From Findlaw website:
Suit Alleges Exploitation of Filipino TeachersIf you ask, most teachers will tell you their job is much more difficult than it looks. Most will tell you they feel underpaid and under-appreciated. However, a lawsuit filed in California on Thursday, August 5, takes those difficulties and pushes them to the level of exploitation, at least according to the claims of the plaintiffs. This class action suit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of plaintiffs claims that 350 Filipino teachers were lured to the U.S. and forced by debt, high fees and confiscated passports into virtual slavery.
The suit was filed against the Los Angeles-based Universal Placement International Inc., its owner Lourdes Navarro, her husband, Universal's sister operation in the Philippines, and the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board. Charges include racketeering and fraud on behalf of the plaintiff teachers working in schools in New Orleans, according to a report by the Associated Press. The suit alleges that the teachers were recruited in the Philippines and brought to the U.S. under the H1-B visa. Before ever leaving their country, the teachers were required to pay about $16,000 in fees. Since this amount is close to five times the average income in the Philippines, the teachers often borrowed the money, sometimes from lenders recommend by the recruiting firm and charging huge interest rates, according to the suit.
..."Complaints about the defendants Universal Placement International and Navarro were made as early as last October when the Louisiana Federation of Teachers filed complaints with state authorities claiming UPI was operating illegally in the state and charging the teachers exorbitant fees. In April, a state labor department judge ordered the company to refund fees estimated by the Federation to be around $1.8 million. UPI's attorney said they will appeal the ruling.
USA Today reports California lawyer for the Navarros, Robert Silverman, denied all allegations, saying they had been dismissed previously by federal immigration agencies. "I am not aware of anyone who has forced any teacher to do anything against their free will," Silverman said in a statement.
Here is more from Businessweek:
Lawsuit filed against Filipino teachers' recruiterA class-action lawsuit accuses a Los Angeles-based company of a human trafficking scheme to bring hundreds of Filipino teachers to Louisiana public schools using exploitative contracts that charged them excessive, illegal fees.
Universal Placement International Inc. and its owner Lourdes Navarro are accused of racketeering and fraud in a lawsuit that the American Federation of Teachers and the Southern Poverty Law Center said they filed Thursday in a California federal court on behalf of 350 teachers.
"We were herded onto a path, a slowly constricting path, where the moment you realize that something is not right, you were already past the point of no return," said Ingrid Cruz, one of the teachers named as a plaintiff in the case, reading from a prepared statement. Cruz teaches science and robotics classes at a Baton Rouge-area middle school.
The lawsuit says the company illegally required the teachers to pay thousands of dollars in fees to be hired to jobs mainly in East Baton Rouge Parish, but also in Caddo, Jefferson and other parishes and in state-run schools in New Orleans.
The blog Change.org goes on to call this a form of indentured servitude.
350 Fillipino Teachers Freed from Indentured Servitude in LouisianaMost people think of modern-day slaves as vulnerable, uneducated people. But the 350 teachers who were held in indentured servitude for over two years in Louisiana blow the lid off that preconception. They were recruited to teach in the U.S. because they had highly specialized skills, including robotics. And if engineers and teachers can fall victim to human trafficking, any one of us can.
Together, the teachers have filed a lawsuit against the two employment agencies which set them up with teaching gigs in Louisiana — Universal Placement International (UPI), based in Los Angeles, and PARS International Placement Agency, based in Manila. The teachers claim these agencies, along with at least three employees of the East Baton Rouge school system, helped recruit Filipino teachers for what they claimed were lucrative jobs in America. However, the fees to get visas and be transported to the U.S. were exorbitant, and the cost of the substandard housing they received was highly inflated as well. Teachers were expected to turn over 30% of their salaries for the first two years.
UPI brought the teachers to the U.S. on H-1B guest worker visas. These visas, which are often used by traffickers and people looking to exploit workers, give the carrier permission only to work for their sponsoring company. So if any of the teachers chose to leave her position at UPI, she could be deported back to the Philippines. The H-1B visa makes it almost impossible for someone who comes to America and ends up in an abusive job to simply move to another company. And it's a system that creates a perfect opportunity for exploitation.
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