Trial of 10 Sentosa nurses in NY set

February 22, 2008  --  Got something to say?
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NEW YORK The New York Times late last month published a comprehensive story about the Filipino nurses who are now facing indictment for abruptly resigning from their jobs in protest against the alleged violations of their contract by the recruiting agency in New York.

The story, titled Filipino Nurses, Healers in Trouble by Joseph Berger and published in the Jan. 28 issue of the New York Times traced the treatment they got from SentosaCare, the NY-based recruiter. The trial, originally scheduled for Jan. 28 has been reset for April 28.

In other developments, - Philippine Vice President Noli De Castro has called for the establishment of agreements with individual states of the United States on the recruitment of Filipino nurses to protect them from abuse and avoid a repetition of the Sentosa case. De Castro said in his radio program there was a need to take a second look at the policy of direct hiring of nurses considering that there were 21,000 of them who passed the recent National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) being administered by the US government.
- In NY, Assistant District Attorney Leonard Lato said the Health Departments review, along with a State Education Department investigation finding that the nurses did nothing wrong when they resigned en masse in April 2006, were not thorough and should not be admissable as evidence.

- On Feb. 2, the Philippine Department of Justice (DoJ) ruled out criminal liability against SentosaCare. In its seven-page resolution, the DoJ, through Senior State Prosecutor Lilian Doris Alejo, said there were no substantive alterations in the employment contract to warrant the filing of the suit against Sentosa.
Ten of the original 21 nurses who quit because the terms of their contract were reportedly not implemented are facing indictment in Suffolk county on charges of endangering the welfare of five chronically ill children and one terminally ill man. They are accused of walking off their jobs at the Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Smithtown in April 2006 without providing sufficient notice for the nursing home to replace them on coming shifts.

If convicted, they face up to one year in jail and revocation of their nursing license. The district attorneys office conceded that the patients suffered no harm, and acknowledged that it could not recall a similar prosecution against nurses in the state. But it said the nurses crime was serious: four of the children they left behind were on ventilators that demand round-the-clock monitoring.

The case has drawn wide attention and outrage in the Philippines, where legislators have held hearings into how the nurses were treated by the company that recruited them. Filipinos there and in the United States have rallied to support the nurses, joined by the American Nurses Association, which has said in a statement that the real patient endangerment lies in the deplorable conditions that led the nurses to leave.

There have been charges that political influence has been involved in the case against the nurses, including the involvement of Sen. Charles Schumer who wrote a letter to the Philippine president on behalf of SentosaCare.

The Times said this was a startling anomaly in what has been a remarkably successful migration of people seeking to work in a single occupation. More than half of American nurses trained abroad are from the Philippines, and they alleviate a perennial shortage of nurses in this country.

It said that Of the New York areas 215,000 Filipinos, 3 out of 10 work as nurses or other health-care practitioners, according to an analysis of Census Bureau.

The indicted nurses pose a strange counterpoint to that success: the image of highly educated legal immigrants complaining about being exploited as green, overly trusting newcomers, the Times said as it interviewed some of the nurses.

The nurses came in November, 2005 to work for SentosaCare, a network of 16 nursing homes with headquarters in Woodmere, N.Y., and operated by Benjamin Landa of Brooklyn and Bent Philipson of Monsey, N.Y. Mr. Landa owns eight other homes independently, and together with SentosaCare, the network of 24 homes has more than 5,000 patients and 5,000 employees.

They said they were promised they would earn the same pay as American nurses and would quickly receive green cards giving them the status of permanent residents. But the nurses said that after two months, they were paid as clerks with salaries that were far below that of a nurse. It took more than half a year to get the green card and they were made to sleep in couches in frigid rooms. Instead of working in the Queens facility that had sponsored their entry, they were assigned to Avalon, 40 miles east.

When they finally received nurses pay, they said it was $24 an hour instead of the $34 that was promised them.

Howard Fensterman, SentosaCares lawyer, denied that the nurses were mistreated or shortchanged, and rejected complaints that staffing was inadequate.

The nurses say that when their complaints went unaddressed, they turned to the Philippines consulate in New
York, which put them in touch with an immigration lawyer, Felix Vinluan who is now himself included in the suit.

Still, the nurses say, they left confident that the elderly and the patients in a pediatric unit would be taken care of because they knew of nurses waiting for assignment in two other SentosaCare staff houses.
This was then followed by suits and countersuits both in New York and in Manila.
?Because I made a $1,500 contribution to Tom Spota four years before, does that mean that I?m disenfranchised from seeking the help of an elected official?? Mr. Fensterman asked.

James O. Druker, a lawyer for the nurses, argues that the case should never have been brought. Mr. Vinluan, he said, was indicted for giving the nurses legally correct advice and his clients were indicted for following his advice.”

It took months for some of the nurses to find other jobs, they say, because every time they applied employers would Google their names and up would pop articles about the indictment. Mr. Jacinto and Ms. Anilao now work at a hospital in Queens.

Asked why Sentosa had to go to this extend, Fensterman said, that if nurses can simply walk out on patients with impunity, that is a danger for all Americans, whether in nursing homes or hospitals.”

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