Blood, Sweat and Tears: Asia’s Poor Build US Bases in Iraq

October 15th, 2005 at 10:03 Björn Hallberg

Virtual slave labour in the empire.

Corpwatch via GPF – 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 U.S. forces.

But Soliman wouldn’t be making anything near the salaries– starting $80,000 a year and often topping $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 $615 a month – including overtime. For a 40-hour work week, that would be just over $3 an hour. But for the 12-hour day, seven-day week that Soliman says was standard for him and many contractor employees in Iraq, he actually earned $1.56 an hour.

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