GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba (AP) --With the crank of a ferry lever, Amorsolo
Batangan waves through a convoy of trucks and contemplates how his
paycheck has swelled since dozens of prisoners from Afghanistan arrived at
this remote U.S. naval base.

Like many of the 1,000 foreign workers -- mainly from Jamaica and the Philippines
-- his normal salary of $316 a month is less than half the U.S. minimum wage, but
still more than what he earned back home.

"Before I was doing the job for the experience because the pay was bad," said the
33-year-old who left a farming job in Manila to work on contract with Burns & Roe,
based in Oradell, New Jersey. "But since the prisoners arrived, more things are
happening. We can make more money."

Building temporary cells to hold what U.S. authorities have called some of the most
dangerous men in the world has translated into more work and, consequently, more
overtime and tips for the contract workers.

"We couldn't run the base without these folks," said base commander Capt. Robert
Buehn. "Their wages are lower than U.S. minimum but on the international market
their jobs are still sought after."

Because Guantanamo is in Cuba, on foreign soil, companies are exempt from U.S.
labor laws but must run checks on prospective employees.

Many workers get free housing, which ranges from apartments to hotel-size rooms
shared by two or three. The contracts -- normally for 18 months -- also include
meal subsidies and airfare home.

"I earn $2.40 an hour here and sometimes I can earn even more by washing buses
or doing extra jobs," said Wilburn Ireland, a 40-year-old from Kingston, Jamaica,
who drives a bus. "In Jamaica, I would only be earning about 500 Jamaican dollars
($11) a day."

Compared to the lush environs of the Philippines and Jamaica, this eastern tip of
Cuba presents a stark contrast with its cactus and desert-like fields crawling with
vultures, iguanas and groundhog-sized rodents called banana rats.

But base officials have worked to keep contract workers happy.

For the Filipino and Thai workers, rice and a variety of Asian sauces are sold in the
commissary. For the Jamaicans, there's Blue Mountain coffee, Red Stripe beer,
spicy jerk chicken sauce and tins of ackee, a breakfast fruit in Jamaica that can be
deadly if eaten unripe.

As the prisoner population grows on Guantanamo, so does the spotlight of scrutiny.
Human rights groups have complained about prisoners' treatment, taking aim at the
U.S. government's refusal to categorize them as prisoners of war, which would give
them legal protections under the Geneva Conventions.

The contract workers shrug off controversy, more interested in their bigger checks.

"We don't really think about politics. We're working," said Fernando Convocar, a
39-year-old Filipino.

Convocar makes about $550 a month, not including plenty of overtime, as the only
air conditioning technician on the base's western side. He works for Kvaerner, a
Norwegian engineering company that has 400 employees on Guantanamo and was
awarded a five-year contract worth up to $50 million in 1999.

Burns & Roe, which employs Batangan, has been on Guantanamo since the 1960s
when they helped built a water desalination plant.

"The workers are well taken care of," said John McCormack, president of Burns &
Roe.

Batangan, who says he's been here for nearly three years and just now started
earning regular overtime, often daydreams about his wife, son and daughter as he
makes the 25-minute ferry ride across the bay that divides the base.

"I can get mangoes and other things that I got when I was in the Philippines, but I
miss home a lot."

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.