck drivers, construction
workers, office workers, and
other laborers it recruits from the United States.
Instead, the 35-year-old father of two
anticipated US$615 a month, including overtime.
For a 40-hour work week, that would be $3-4 an
hour. But for the 12-hour day, seven-day week that
Soliman says was standard for him and many
contract employees in Iraq, he actually earned
$1.56 an hour.
Soliman planned to send
most of his US$7,380 annual pay home to his family
in the Philippines, where the combined
unemployment and underemployment rate tops 28%.
The average annual income in Manila is US$4,384,
and the World Bank estimates that nearly half of
the nation's 84 million people live on less than
$2 a day.
”I am an ordinary man,” said
Soliman during a recent telephone interview from
his home in Quezon City near Manila. ”It was good
money.” His ambitions, like many US civilians
working in Iraq, were modest: ”I wanted to save
up, buy a house and provide for my family,” he
says.
That simple dream drives tens of
thousands of low-wage workers like Soliman to
travel to Iraq from more than three dozen
countries. They are lured by jobs with companies
working on projects, led by Halliburton and other
major US-funded contractors, to provide support
services to the military and reconstruction
efforts.
Called ”third country nationals”
(TCNs) in contractors' parlance, these laborers
hail largely from impoverished Asian countries
such as the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Sri
Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan, as well as from Turkey
and countries in the Middle East.
Once in
Iraq, TCNs earn monthly salaries between US$200
and US$1,000 as truck drivers, construction
workers, carpenters, warehousemen, laundry
workers, cooks, accountants, beauticians, and
similar blue-collar jobs.
Tens of
thousands of such TCN laborers have helped set new
records for the largest civilian workforce ever
hired in support of a US war.
They are
employed through complex layers of companies
working in Iraq, including dozens of small
subcontractors - largely based in the Middle East
- like PPI. This layered system not only cuts
costs for the prime contractors, but also creates
an untraceable trail of contracts that clouds the
liability of companies and hinders comprehensive
oversight by US contract auditors.
Numerous former US contractors returning
home say they were shocked at the conditions faced
by this mostly invisible but indispensable army of
low-paid workers.
TCNs frequently sleep in
crowded trailers and wait outside in line in 100
degree-plus heat to eat ”slop”. Many are said to
lack adequate medical care and put in hard labor
seven days a week, 10 hours or more a day, for
little or no overtime pay. Few receive proper
workplace safety equipment or adequate protection
from incoming mortars and rockets.
Adding
to these dangers and hardships, some TCNs complain
publicly about not being paid the wages they
expected. Others say their employers use
”bait-and-switch” tactics: recruiting them for
jobs in Kuwait or other Middle Eastern countries
and then pressuring them to go to Iraq. All of
these problems have resulted in labor disputes,
strikes and on-the-job protests.
While the
exact number of TCNs working in Iraq is uncertain,
a rough estimate can be gleaned from Halliburton's
own numbers, which indicate that TCNs make up
35,000 of KBR's 48,000 workers in Iraq, employed
under its sweeping contract for military support.
”They do all the grunt jobs,” said former
KBR supervisor Steve Powell, from Azle, Texas.
”But a lot of them are top notch.”
The
TCNs not only do much of the dirty work, but, like
others working for the US military, risk and
sometimes lose their lives. Many are killed in
mortar attacks; some are shot. Others have been
taken hostage before meeting their death.
The Pentagon keeps no comprehensive record
of TCN casualties. But the Georgia-based,
nonprofit Iraq Coalition Casualty Count estimates
that TCNs make up more than 100 of the estimated
269 civilian fatalities. The number of unreported
fatalities could be much higher, while unreported
and life-altering injuries are legion.
Soliman was one TCN who barely escaped
death on the night of May 11, 2004, when his
living trailer at Camp Anaconda was blown apart by
a bomb attack. Sardonically dubbed
”Mortaritaville”, the camp is 42 miles north of
Baghdad. Some 17,000 US soldiers and thousands of
contractors have dug into the former Iraqi airbase
for a long-term occupation.
Three others
were injured along with Soliman that night. One
roommate, 25-year-old fuel pump attendant Raymund
Natividad, was killed. Soliman flew home to the
Philippines in a wheelchair days later because he
wanted medical treatment in his own country.
But even after surgery and skin grafts, he
sometimes feels nagging pain in his leg. Doctors
tell Soliman he will walk with a piece of shrapnel
lodged in his left leg for the rest of his life.
”It was too deep,” he explains.
A number
of former KBR supervisors say they don't know why
TCNs continue working in Iraq when they face much
more brutal working conditions and hours than
their US and European co-workers would tolerate.
”TCNs had a lot of problems with overtime
and things,” recalls Sharon Reynolds of
Kirbyville, Texas. ”I remember one time that they
didn't get paid for four months.”
The
former KBR administrator, who spent 11 months in
Iraq until April, says she was responsible for
processing time sheets for 665 TCNs employed by
PPI at Camp Victory near Baghdad. The 14,000
troops and the US contractors based at this former
palace for Saddam Hussein have use of an
Olympic-sized swimming pool and a manmade lake
preserved for special events and fishing.
But TCNs have to make do with far less.
They ”ate outside in 140 degree heat”, Reynolds
says, while US contractors and troops ate at the
air-conditioned Pegasus Dining Facility featuring
a short-order grill, salad, pizza, sandwich and
ice cream bars under the KBR logistics contract.
”TCNs had to stand in line with plates and
were served something like curry and fish heads
from big old pots,” Reynolds says incredulously.
”It looked like a concentration camp.”
And
even when it came to basic safety, the TCNs faced
a double standard. ”They didn't have personal
protection equipment to wear when there was an
alert,” Reynolds said. ”Here we are walking around
with helmets and vests because of an alert and
they are just looking at us wondering what's going
on.”
Although Filipino passports now
explicitly ban entry into Iraq, the ranks of
Filipinos sneaking over the border from
neighboring countries has swelled from an
estimated 4,000 before the 2003 ban to 6,000
today.
Filipinos ”believe it is better to
work in Iraq with their lives in danger rather
than face the danger of not having breakfast,
lunch, or dinner in the Philippines”, said Maita
Santiago, secretary-general for Migrante
International, an organization that defends the
rights of more than a million overseas Filipino
workers.
Soliman now finds his problems
with PPI and injuries in Iraq pale in comparison
to life back in the Philippines. Jobless, he sees
his life teetering on the edge. He may be
splitting up with his wife, and his plans to
provide a new home for his family are on hold.
He says he doubts that PPI will be sending
money for his final medical checkup or even the
several months' salary he says he is still owed.
But those things don't matter so much.
What really matters now is finding another
job. ”If you hear of anything, let me know,”
Soliman said at the end of the interview. ”I would
even go back to Iraq.”
