New York: A Federal judge has given an Oklahama based company a deadline till October 31 to submit concluding arguments on whether it denied minimum wages to 52 Indian workers employed by it.

The skilled Indian workers including welders, fitters and electricians, have also complained that they were confined in the factory premises of the John Pickle Company and given substandard food.

The company though, has said they were temporary trainees destined for its plant in Kuwait.

If the court decides that they were full-time employees, the issue about their alleged denial of minimum wage would be taken up.

The defence rested the case on September 18 after producing only two witnesses and the judge gave the two parties till October 31 to submit their concluding arguments.

The John Pickle Company, which manufactured specialised oil equipment, has since shut its doors, citing bad publicity generated by the case.

The workers allege that they were given $ two or three an hour in 2001, much lower than the federal minimum wage of $ five and 15 cents.

"They can easily be given a place to live, little bit of food, they might not know what they were missing and that's exactly what happened to the folks coming from India," workers' attorney Robert Canino said.

The company had been using an Indian agency to recruit workers and after six months they were either sent to Kuwait or returned to India.

John Pickle had argued that the foreign workers were paid wages that were considered fair by the Indian standards, but federal officials rejected that argument.

The officials contended that no matter who pays, a person working in the United States is entitled to the minimum wage of $ five and 15 cents.

When the investigation began, 'AsiaWeek' had quoted Joe Reeble, executive vice president for John Pickle Co, as saying that the Indian recruiting company might have misrepresented the nature of the jobs by telling the recruits they could expect high wages and the chance to remain in the United States permanently.

Reeble also said the company kept close watch over the Indian workers, even telling them not to leave the dormitory for an extended period of time without notifying a supervisor.

The precautions, he was quoted as saying, were necessary because John Pickle Co had a contractual agreement to return the workers to the recruiting company in India. Some of the workers had left the factory to seek other jobs, apparently with the intention of never returning to India.

"So we have to be a little more restrictive in not letting these guys go out on their own," Reeble said.

He said the restrictions did not include locking the workers inside their dormitory. The company provided buses to take the workers to area churches and shopping malls, he said.

"We're not a jail," Reeble had said.

PTI