NEW YORK: Countless marginalized employees from India were recruited to construct a massive Hindu temple at New Jersey in which they had been made to work long hours for low pay in breach of US labor and immigration laws, based on litigation filed Tuesday.
The complaint, filed in US District Court in Newark on behalf of over 200 Indian building workers in the temple, also declared”shocking violations of the simplest laws related to employees in this nation, such as legislation prohibiting forced labour.” The lawsuit, filed by all the employees, accuses their own employer, Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, or even BAPS, and associated entities of recruitment them together into India, bringing them into the United States and forcing them to focus to the temple for over 87 hours per week for $450 per month, roughly $1.20 an hour.
New Jersey’s minimum wage is $12 a hour and also US law demands the cover rate for many hourly employees grow to time-and-a-half if they work over 40 hours per week.
The lawsuit states the employees were kept under continuous watch and have been threatened by pay reductions, detain and return to India when they talked to outsiders.
On Tuesday, FBI agents visited the sprawling elaborate temple at rural Robbinsville, just west of Trenton.
“We’re there about court-authorized law enforcement action,” Doreen Holder, ” a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in Newark, supported by phone.
Holder declined to state how many representatives were on the assumptions or elaborate in their assignment.
Even a spokesman for BAPS, that describes itself as a socio-spiritual Roman firm, issued an announcement stating,”We were made conscious of the accusations that morning, we’re taking them very badly and are reviewing the topics raised” The lawsuit stated the BAPS entities have the land in which the temple was constructed and organized for its structure.
The temple was open for many decades, but operate on expanding it’s continuing.
The plaintiffs, who claim to have worked to the temple as rock cutters and other building employees as much back as 2012, stated that in Indiathey jumped to the Scheduled Caste, previously known as”untouchables” and socially ostracized.
Once in their building tasks, the complaint said”that they had been made to reside and operate at a fenced, protected compound that they weren’t permitted to leave unaccompanied by overseers connected with (BAPS).” The lawsuit, which also maintains the employees were classified as spiritual volunteers and workers once they entered the nation, seeks”the complete value of the solutions” and unspecified damages and other damages.
