Maryland teachers, mostly Pinoys, to receive $4.2M in back wages

More than 1,000 foreign schoolteachers in Maryland, mostly Filipinos, will receive more than $4 million from an operator of public primary and secondary schools in the US state. According to a news report posted on Asian Journal website, the US Department of Labor has ordered Maryland’s Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) to repay $4.2 million to 1,044 foreign schoolteachers, about 800 of which are Filipinos. The report said the order was rendered after the US government found that the schoolteachers were illegal required to pay fees that should have been handled by their employers. The US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division revealed that PGCPS illegally slashed the wages of the foreign schoolteachers hired under the H-1B program, the report added. This, according to the report, is a violation of the laws governing the H-1B temporary foreign worker visa program. “All employers, including school systems, are required to follow the law. That includes the legal duty to pay every teacher hired the full wages he or she is owed," said Nancy Leppink, acting administrator of the Wage and Hour Division. The US Department of Labor imposed a $1.7-million fine on the public school’s operator and barred it from hiring foreign workers for at least two years, the report said. The Asian Journal report, quoting the department, said employers who hire foreign professionals must be paid at least the same wage rates and benefits as those paid to US workers performing the same job in the area. An Associated Press report said the Maryland’s second-largest school system will dispute the department’s findings and will institute an appeal. “This determination penalizes a school system that has strived to obtain qualified teachers in the same or similar manner used by other school systems throughout the country," the US Department of Labor said in a statement. The department’s investigation of this case has been going on since 2007. PGCPS had been doing settlement talks with the department only for about six months. Carlo Parapara, president of the Pilipino Educators Network, an alliance of Filipino teachers that was formed in 2010, believes that the school teachers were "victims." “When we were recruited initially, these fees were collected from us. Therefore, it should be returned to us," Parapara said. US Department of Labor data showed that the affected schoolteachers were hired between 2005 and 2010. Meanwhile, the American Federation of Teachers called the alleged illegal activity appalling, its president, Randi Weingarten, said in the Asian Journal’s report. The group has likewise been pushing for legislation to regulate the recruitment industry, Weingarten said. According to the report, PGCPS employs around 9,000 schoolteachers overseeing 130,000 students. In 2009, the average yearly salary of a teacher with a bachelor’s degree was $59,000, while a teacher with a master’s degree could earn about $79,000, the report said. – JE, GMA News