Filipino RNs claim Glen Island nursing home exploited immigration status

Filipino registered nurses employed by Glen Island Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation are invoking the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act in lawsuits brought against the New Rochelle nursing home.

Philippine-trained RNs claim they were recruited to work at the facility with promises of securing permanent residency status and then coerced into signing a $25,000 payback indenture that trapped them into working for substandard compensation for years.

Jo-Ann Heram S. Esturas sued Glen Island Center and its CEO, Leah Friedman, Nov. 20 in U.S. District Court, White Plains. Her suit is nearly identical to a complaint filed on Oct. 12 by Dana Faye C. Go, on behalf of herself and more than 40 Filipino nurses employed by the nursing home since 2013.

Glen Island Center is a 183-bed facility owned by Maury Flax, who is not named as a defendant in either lawsuit. The nursing home did not reply to a message asking for its responses to the allegations.

Filipino nurses dream of working in the United States, both complaint states, because wages are higher and the jobs offer a “way to get out of poverty and to improve (their) station in life.”

Esturas says she was recruited in 2021 with an offer by Glen Island Center to sponsor her immigration process and obtain her green card for permanent resident status. She was to be paid the U.S. Department of Labor prevailing wage for registered nurses in Westchester County.

She agreed to work for three years after receiving her green card, and if she left before the end of her contract, to pay back $25,000 to the nursing home.

The complaints describe the terms as “take-it-or-leave it.”

Esturas started in November 2022.

She claims she had to do the work of two nurses, caring for 36 to 48 rehabilitation and long-term care patients, or about 10 minutes per patient per shift.

(The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services currently ranks Glen Island Center as average in its overall rating. It was below average for the total number of nursing hours per day per resident. But the breakout for registered nurses was 42 minutes per resident per day, two minutes better than the national average.)

Esturas typically came in early and stayed late, according to the complaint. She had to clock out for 30 minutes a day for a meal but used some of that uncompensated time to do her job.

The nursing home allegedly used a finger scan clock that did not allow employees to check in or out for duty by more than seven minutes greater than their designated hours.

She regularly worked extra hours but received no overtime compensation, according to the complaint. She was paid $36.32 an hour, $2.02 less than the actual prevailing wage.

Esturas desribes a brutal patient load and work pace.

“Despite her best efforts,” the complaint states, “she often could not physically get to patients fast enough to give them their medications on time, or to protect them against falls. (She) commonly heard her patients moaning in agony as they waited for her or anyone else to provide them with care.

“Patients … had to wait for some time to eat because (she) did not have the capacity to assist them. Patients frantically used their call buttons and rang them repeatedly to alert staff of their medical needs, including issues like pain, feeding, wet diapers and falls.”

Esturas says she feared that something would go wrong and she would lose her license, “or worse … the death of a patient.”

Many nights, she says, she cried when she returned home from work, feeling desperate, helpless, depressed, trapped and scared.

On Nov. 20, she resigned.

She has not received her green card yet, and she fears her former employer will demand the $25,000 payback.

Her lawsuit, as well as the previous class action case filed by Dana Go, accused Glen Island Center of violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act by, for instance, obtaining their labor by threats of serious harm and abuse of the legal process.

The nurses are asking the court to prohibit Glen Island Center from enforcing the $25,000 payback penalty and to compensate them for all time worked.