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Philippine News: Sentosa-hired nurses decry abuses


NEW YORK — National Nurses Week was a bittersweet event for 26 Filipino nurses and a physical therapist who filed a class action suit against Sentosa Care for discriminatory workplace policies. When Mark de la Cruz, 29, a nurse from Manila, came to Brookhaven, New York in November 2004, he was full of dreams that he could earn well to support his relatives in the Philippines. He was recruited by Sentosa recruiting agency in Manila, promising pay of $21 to $24 an hour, free staff housing, reimbursement of licensing fees and other benefits. De la Cruz was brought to three-room staff house with 11 other nurses that he got to sleep on the floor on cold winter, with no proper heating. He and other nurses would use corrugated boxes to cover the broken walls and the windows and shield them from the cold. De La Cruz was assigned to take care of 100 dementia patients on a floor on an eight-hour shift in a health facility for sick seniors. Their pay of $24 per hour was lower than the $35 per hour being paid to nurses directly hired by the health facility. The contract showed that De la Cruz and other nurses had to work 40 hours, but the nursing facility cut back their hours to 35, that lessen their income. There was one week that De la Cruz was not paid for 35 hours work. When he complained, a supervisor of the facility slammed the door on his face. Other Filipino nurses complained that they were recruited to work for Sentosa on a contract, but ended up working for other nursing facilities, although still owned by Sentosa. They complained of delayed pay, non-payment of overtime and night differential, threats if they join a union and deception by the management. He said management largely ignored their complaints. De La Cruz, and 26 nurses resigned en masse from Sentosa Care Group after few months in the job. “We got tired of abuses and broken promises," he said. Last month, 10 Filipino nurses and their New York-based lawyer, pleaded not guilty to criminal cases filed by Sentosa for breach of a three-year contract. “That was the worst day of my life. I just wanted to disappear. We were branded as criminals after working hard," said De la Cruz. Two of the nurses charged were medical doctors in the Philippines but have been working as nurses in New York, lured by better pay. De La Cruz has found a nursing job at St. Vincent Hospital in Manhattan and rebuilding his life despite of pending cases. Lawyer Felix Vinluan said the nurses had resigned after finishing their shifts of assigned duties, and another set of nurses took over. It means the patients were properly taken care of. The nurses were charged at the Suffolk County Courthouse with five counts of endangering the welfare of a child and six counts of endangering the welfare of a physically disabled person. Vinluan said the nurses had filed a discrimination complaint at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC and would claim multi-million damages. The case was lodged against Sentosa Care group owner Bent Philipson, and the Filipino recruitment agency headed by Francis Luyun. “But Sentosa has political connection. If you have somebody in power, you can get away with anything," said Vinluan. The Philippines exports millions of nurses globally and the biggest source of foreign nurses in global market, the World Health Organization said. “This is a case that not only touches on massive labor law violations, but anti-trafficking and involuntary servitude as well, “ said Rico Foz, vice president of the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns. The Office of Professional Discipline of NY Board of Education cleared the nurses of any violations last year, but the criminal case at Suffolk County Supreme Court is still being heard. Nurses in a press conference Sunday shed tears as they recalled harassments, and unpaid working hours. Harriet Avila, a former nurse at Sentosa-Avalon said the management had forced her to wear a nurse’s supervisor ID so she would not be able to join the union and get benefits. According to Archiel Buagas, a former Sentosa agency nurse, the 27 had signed individual employment contracts to work directly as registered nurses with various nursing home facilities affiliated with both the Sentosa Recruitment Agency based in Ortigas Center in Pasig, and with Sentosa Care, LLC, a healthcare management company based in Woodmere, NY. In a sweeping manner, the contracts were violated by Sentosa Care LLC when the health workers were made to work as agency nurses of Prompt Nursing Employment Agency, dba Sentosa Services, versus as registered nurses for the nursing home facilities. “We do not seek to shatter the hopes and dreams of the thousands of nurses who seek to work abroad. We understand the conditions of poverty and joblessness in the Philippines leave us with no choice. We simply want to expose the truth and the deceit Sentosa is using to lure more of our compatriots into. We do not want others to have to suffer under these conditions," said Buagas. - Philippine News

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