Judge awards $15.2 million to exploited Filipino workers

The Beverly Hills bakery where the Filipinos worked has been closed

ELEVEN FILIPINO workers were awarded over $15 million in a lawsuit against their former employers, whose claim of labor exploitation and human trafficking was uncontested 

The workers were trafficked to the United States to serve as domestic servants and back-of-the-house employees at two high-end bakeries owned by defendants Analiza and Goncalo Moitinho de Almeida.

“Because of this judgment, all the heartache and suffering we had to endure because of Ana’s greed has not been for nothing,” said Gina Pablo, one of the workers.

On May 2, 2016, Judge Fernando M. Olguin of the United States District Court for the Central District of California granted to the workers a default judgment of $15.2 million in damages and fees. 

The defendants subjected the workers to abusive conditions, including workdays as long as 17 hours and wages as low as three dollars an hour. They verbally abused the workers, forced them to do landscaping and cleaning at their home, referred to them as “dogs,” and imposed $11,000 in debt bondage on each worker. The defendants also threatened to cancel the workers’ visas and after the lawsuit was filed, threatened to harm them and their families in the Philippines. 

On March 18, 2015, with the help of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles (Advancing Justice-LA) and the law firm Latham & Watkins LLP, the workers sued the defendants for human trafficking, RICO violations, and violations of federal and state labor, retaliation, and whistleblower laws.

Ana de Almeida is the daughter of politically connected Juan B. Santos, the Chairman of Philippines' Social Security Commission/Social Security System and a retired CEO of Nestle Philippines. 

RELATED: Filipino bakery workers worked for $3 per hour

The 11 Filipino workers came to the U.S. on E-2 visas, which give immigrants with specialized skills authorization to work for a foreign national who has invested a substantial amount of money in a U.S.-based business.

Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, the Almeidas rapidly began liquidating their assets, including fraudulently encumbering and selling their million-dollar residence in Rolling Hills Estates, Calif., to keep the property and the proceeds from its sale out of the workers’ hands. The workers amended the complaint to add fraudulent transfer claims. By August 2015, the defendants had fled overseas and instructed their lawyers to “take no further action in defending the lawsuit.”

Judge Olguin voided the defendants’ fraudulent transfers and took steps to prevent them for further moving their assets. Advancing Justice-LA and Latham & Watkins are now pursuing steps to enforce the judgment.

"We are thrilled that the court has awarded the entirety of the requested relief, especially after the defendants did everything in their power, including breaking the law, to avoid accountability to our clients,” said Sid Nadkarni, associate at Latham & Watkins.

According to the Philippine Department of Labor & Employment, an average of 6,092 Filipinos are forced to migrate everyday in order to work abroad totaling up to 12 million Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) around the world creating the Filipino Diaspora. In 2014 alone, $26 billion in remittances have been sent back to the Philippines, a majority of which been sent by OFWs in the U.S. (Source: Bangko Central ng Pilipinas). 

Advancing Justice-LA has also secured special immigration status for the workers as victims of human trafficking, which also provides work authorization so the workers can begin rebuilding their lives and reunite with their families.

“I’m so relieved about the judgment. All the stress that we went through is over. All the fears that the Almeidas imposed on us are gone. We can now focus on our new jobs and look forward to reuniting with our family soon,” said Armelinda de la Cerna, another worker.

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For more news about Asian/Americans & Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News

New York nail salons clipped; owe workers $2 million in back wages

THE NEW YORK STATE Nail Salon Industry Enforcement Task Force directed 143 nail salons to pay $2 million in unpaid wages and damages to 652 employees. As the anniversary of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s creation of the task force, and subsequent enactment of industry reforms approaches, industry workers and their advocates are heralding this recovery as another example of the “significant progress” Cuomo’s initiatives have ushered in.

“New York State is cracking down like never before on the unscrupulous individuals that take advantage of the hardworking people they employ,” Governor Cuomo said. “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work is a principle that this state was built upon and this administration is committed to stopping employers who exploit workers and deny them what they are rightfully owed.”

Nail salons already paid $1.1 million in back wages earlier this year, as the state continues to probe the nail industry following last year's New York Times investigative articles that found widespread underpayment and a pretty loose grasp of state labor laws.

RELATED: Nailed - Human trafficking in the Asian American community and the price of silence

Now, the New York Daily News reports, Cuomo is set to announce that the state’s Nail Salon Industry Enforcement Task Force has ordered a total of 143 salons to repay 652 workers, for a sum of $2 million in all.

Many salons employed undocumented workers who were forced to work for low wages out of fear of deportation. The shops were paying a weekly rate that was far below minimum wage, such as handing workers $200 for 40- to 50-hour workweeks. That is about half of minimum wage in the state of New York, which is currently $9 per hour. According to the NYTimes investigation by reporter Sarah Maslin Nir, some salons were paying workers nothing when they first started, until they proved their skills were up to par.

"Immigrant Asian and Latina workers now have more access to the licensing process, protections and training; and they know that the nail salon workers bill of rights and enforcement of the minimum wage and health and safety laws is on their side," said Charlene Obernauer, executive director of New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health.

After the NYTimes expose', Cuomo created the Nail Salon Industry Enforcement Task Force to address widespread exploitation and abuse of nail salon workers. Since that time, the task force, led by the New York State Department of Labor, has opened investigations into more than 450 nail salon businesses, with 383 being completed to date.

Following the task force’s creation, New York State enacted a series of nail salon industry reforms, ranging from a workers' bill of rights to protective equipment standards to posting notices in multiple languages including Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese.

A lawsuit filed by Korean and Chinese nail salon owners claiming that the original NYTimes articles were biased and questioning the need for state-mandated reforms, was dismissed by the New York courts in December 2015.

“The changes have been noticeable, now we are not forced to work 13-hour days without proper hourly wages," said Martha Narvaez, a nail salon worker. "Owners of salons cannot get away with free labor. If it's slow, we can go home, and if it's busy, we are happy to work more and earn more money.”

Nailed: Human trafficking in the Asian American community and the crime of silence

MANICURES and pedicures used to be vanities relegated to the rich, to that class of women who have nothing better to do than to look good. Nowadays, the procedures are so inexpensive, its as accessible and commonplace as having a haircut.

There's a reason the prices have come down so dramatically and it doesn't paint a pretty picture.

The recent series of articles that appeared in the New York Times this week, "The Price of Nice Nails", exposes the underside of all the manicures and pedicures loved by New York residents. New York City has the highest concentration of these shops catering to women of all classes. San Francisco and Los Angeles, the next largest concentrations of nail salons, have half as many per resident.

Its a form of human trafficking. Most people think human trafficking takes the form of prostitution. Sex trafficking is only one - albeit the most publicized - form of human trafficking. Contrary to popular belief, most of the sex trafficking victims are U.S citizens, not immigrants. 

Labor trafficking in the Asian American community is something no one wants to talk about. It is one of those stones no one wants to turn over for fear of what you might discover. But almost every new Asian immigrant knows someone, or is related to someone, who has been or is currently is in a trap between unscrupulous employers and the fear of deportation.

"Human trafficking," said President Obama, "must be called by its true name—modern slavery.

"Now, I do not use that word, 'slavery,' lightly," he said. "It evokes obviously one of the most painful chapters in our nation’s history. But around the world, there’s no denying the awful reality. When a man, desperate for work, finds himself in a factory or on a fishing boat or in a field, working, toiling, for little or no pay, and beaten if he tries to escape—that is slavery. When a woman is locked in a sweatshop, or trapped in a home as a domestic servant, alone and abused and incapable of leaving—that’s slavery."


Most of the women working in these salons are immigrants from Asia. Poor families often take loans or use their life savings to pay labor recruiters to take their daughter, sister or wife to America with the promise of untold fortune and opportunity. Some are enticed by promises of marriage to American citizens.

They speak little English and often paid below-minimum wage salaries. Their shaky immigration status makes them vulnerable to exploitation by their employers. 

RELATED:
Filipinos say they worked for $3 per hourDocumentary on Vietnamese Documentary on Asian Americans in the nail salon industry seeks funding Thoughts from a nail salon worker advocate  
7 steps to guilt-free manicures

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act defines labor trafficking as: "The recruitment, harboring, transportation provision or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery."

Labor trafficking is not limited to nail salons and it is not just a New York problem.

Part of the work I do in California is helping our local agencies educate the public about human trafficking, helping the victims connect to services and making sure that those exploiters, those pimps or manipulative employers are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. In the Bay Area, we have formed a collaborative of law agencies and nonprofits to combat the the second largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world with as many as 27 million individuals living in slavery-like conditions throughout the world. That is more enslaved people than existed during the American Civil War.

Victims of labor trafficking can be right under our noses. Besides nail salons, they can be found in garment-makers' sweatshops, attendants in nursing homes, or laborers in construction, agriculture, or as domestic servants working in the homes of the well to do or politically connected.

Labor abuse is probably most widely practiced in the restaurant industry where workers live in cramped quarters, work for low wages and their passports taken from them. In one northern California case, a Chinese restaurant was closed down and as investigators gathered their evidence, all their workers disappeared the next day. The employers gave them bus tickets to their restaurants in other cities or states, or they simply went into hiding. The investigators lost their witnesses. Some workers were eventually tracked down and convinced to testify so the district attorney could file charges against the restaurant owners.

Another case prosecuted in northern California involved owners of group homes that cared for the elderly. It was found that workers in these homes were untrained and underpaid and forced to work long hours without compensation.

Trafficking in human beings is rampant in California where victims can disappear into the large Latino and Asian networks. Language difficulties and fear of deportation make victims hesitant to come forth. In some instances, threats to relatives in their home countries reinforces their fear as is a pending case involving bakery workers in southern California.

Nail salons may be in the spotlight now, but the first series of labor abuses in that industry began appearing seven years ago. In some cases, after a long day of pampering customers, at night the women were forced into prostitution. The hoopla generated by the NYTimes just shows how influential and widely read the Gray Lady is. The mayor and governor promised to crack down on those illegal practices.

Law enforcement agencies have made human trafficking among their top priorities along with drug dealing and the illegal sale of weapons.

So what is one to do if you're hooked on this aspect of personal grooming? (Liberals are just as apt to have their nails done as conservatives.) Tipping more probably won't help. That just means more money for the owner if he/she decides to share the tips at all.

If you are really torn about the possibility that the woman painting your nails is being exploited, Slate makes a good point on this: "Consider asking your state legislator to properly fund the state labor department so that it has enough manpower to look into these abuses. Remember, there are similar problems across all sorts of industries, especially restaurants. (The poor guy delivering your Chinese food through the rain? There's a strong chance he's living off nothing but tips, as well). Leaving your manicurist an extra $5 isn't going to solve them."

The next time you feel like indulging yourself by getting your nails done and the cost is less than getting a meal at McDonalds, maybe its time to reconsider your options. Its your choice.

If you suspect human trafficking, or you're a victim:

Call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center at 1-888-373-7888.

Here are some cues to look for that might indicate human trafficking is taking place. 
The National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) is a national, toll-free hotline available to answer calls from anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year. The NHTRC is not a law enforcement or immigration authority and is operated by a nongovernmental organization funded by the federal government.