Operation
Sweatshop Iraq
By Pratap Chatterjee
CorpWatch
14 February, 2004
Baghdad
- Behind miles of coiled barbed wire, a maze of concrete barricades
designed to stop the most determined suicide bomber and checkpoints
run by heavily armed soldiers from the Florida National Guard, lies
the Al Rasheed hotel, Baghdad's most exclusive, which modestly advertises
itself as "more than a hotel." Today it serves as part of
the temporary headquarters for the occupation forces in Iraq.
I was on my way
to meet with a U.S. Army spokesperson, glad I had finally been granted
an interview. It is difficult to get inside the hotel in the best of
times -- the only way is via a personal invitation. It took three hours
and multiple satellite phone calls routed through Virginia for us to
connect that day because of an emergency shutdown. My army contact got
confused as to where we were meeting, partly because he had only been
in country for three weeks. Perhaps more importantly, because the occupation
forces never leave the Green Zone, they have no idea how complicated
it is for civilians to get in.
As I entered the
Al Zaheer restaurant inside the hotel, I encountered three employees
representing an unusual collection of South Asian nations whose governments
have at times been bitter enemies: Muzaffar, a cook from a small village
some 40 miles from Dhaka, Bangladesh, Shahnawaz, a waiter from Delhi,
India and Ali from the lawless North-West Frontier Province in Pakistan,
who works behind the salad bar.
These men work quietly
together serving meals in the dining room that seats some 300 people.
Sprawled out at the tables are uniformed soldiers and Secret Service
men with earpieces -- guns never more than an arm's length from their
reach -- smartly dressed secretaries from military contracting firms
and men in dark business suits, chatting loudly about the business of
running a country.
The restaurant workers
were brought together by a company named Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR),
a subsidiary of Halliburton of Houston, Texas. Halliburton has contracts
in Iraq worth more than $8 billion that range from cooking meals, delivering
mail, building bases to repairing Iraq's oil industry.
The company can't
hire workers fast enough to fulfill their commitments, but the pay scales
fluctuate wildly depending on the country of citizenship of the employee.
Americans, who work at dead-end, low-wage jobs at home, get paid handsomely
even by US standards. Iraqi salaries start at $100 a month and imported
South Asian workers get three times that. Meanwhile Halliburton is being
investigated by the US military for overcharging US taxpayers to the
tune of at least $16 million.
Halliburton's
Dirty Dishes
I was invited to
lunch at the Al Zaheer restaurant by Richard Dowling, the spokesperson
for the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Dressed in full green
military camouflage uniform, he is a cheerful, middle- aged white bearded
civilian who has worked for the Army for 23 years. His appearance has
earned him the name Baba Noel, the Arabic translation for Santa Claus.
I ate uneasily remembering
an NBC news report that the Pentagon repeatedly warned Halliburton that
the food it served to US troops in Iraq was "dirty," as were
the kitchens it was served in. The Pentagon reported finding "blood
all over the floor," "dirty pans," "dirty grills,"
"dirty salad bars" and "rotting meats ... and vegetables"
in four of the military messes the company operates in Iraq.
Indeed even the
mess hall where Bush served troops their Thanksgiving dinner was dirty
in August, September and October, according to NBC. Halliburton promises
to improve "have not been followed through," according to
the Pentagon report that warned "serious repercussions may result"
if the contractor did not clean up.
The meals at the
Al Rasheed are mediocre -- certainly nothing to write home about. They
are definitely a step up from the Meals-Ready-To-Eat issued to soldiers
in the battlefield but the average hotel or restaurant in Baghdad could
turn out equally mediocre or better food for a quarter of the price.
For the kind of cash that the government is spending ($28 a day per
soldier) the soldiers could be eating at the White Palace, one of the
best restaurants in Baghdad, fancied by Paul Bremer, the United States
ambassador who oversees the occupation authority in Iraq.
After our meal,
I stop to chat with the workers who tell me they earn $300 a month including
overtime and hazard pay. Asked what they think of their jobs, they are
non-committal. "Chalta he," says one. (We manage somehow.)
Muzaffar explains that it's a lot more than he makes at home. He's paid
for his eldest daughter to get married to another Bangladeshi who lives
in Saudi Arabia. But both he and his son-in-law rarely get to see their
wives. His other daughter and his young son barely know him as he has
lived abroad for 13 years.
While some of the
men working for Halliburton in Iraq are recruited to these jobs directly
from India by the Saudi-based Tamimi Corporation, most are brought over
from Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, where they were offered bonus pay to work
in Iraq. One worker says that the company really didn't offer him a
choice: it was Iraq or get laid off. These men never get to leave the
grounds of the hotel or the Republican Palace because it is considered
far too dangerous to venture out of the high-security Green Zone.
Our conversation
is cut short by Tony, a Filipino American ex-Marine from Burlingame,
California and the man in charge of the 60 South Asian staff, who strides
over to the kitchen workers taking a break to say goodbye.
"Back to work,"
he snarls. "All of you in the kitchen now." As he speaks neither
Urdu nor Bengali, the conversation is incomprehensible to him and maybe
that makes him nervous.
"Tony's such
a hard-ass," says Mike, one of the military contractors and witness
to the exchange. "Give them a break," he calls out as I rise
to leave. The three kitchen workers are apologetic. "Come back
to meet us at the palace," they say. "Sometimes we cook Indian
food here."
Cooking the Numbers
In December Halliburton
estimated that it had served 21 million meals so far to the 110,000
troops at 45 sites in Iraq, according to numbers provided to an NBC
reporter. But in recent weeks military auditors have started to suspect
that the company may be cooking the numbers and over-charging the government
by millions of dollars.
The Wall Street
Journal reported in early February that Halliburton may have overcharged
taxpayers by more than $16 million for meals to U.S. troops serving
in Operation Iraqi Freedom for the first seven months of 2003. In July
2003 alone Halliburton billed for 42,042 meals a day but served only
14,053 meals daily.
I ask Army Corp
of Engineers spokesperson Dowling about the alleged overcharging.
"Some may see
it as war profiteering but for the young soldiers, it is hot food and
a dry place to sleep," he explains. "Yes, it is a profit motive
that brings companies into a dangerous location, but that is what capitalism
is all about. Halliburton employees are under fire and several have
died but they are still here. With all due respect to nonprofit organizations,
like the United Nations and the Red Cross, they have pulled out. If
it takes profit to motivate an organization to take a tough job, then
that's the only way to do it," Dowling went on.
Later, back in the
States, I email Melissa Norcross, a spokesperson for Halliburton's Middle
East region, about the phantom meals. She wrote back to CorpWatch with
the following explanation from Randy Harl, chief executive officer of
KBR:
"For example,
commanders do not want troops "signing in" for meals due to
the concern for safety of the soldiers; nor do they want troops waiting
in lines to get fed."
Norcross also explained,
however, that the "dirty kitchen" problems have been taken
care of, and the facilities have since passed subsequent inspections.
"Keep in mind
that serving food to more than 130,000 patrons daily in a hostile war
zone is not easy. And it's worth noting that although there are many
challenges involved in supplying food to more than 130,000 patrons every
day, there are also accounts of wonderful things our employees do,"
according to the Halliburton spokesperson.
She quoted a note
from a Halliburton client in Tall Afar, Iraq: "The commander gave
kudos to staff for the Thanksgiving Meal served. He said it was the
best he had ever seen and I told him that it was the best that I have
seen anywhere in 23 years of government service."
Local Labor
Across the street
from the Al Rasheed hotel stands the Baghdad convention center with
a vast empty theater but lots of life in the offices from the basement
to the third floor. Earnest Iraqis, the military and their private guards
and the odd camera crew mostly populate the rooms.
Eventually a group
of convention workers, wearing Halliburton badges, stop by to chat on
their tea break. One of them tries several times to pronounce the word
Congratulations but fails. Unable to wish his boss well, he exasperatedly
turns to me to ask if there is a better word. I suggest slapping the
boss on the back and saying: Good job! Well done! But he shakes his
head violently. "No, I cannot say that - Mr. Lewis is an American,
my boss. I must say something more polite."
The convention hall
employees are friends and live in the same neighborhood. Every morning
Halliburton sends a car to pick them up and bring them to work at 8:00
a.m. and take them back at 4:00 pm. The three are professionals who
are better paid by Halliburton than [are] laborers. Khaled Ali is an
engineer in charge of construction at the convention center, Saba Adel
Mostafa is an interpreter, and Daoud Farrod is a supervisor. Farrod
is older but the first two are in their late 20s. They are excited to
work for Halliburton.
"It's my first
job, I was not able to practice my English before. And the government
pay before was just $10 a month," Saba says.
Khaled explains
that it is his first job too. "And you are in charge of all the
construction here?" I ask. He nods proudly, beaming when I exclaim,
"Congratulations!" The three of them say that Halliburton
workers earn a range from $100 to $300 a month - Saba earns $200.
Temps From Texas
Half a world away,
another group of unemployed workers can be found at recruiting sessions
in Houston. The company has been posting flyers at truck stops and posting
advertisements on the internet. Four out of five of the recruits who
are invited to training sessions who worked at a now defunct JC Penny
store will be sent to Iraq. Halliburton sends an average of 500 recruits
a week.
These men are not
skilled. "They are unemployed and underemployed workers with few
jobs in a U.S. economy that isn't producing many jobs," writes
Russell Gold, a Wall Street Journal reporter. Gold interviewed men lining
up for the training sessions, citing the example of one typical applicant
whose previous job was transporting chickens for $12 an hour.
But when they arrive
in Iraq, their navy blue American passports earn them a tidy sum of
money: between $7,000 and $8,000 a month, generous sums, even by American
standards. CorpWatch asked company spokesperson Norcross why there is
such a huge disparity based on nationality in the wages Halliburton
pays in Iraq.
"We will not
discuss our specific wage structures. Our compensation packages and
the compensation packages provided by our subcontractors are based on
a wage scale that was recommended by the Coalition Provisional Authority
in Iraq, and are competitive in terms of the local market," she
wrote back.
When I posed the
same question to Army spokesperson Dowling, we got a more revealing
answer.
"These workers
consider themselves fortunate to have jobs even if it means them traveling
somewhere else. There is an army of companies that move from conflict
to conflict with experience in setting up chow halls from an empty field
to a 1,000 army camp in a matter of days. It's not an easy job and these
guys are good at it. They bring their own people with them - people
with experience in other military locations," Dowling explained.
"The (salary)
decision is not based on the value of his life but on the cost of training
and equipping the workforce. Nor would it be right for the US Army to
enforce US based salaries where no one else could match it. Life sometimes
isn't fair," he concluded.
I'm sure Al Rasheed
waiters Muzaffar, Shahnawaz and Ali would agree.
Pratap Chatterjee is Program Director/ Managing Editor of CorpWatch.