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7 Filipino Nurses Wins Case in New York
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Out of the 31 complainants, 7 Filipino nurses had won the case against recruitment agent SentosaCare LLC filed at the National Labor Recruitment Commission in Manila.
Thirty one nurses filed lawsuit against SentosaCare because it failed to fulfill its commitment to give jobs and deploy them to specific healthcare units as what is written on their contracts.
The NLRC headed by presiding commissioner Gerardo C. Nograles awarded the seven nurses the "unexpired portion of their basic salaries" totaling $186,000. Nograles, among the other two panels found out that the nurses were "constructively dismissed" from their jobs.
However, the cases filed by other 18 nurses were dismissed after the panels found lack of "quantum of evidence".
The ruling, which was handed down last Sept. 25 but made public only on Oct. 13, reversed an earlier ruling of executive labor arbiter Fatima Jambato-Franco that dismissed the case on January 24, 2008.
The National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCon) executive vice president Rico Foz said that the decision was a "victory for the nurses, as the decision now finds wrongdoing on the part of the Sentosa employers."
"But let us not lower down our guard. Justice has not been truly served yet by this decision. While it is an improvement on how Philippine labor agencies look at the nurses' complaints, the decision merely throws bones to the nurses and to all of us who support the nurses," he added.
Nafcon is one of the lead convenors of the campaign launched in the US in 2006 to help the nurses from exploitation and threats by their employers.
The nurses who won the case are Maria Theresa Ramos, Jennifer Lampa, Carlo Conrad Garcia, Rizza P. Maulion, Riche P. Salve, Annabelle Capulong and Maria Consuelo Gonzales.
They were former nurses at Avalon Gardens Nursing Home in Long Island, New York, who resigned from their positions as contract nurses with the SentosaCare LLC.
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