Teachers from the Philippines victimized by labor traffickers; hundreds win lawsuit in the U.S.

HUNDREDS of teachers from the Philippines won a multi-million dollar lawsuit when a U.S. appeals court last week upheld a decision against the placement agency that brought them to the U.S.

A $4.5 million award to about 350 Fllipinos was upheld Dec. 1. The teachers from the Philippines accused recruitment companies of demanding they pay massive processing and placement fees or face losing their teaching positions in Louisiana.

The Ninth Circuit decided that Los Angeles-based Universal Placement International Inc. and its principal, Lourdes “Lulu” Navarro, had to pay back the fees, along with about $1.3 million in attorneys’ fees. A class of 347 Filipino teachers, who came to the United States to work on H-1B guest worker visas, said recruitment agencies and their agents misled them and collected millions of dollars in fees, according to Courthouse News Service. They reportedly paid up to $16,000 each to work in public schools in Louisiana.

Louisiana school districts hired Universal International Placement, based in Los Angeles Koreatown, its president Lourdes “Lulu” Navarro, a Filipino/American, and Quezon City-based PARS International Placement Agency, to recruit the teachers.

“The outrageous conduct by the companies that recruited these teachers and those who assisted them in carrying out their scheme is part of a larger pattern of exploitation that we’ve documented in guestworker programs,” said SPLC Legal Director Mary Bauer, author of the 2007 report Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States. “It’s clear that the very structure of the program lends itself to pervasive worker abuse. Guestworker programs should not be the model for immigration reform.”

RELATED: Summary of complaint

About 200 of the teachers were assigned to the East Baton Rouge school system; others were spread among the Caddo Public School District, Jefferson Parish Public School System and the Recovery School District as well as other school districts in Louisiana," according to an AFT press release. Only the East Baton Rouge district was named as a defendant.

Instead of the American dream, they found themselves living in a nightmare. 

They suffered from culture shock in the American schools. In the U.S., students talked back and could not sit still — not like the students in the Philippines.

“Every afternoon, as soon as the bell rang, I was crying,” said Ingrid Cruz, a graduate of a prestigious University in the Philippines who was hired to teach sixth-grade science. “I didn’t expect them to be that rude.”

They also faced hostility from locals who accused them of stealing jobs.

“It was overwhelming for them,” said Donnabel Escuadra-Rayburn, who arrived in 2008. “My paraprofessional had been working 10 years. He was a good teacher, but he couldn’t pass his certification exam, so he lost his job.”

The teachers began arriving in the United States in 2007 after each paid about $16,000, several times the average household income in the Philippines, to obtain the jobs. The H-1B guestworker program, administered by the Department of Labor, permits foreign nationals with special skills to work in the United States for a period of up to six years.
Nearly all the teachers had to borrow money to pay the recruiting fees; the recruiters referred them 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 financial investments that would not be returned and because the recruiters confiscated their passports and visas until they paid. 

The teachers were also 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 they had already paid. The recruiters also charged fees for arranging substandard housing and threatened teachers who complained or sought to move to a new location.

The teachers were represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP.

“The jury sent a clear message that exploitive and abusive business practices involving federal guestworkers will not be tolerated,” said Mary Bauer, legal director for the SPLC. “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."
“These teachers have been victimized in ways reminiscent of the worst abuses students learn about in history class: labor contracts signed under duress and arrangements that remind us of indentured servitude,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “The goal of this lawsuit is to put an end to this exploitation, which should have no place in 21st-century America.”

In the interim, math and science scores began climbing in East Baton Rouge. Cruz started a robotics club. She and her colleagues had grown so fond of their students that it actually hurt their case. How can you assert human trafficking cases if the teachers liked their jobs?

Navarro claimed bankruptcy, so they don’t expect the money. But the verdict means they are free. They don’t owe her anymore.