|
The group of 27 migrant Filipino nurses who have
become world famous as the Sentosa 27 (actually one of them is a
therapist) have lost almost all of the legal and administrative
suits they have filed against the people and companies they allege
to have exploited them.
They are down but not out.
They have appealed the cases they have lost and more and more
nursing associations the world over are coming to their aid.
They were recruited—some as
early as in 2004—for jobs as nurses in the United States by
Philippine Overseas Employment Administration-approved Sentosa
Recruitment Agency. They did not know that SRA was just the
Philippine subsidiary or partner or affiliate of the New York based
Sentosa Group. [See “Sentosa Group wields power not just in the US
but also in the Philippines.”]
They all thought, signed their
contracts thinking, that they were being recruited as
“direct-hire” nurses by “direct-hire” nursing-home and
health-care industry employers (represented by SRA).
There lies the root of the
problem.
Nurses and health-caregivers can
get visas, employment and green cards (immigrant status visas)
either as employees of an employee-supplier or as employees of a
hospital or healthcare facility.
In both cases a recruitment
agency could be involved. The recruiter hands the nurse over
to the employee-supplier company or to the hospital in the America.
In the case of the Sentosa 27
(whom we now call the “Sentosa 27++” because more Filipino
nurses are similarly threatened) they were being recruited by SRA to
work for a personnel-supplier company in the USA, which apparently
happens to be a sister-company or affiliate-company or
associate-company of both SRA and the various healthcare facilities
to which the nurses were farmed out.
“Full of hopes, dreams and
optimism we signed the contract, not knowing any better the
disadvantage this contract held for us. We signed the contract with
a financial obligation should we pre-terminate the contract of three
years,” writes Maria Theresa G. Ramos, RN, BSN, in an open letter
titled “Breaking the silence…”
In their different health-care
facilities they were not being made to function as Registered Nurses
or Bachelor of Science in Nursing graduates.
She saw warning signs “that
things seem not right in the work place. The issues of understaffing
and lack of it, lack of proper training and orientation, the unpaid
nights shift differentials, workplace inequities, salary way, way
different from local [US] nurses, under limited permits yet we
worked without the direct supervision of an RN (which is the
condition of NYSED for the issuance of limited permits). The “No,
I can’t” is unheard of, it was always “you have to…”
When most of them could not bear
it any longer they reviewed their contracts. Ms. Ramos
continues, “rights as immigrants were discussed and it became an
opportunity to be better-informed. There are provisions in the
contract that was violated by the agency while all along day by day
we’ve tried to follow every provision in the contract as faithful
as we can.
“A case in point,” she
writes, “we were prohibited to work for any other employer and we
never did, then finding out later on that as an immigrant we have
the right to work wherever we want to, provided we fulfill our
obligations with the petitioning employer.”
But as it turned out the
petitioning employers were actually in the same Sentosa Group as
their original recruiter in Manila and the agency that became their
real boss in New York.
So, they ended up with a lawyer,
Atty. Felix Vinluan, and filed suits— most which they have lost so
far.
For more details of the unhappy
plight of the Sentosa 27++ read all the stories by Times Senior Desk
Editor Nora O. Gamolo and the position paper of the Philippine
Nurses Association that we offer you in this special report.
--Rene Q. Bas, Editor in Chief
|
