SAN JOSE — County officers introduced a lawsuit Wednesday towards a Milpitas-based house care enterprise and three people who allegedly exploited a number of dozen immigrant care staff with wage theft and different labor legislation violations.
The people and residential care enterprise, which is named Safejourney Transport LLC and likewise operates below the identify Comfortable Journey Residence Care, are accused of paying lower than minimal wage, failing to pay additional time and failing to offer meal and relaxation breaks, amongst different illegal enterprise practices, in keeping with court docket filings.
The case, which resulted from a year-long investigation, names three defendants — Armando Ogerio de Castro, Jr., Michelle Sison Delos Reyes and Edmund Vasquez Olaso, LoPresti mentioned. The three defendants allegedly employed immigrant staff to offer live-in care to aged folks 24 hours per day and 7 days per week, with out meal and relaxation breaks, whereas paying “next to nothing” — in some circumstances, lower than $5 per hour, far under the state minimal wage of $16.50 per hour.
“The job these immigrant workers perform is grueling,” LoPresti mentioned. ” They’ve sole accountability to care for people with severe life wants. They help with bathing, with dressing, with toileting, with meals, with mobility. In essence, these staff are chargeable for holding these aged people alive and nicely.”
The three defendants and the enterprise couldn’t be reached for remark.
The county is in search of a direct injunction to stop any additional illegal exercise, in addition to restitution for the alleged wage theft and identification theft, mentioned Valerie Brender, deputy county counsel.
Brender added that the defendants “conspire together and work in coordination with each other,” operating some however not all the alleged criminality by the enterprise and a few in their very own names.
The defendants are additionally accused of failing to offer staff with wage statements, LoPresti added. They allegedly did not pay wages in a well timed method and upon separation of employment, in keeping with court docket paperwork.
In a minimum of one case, the defendants allegedly took an worker to the financial institution, opened an account in her identify, then confiscated her passport and financial institution playing cards to make use of the account with out her consent, LoPresti mentioned.
“The basic protections and equity that we have come to expect and assume (of) an American workplace are not present in these homes,” LoPresti mentioned. “While these workers toil away for extreme subminimum wages, the defendants pocket hundreds of dollars a day in profit off of their labor.”
Whereas the employees have been paid between $100 and $250 per day — understanding to between $4.17 and $10.42 an hour — the defendants have been allegedly charging shoppers between $300 and $500 per day for companies, in keeping with court docket paperwork. The defendants are additionally not licensed below the Residence Care Shopper Safety Act, the go well with alleges, but they publicly current themselves as suppliers of in-home care.
LoPresti added that the difficulty of immigrant employee vulnerability is compounded by the Trump administration’s “unprecedented anti immigration campaign that expressly and aggressively attempts to instill fear in our immigrant communities.”
Duong additionally famous that the county presents a free authorized recommendation line, at 866-870-7725, for staff and companies to talk with an lawyer and get assist addressing office points and labor requirements compliance.
Tess Brillante, a former in-home care employee who isn’t related to this wage-theft case, mentioned in Tagalog by a translator that, throughout her personal time within the business, she had been paid lower than minimal wage for fewer hours than she labored, and that she was not given any breaks or sick days. The job typically requires care staff to hold out tasks past the scope of their work, from caring for sufferers’ companions and cleansing the home to attending to pets and cooking.
“Basically, it was no work, no pay,” she mentioned. “The majority of caregivers experience all kinds of exploitation and hardship in their workplaces, but most of them choose to keep silent and endure these terrible conditions out of fear of losing jobs or a place to live. … Workers not only need the job for their livelihood, but also to send money back home to support their families.”
Ruth Silver Taube, supervising lawyer of the Employee’s Rights Clinic at Santa Clara College College of Legislation, added that in-home care staff typically are girls of their 60s and 70s with their very own medical points who specific “sadness, stress and loneliness” as they reside in-home and expertise isolation.
LoPresti added that the defendants might already be working new companies, and that authorities count on extra victims to come back ahead as litigation progresses.
