Congratulations to the Southern Poverty Law Center!

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 guestworker 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 guestworkers 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.”

FILED UNDER: Guestworkers

from the EEOC:

Hispanic  Workers Were Singled Out for Harassment, Agency Charged

DALLAS - Air Express International, USA, Inc. and Danzas  Corporation, doing business as DHL Global Forwarding, will pay $201,000  to nine employees and provide other significant relief to settle a national  origin hostile environment lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment  Opportunity Commission (EEOC).  The  settlement, announced today, resolves the EEOC's and Plaintiff-Intervenor  Carlos Villanueva's claims against DHL Global.   The EEOC charged DHL Global with subjecting a class of Hispanic employees to national origin  discrimination.  The EEOC's suit also  resolved a retaliation claim by one non-Hispanic employee who was allegedly  fired for a brief time after he reported the treatment of Hispanic employees.

FILED UNDER: EEOC

From Centro de los Derechos del Migrante:

The Mexican National Administrative Office (NAO) issued an opinion in response to petitions filed by U.S. and Mexican workers' rights advocates for violations of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC).  In its decision, the NAO agreed that apparent violations had occurred denying workers protection under the NAALC.  The opinion calls on the Mexican Department of Labor to meet and confer with U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis to examine what is being done to guarantee H-2 workers' rights.  Rachel Micah-Jones, Executive Director of Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc., (CDM), stated, "This opinion is groundbreaking and comes at an incredibly important time - on the heels of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto's visit last week with President Obama, and the renewed bipartisan interest in addressing immigration reform."

FILED UNDER: Guestworkers | Human Rights

The Worker’s Justice Project, located in Jackson Heights, New York, is a collectively-formed organizing project to empower low-wage immigrant workers to change conditions that lead to exploitation, strengthen the grassroots base of the labor movement, and to create grassroots economic change.  For more than a decade, the Bay Parkway Community Job Center has served as an important community resource for countless workers. The job center, however, was not spared by Hurricane Sandy, which destroyed the worker center and the surrounding area. Day laborers—who are playing a critical role in the recovery of the area, even forming a volunteer brigade to help with the cleanup—now lack a central space to meet employers.

FILED UNDER:

Congratulations to the UC Irvine School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic and the Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center!

LONG BEACH, Calif. Eighteen hotel employees reached a $130,000 settlement with HEI Hotels and Resorts over denial of meal and rest breaks required by California law. The settlement arose from claims filed with the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement by employees of the Hilton Long Beach and Executive Meeting Center, owned and managed by HEI.

In hearings before the Labor Commissioner, workers described facing direct pressure from supervisors to work through meals and to skip rest breaks to keep up with increasingly heavy workloads. Some employees suffered injuries due to the unremitting nature of their work. Employees in the hotel’s kitchen, restaurant, room service, banquet services and housekeeping departments stepped forward to participate in the legal action. Most of the workers are “back of the house” monolingual Spanish speakers.

FILED UNDER: Immigrant Workers | State Departments of Labor | Wage Theft