Corpo's Use Middle East Addresses to Frustrate Employees' Rights

There's a standard corporate dodge encouraged by the Bush Administration that lets corpo's avoid paying taxes, duck any laibilities from poisoning the air or water, and stop unions from getting a foothold in their plants: register your headquarters in another country even though the offices are in the US (that's what the Panama trade deal was all about - the Democrats passed it, btw). Well, American corporations, thanks to a couple of Iraq-war profiteer-related legal decisions, have discovered a brand new use for the Foreign Registration Scam - short-circuiting their workers' rights as employees.

When William Christopher Hyser abruptly lost his job as a police trainer in Iraq - and his $16,000 bonus - he was so angry that he wanted to sue DynCorp, the Virginia-based defense contractor that hired him.

But when he called the company's complaint line, he was told that if he wanted to file a lawsuit, he had to do it in the United Arab Emirates. Like nearly 1,000 other American police trainers in Iraq, Hyser wasn't on the official DynCorp payroll - he was employed by a wholly-owned subsidiary set up in a tax-free-zone Dubai, a business-friendly citystate where labor unions are banned.

"I was so frustrated," said the former Maryland state trooper. "It just blew me away."

DynCorp, one of the largest US defense contractors in Iraq, is one of a small but growing number of US companies that mandate the use of courts in the Middle East to resolve disputes with their American employees. The practice frequently serves to block employees' lawsuits, legal specialists say, because few are able to navigate a still-developing foreign legal system in a distant land.

"The company has put up a hurdle that is probably insurmountable, or is just not going to be worth it to fight," said Richard Posthuma, an international labor specialist at the University of Texas, El Paso.

It's a simple - and apparently legal - scam.