The John Pickle Company, Inc. (JPC) is a Tulsa, Oklahoma based oil industry parts manufacturer. The Tulsa factory closed in September 2002. The company currently has operations in Kuwait, John Pickle Middle East, the pressure-vessel division of Kuwait Pipe Industries and Oil Services Company (KPS). The company is notable for having suffered a significant legal loss to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), when a federal judge ordered John Pickle Company, Inc. (JPC) and its president, John Pickle, to pay $1.3 million to 52 male victims of national origin discrimination and human trafficking. The workers were recruited from India as skilled laborers in 2001 and then subjected to widespread abuse, intimidation and exploitation. With the help of church workers, they left the plant in early 2002. Lawsuit and ruling In its 2003 lawsuit, the EEOC charged the Tulsa, Okla.-based oil industry parts manufacturer with recruiting the class of foreign employees to the United States with assurances they would work under conditions similar to those of Americans. Indian witnesses testified at trial to being deceived by JPC that they were being brought to the U.S. with the promise of lawful wages and appropriate working conditions. However, once they arrived, the workers had their identification and immigration documents confiscated by JPC, were crammed into a warehouse “dormitory,” and only paid between $1.00 and $3.17 per hour (while non-Indian employees of JPC were paid approximately $14.00 per hour for performing the same type of skilled work). The court relied on findings from testimony that the highly skilled welders and fitters from India were also made to perform janitorial work, replace a septic tank, and perform kitchen duties and yard work for JPC officers. Beginning in October 2001, the Indian workers were forced to live behind the gates of the company until escaping from the facility in February 2002 with the aid of area churches. In her 71-page written opinion, issued in May 2006, Federal District Court Judge Claire V. Eagan detailed evidence of unlawful and egregious conduct by JPC against the Indian-born high-tech welders, fitters, electricians, engineers and cooks once they arrived in the U.S. The judge ruled that JPC subjected the Indian workers to fraud and deceit, inadequate pay, sub-standard living conditions, false imprisonment, lockdowns with an armed guard, phone tapping, food rationing, restrictions on freedom to worship, degrading job assignments, ethnic slurs, intimidation, and the non-payment of wages earned. The