Labor Recruiting Firm must pay $4.5 million to exploited teachers

Firm must pay $4.5 million to exploited teachers in precedent-setting case

A jury ordered a labor recruiting firm and its owner Monday to pay $4.5 million to 350 Filipino teachers they lured to teach in Louisiana public schools and forced into exploitive contracts after arriving in the United States through the federal guest worker program.

Universal Placement International of Los Angeles and its owner and president, Lourdes Navarro, were ordered to pay the damages following a two-week trial in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles.

“The jury sent a clear message that exploitive and abusive business practices involving federal guest workers will not be tolerated,” said SPLC Legal Director Mary Bauer. “This decision puts unscrupulous recruitment agencies on notice that human beings – regardless of citizenship status – cannot be forced into contracts that require them to pay illegal fees.”

The verdict came in a federal class action lawsuit, Nunag Tanedo v. East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, brought on behalf of the teachers in August 2010. The teachers are represented by the SPLC, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP.

The teachers began arriving in the United States in 2007 as part of the H-1B guest-worker program administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. H-1B visas permit foreign nationals with special skills to work in the United States for up to six years. Most teachers paid the placement service about $16,000 – several times the average household income in the Philippines – to obtain their jobs.

Nearly all the teachers had to borrow money to pay the recruiting fees. Sounds like a private school loan most young Americans endure to get the chance to be a teacher. The recruiters referred the teachers to private lenders who charged 3 to 5 percent interest per month. Teachers were forced to pay these exorbitant fees because they had already made substantial investments that would not be returned. The recruiters confiscated their passports and visas until they paid.

“This groundbreaking verdict affirms the principle that all teachers working in our public schools must be treated fairly, regardless of what country they may come from,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “The outrageous abuses provide dramatic examples of the extreme exploitation that can occur, even here in the United States, when there is no proper oversight of the professional recruitment industry. The practices involved in this case – labor contracts signed under duress and other arrangements reminiscent of indentured servitude – are things that should have no place in 21st-century America.”

Sorry Randi, but this is the way all teachers will be treated in the near future. Please don't think that this is a foreign labor affliction. OH wait you should know that. At least the AFT and the Southern Poverty Law Center went to bat for these unfortunate folks. This aid wouldn't have occurred if the NEA or the CTA were involved. It would be a fair bet they would have denied the occurrence. Just as they ignore similar treatment to members right now within their own ranks.

In addition to paying upfront fees, the teachers were forced to sign away an additional 10 percent of the salaries they would earn during their second year of teaching. Teachers who resisted signing the contracts were threatened with being sent home and losing the thousands of dollars they had already paid. The court declared those contracts illegal and unenforceable. “We are very pleased with the verdict in this case and proud to have stood by these brave teachers as they finally obtained justice,” said Dennis Auerbach, lead attorney on the case from Covington and Burling. The theft of thousands of dollars in earnings by California school districts from unsuspecting teachers is much the same. Only difference these folks had some top notch legal help. CTA pays its attorneys a BONUS to settle a case, even at the educators expense or ultimate firing. A percentage of the difference from the super secret maximum dollars in Billable Hours. Hell, as a victim, oops client, you can't even look at the billable hours charged. Speaking of QUALITY representation, when I asked my CTA "fraud" about my Weingarten, lybarger rights as well as due process per the the CTC, I was told, "some things have to be given away to grease the wheels and get things moving!" I had no say nor was I asked.