Decatur Hotels LLC. is being sued by Latin Americans hired as "guest workers" contending that they were recruited with false promises of good earnings but have been left with thousands of dollars of debt for the cost of visas, recruitment fees, and for travel here, as stated in this WashingtonPost.com article.
The 82 guest workders named in the lawsuit come from Bolivia, Peru and the Dominican Republic and paid $3,500 and $5,000 to recruiting firms working for Decatur Hotels LLC, which owns 15 hotels in the historic areas of New Orleans. The workers were hired to do maintenance, housekeeping and other service jobs and were replacing African Americans displaced by the storm.
"Under immigration law, they are bound to their employer and cannot legally work for anybody else," said Mary Bauer, attorney for the Immigrant Justice Project of the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which brought the suit with the Washington, D.C.-based National Immigration Law Center and New Orleans civil rights lawyer Tracie L. Washington. "Their debt makes them desperate to work -- but Decatur doesn't give them enough hours. And if they switch jobs, they're breaking the law. They are captive workers in a situation of virtual debt peonage."
Know More about recruiting at GoodRecruits.com.
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