Afghan Immigrants Want OT for Training Marines

At the U.S. Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., halfway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, military trainers spent years hiring Afghan and Iraqi immigrants to teach U.S. troops how to interact with locals while deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The workers were paid by the hour—$17 in 2013—to play farmers, village elders, and insurgents, spending as long as two weeks at a time living on base. They spent much of their time in mock villages built from steel shipping containers that could be hot during the day and freezing at night. Their military supervisors insisted they be available at all hours to participate in training exercises.

The program, originally known as Mojave Viper, wrapped up in 2014, but workers who took part are claiming the defense contractor that hired them, Tatitlek Support Services, owes them overtime pay and compensation for meal and rest breaks they say they should have been given under California labor laws. They recently found a sympathetic ear with the state’s Labor Commissioner’s Office, which has issued awards of as much as $200,000 each to 75 former role players since July. It’s still considering more than 100 claims. Tatitlek, the state found, exercised control over the role players for the whole time they were on the Marine base and therefore should have paid them for all those hours. “The employees are subject to the state’s labor laws,” says Peter Melton, a spokesman for the California Department of Industrial Relations, which includes the Labor Commissioner’s Office. “They were not relieved of all duty, their sleep time was not duty-free, and they could not leave the premises.”