Labor Abuse

Trafficked Filipino Teachers Win $4.5 Million Lawsuit Over LA-based Recruitment Company

Trafficked Filipino Teachers Win $4.5 Million Lawsuit Over LA-based Recruitment Company

Excerpt: A U.S. appeals court Monday, December 1 upheld a jury’s $4.5 million award to a class of roughly 350 Filipino teachers who accused recruitment companies of demanding they pay massive processing and placement fees or face losing their jobs in Louisiana. 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. News story from Inquirer.net.

Tricked and Indebted on Land, Abused or Abandoned at Sea unveils abuse of Filipino seafarers

Tricked and Indebted on Land, Abused or Abandoned at Sea unveils abuse of Filipino seafarers

When Eril Andrade left this small village, he was healthy and hoping to earn enough on a fishing boat on the high seas to replace his mother’s leaky roof.

Seven months later, his body was sent home in a wooden coffin: jet black from having been kept in a fish freezer aboard a ship for more than a month, missing an eye and his pancreas, and covered in cuts and bruises, which an autopsy report later concluded had been inflicted before death.

Story from Ian Urbina, New York Times.