Health Care Bosses Target Filipino Nurses

Defend the Sentosa 27!

Ten Filipino immigrant nurses and their lawyer await trial on April 28 in Suffolk County, New York, on bogus charges of conspiracy and “patient endangerment”—when not a single patient was in fact endangered or even inconvenienced. This vindictive and unprecedented prosecution is retaliation for the nurses’ decision to stand up to their employer SentosaCare, the largest for-profit nursing home business in the state, and its Manila-based recruiting agency.

The attack on these immigrant workers, who are among the many thousands of Filipino nurses hired to work in the U.S. to alleviate a severe nursing shortage, points to the precarious situation of immigrants as a whole. Sentosa paid the nurses reduced wages, denied them promised benefits, subjected them to intolerable working conditions and, in some cases, forced them to work miles away from the home they had been assigned to. “You were treated like dirt,” said Juliet Anilao, a mother of two and one of the ten indicted nurses. In April 2006, after the company ignored their complaints, these ten nurses, along with 16 other nurses and a physical therapist collectively known as the Sentosa 27, filed discrimination suits against the nursing homes. They resigned their jobs in protest as a last resort, believing the inaction of the nursing home bosses was putting the patients at risk. Now the ten nurses face 12 counts, each carrying a potential sentence of one year in prison, the loss of their nursing licenses and deportation. The courage shown by the Sentosa 27 has prompted other Filipino nurses victimized by Sentosa to come forward.

The manufactured allegations of “endangerment” were already dismissed in September 2006 by the New York State Education Department, and another report issued this January by the New York State Department of Health also cleared the nurses. Not only did the nurses not place any patients in jeopardy, but they purposely quit at the end of their shifts, having completed all their duties and knowing the next shift would be covered. As a representative of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) stated in support of the Filipino nurses: “It’s clear to us that this employer wants free rein to bring nurses to this country under false pretenses, treat them like indentured servants, and threaten them with imprisonment if they don’t keep quiet and obey orders.” Drop all charges against the Filipino nurses and their lawyer, Felix Vinluan! Throw out the bosses’ civil suit! Immediate compensation of all wages due!

The trade unions which organize nurses in the U.S. and wield real social power, like 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East and AFSCME, as well as the NYSNA and California Nurses Association (CNA), should organize all Filipino and other immigrant nurses with full union rights regarding working conditions, wages and benefits. This must be part of a union drive to organize all the unorganized and must be linked to the fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants! These nurses, like all other immigrant workers, are an integral part of the U.S. working class. The ten nurses under indictment worked at the Avalon Gardens nursing home, where aides and other workers are organized by 1199. However, management kept the Filipino nurses out of the union by categorizing them as “supervisors.” The capitalist government, through its National Labor Relations Board, expanded the use of this union-busting ploy with its ruling on the “Kentucky River” cases in October 2006 (see “Fight NLRB Union Busting!”, WV No. 882, 8 December 2006).

The NYSNA and CNA have issued support statements, and the NYSNA had a contingent at a rally for the Sentosa 27 last year. Members of these unions understand that if the victimization of these Filipino nurses is allowed to stand, it will set a precedent for attacks on all nurses, especially those considering strike action. But the union bureaucrats dodge a real fight to defend the Sentosa nurses, instead channeling union efforts into the self-defeating strategy of lobbying capitalist politicians, usually Democrats but at times Greens and Republicans.

The NYSNA, along with other groups in the campaign for the Sentosa 27, has thrown its weight behind calls for Democratic New York governor Eliot Spitzer to appoint a special prosecutor to handle the cases against the nurses. Soon after the petition campaign for a special prosecutor began, Sentosa started pouring thousands of dollars into Spitzer’s campaign coffers. The same Spitzer, as state Attorney General, invoked the slave-labor Taylor Law in an attempt to crush the 2005 New York City transit strike.

And it was liberal New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer who bailed out the Sentosa bosses when the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) suspended Sentosa’s recruiting license in May 2006 after the nurses filed complaints. Schumer lobbied the Philippine government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The POEA quickly reinstated Sentosa’s license. Sentosa’s associates promptly donated $75,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) headed by Schumer. Sentosa had earlier given some $125,000 to the DSCC and to Schumer’s re-election committee. This is how capitalist “democracy” works. As Schumer explained in his own defense: “I regard it as part of my job to help New York companies.”

Schumer’s Long Island finance chairman, Howard Fensterman, also happens to be Sentosa’s chief attorney. In May of 2006, Fensterman and the Sentosa bosses met with Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota, a Democrat who received campaign contributions from Fensterman, to push for prosecution of the nurses. Last March, Spota indicted the nurses as well as their lawyer, who also was hit with the bogus charge of “criminal solicitation” for advising the workers of their legal rights. The prosecution of the nurses’ lawyer serves to strip the nurses of the right to adequate defense and in general to chill expressions of dissent.

The struggle of the Sentosa 27 shows how the union bureaucrats’ strategy of reliance on the Democrats is a recipe for disaster. This support to the political parties of the capitalist class enemy flows from the union tops’ acceptance and defense of the capitalist profit system and of the “national interests” of U.S. imperialism. In opposition to the class-collaborationist union tops, workers need to forge a classstruggle leadership in the unions—a leadership that will fight for a workers party independent of and opposed to all the parties of the capitalist class. We need a workers state where those who labor rule! Break with the Democrats! For a revolutionary workers party that fights for a workers government!

Suffolk County, a racist hellhole for blacks and immigrants, is one of the most segregated regions in the U.S. Last year, Spota oversaw the outrageous prosecution and conviction of John White, a courageous black man who now faces 15 years in prison for the crime of defending his home and family against a racist mob of white youth (see “John White Must Go Free!”, WV No. 905, 4 January). Suffolk County has long been awash in anti-immigrant racism, with the police rounding up “illegal” immigrant workers and policies that make “standing while Latino” illegal. A local reverend has accused the Democratic County Executive of “ethnic cleansing.”

Filipino nurses make up the largest section of a huge number of foreign-trained nurses now working in the U.S. The nursing shortage is due primarily to a lack of nursing schools and teachers, and many nurses leave the profession due to the low pay and horrible working conditions. The U.S. Health and Human Services Department estimates that 8.5 percent of the nursing positions in the U.S. are now unfilled and that by 2020 there may be 810,000 unfilled nursing positions. Thousands of patients die each year as a result of inadequate staffing, just one example of how capitalism sacrifices lives for profits.

Schumer’s intervention to revoke the suspension of Sentosa touched off a storm of outrage in the Philippines. The Arroyo regime, backed by U.S. imperialism, is responsible for a bloody campaign of terror against leftists, workers and peasants (see “Philippines: Down With Arroyo’s Reign of Terror!”, WV No. 878, 13 October 2006). “Labor export” has been official government policy for over 30 years in this impoverished neocolony and remittances from overseas workers—including seamen and household servants, many of whom are brutally mistreated—account for some 10 percent of the national income. Some 120,000 Filipino nurses went abroad to work last year alone. The Sentosa 27 have won wide support in both the U.S. and the Philippines, including from the Philippine Nurses Association, the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns, the Alliance of Health Workers in the Philippines, and the International Alliance of Filipino Migrant Organizations. Faced with popular outrage, the Philippine parliament has held hearings into the case and Arroyo pledged a token amount of money for the Sentosa nurses’ legal defense last November. Predictably, in early February the Philippine Department of Justice decided not to prosecute Sentosa for its recruitment practices.

As the Sentosa 27 show, Filipino immigrant workers can be a bridge between the multiracial working class in the imperialist U.S. and workers in the Philippines. Workers in the U.S. must fight against the imperialist subjugation of the Philippines and demand the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and bases from there. A revolutionary workers party in the U.S. would support the struggles of the Filipino workers and oppressed against their own bourgeoisie, lackeys of U.S. imperialism. As we wrote in “U.S. Troops Out of the Philippines!” (WV No. 779, 19 April 2002): “The United States and Philippine bourgeoisies have enjoyed a neocolonial ‘special relationship’ spanning decades. The special relationship that the Philippine and American workers must have is one of internationalist working-class solidarity. Led by a revolutionary workers party, the American working class will fulfill its task of aiding the enslaved masses of the semicolonies by carrying out a proletarian revolution in the bastion of world imperialism.”

The Partisan Defense Committee, a legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League, has contributed to the legal defense for the Sentosa 27. Send donations to: Sentosa 27 Legal Defense Trust, P.O. Box 730505, Elmhurst, NY 11373.