Caregivers allege recruiter abuse in Superior Court
Caregivers allege recruiter abuse in Superior Court
TORONTO –Filipina caregivers Debie Mendez de la Fuente, Mary Grace Gallego and Joelina Maluto have filed claims in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice against their former employment recruitment agency, the Rakela Care Agency.
Claims against the recruiter include breach of contract, false imprisonment and infliction of mental distress. The women are seeking compensation for the alleged wrongs committed against them by the agency. They are also seeking punitive damages against the owners of the agency, Rakela and Zeev Spivak, for behaviour which they claim was “tantamount to human trafficking.”
The women claim that after being recruited in Hong Kong by Rakela Spivak, they were admitted to work in Canada under the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) based on employer names provided by the agency. The women paid the agency amounts of up to $1,400 for the employer names, which are needed to complete the immigration paperwork. Upon arrival in Canada, the women were met at the airport by Spivak and not the employers on their work permits, as they had anticipated. Spivak told the women that these employers already had caregivers working for them, making their existing work permits useless.
The women claim Spivak then took them to her Thornhill home, which is also her place of business, where they were forced to live in her basement with more than a dozen other domestic workers. All the women were stuck in the same situation and were told they could not work for the employers on their work permits. The women slept on floor mattresses and couches, were not given enough food, just leftovers, and shared one bathroom with Spivak’s son. Each of the three women were demanded to surrender their passports to the agency, which is needed for them to seek employment in Canada under the LCP.
When Joelina Maluto left the house one day, she claims Zeev Spivak reprimanded her “forcefully” and told her she was not to leave the house again, unless she paid the agency $5,000. If she did not comply, she would be sued and deported. The women were unfamiliar with Canada and were fearful of leaving the house unless authorized to do so by the Spivaks or another agent of the agency. All three were asked to pay the agency an additional $5,000 to be placed with an employer in Canada.
The women further claim they were subsequently sent by the agency to do work without new Labour Market Opinions or work permits. The women also did unpaid chores in the Spivak home as part of ‘training’ for the LCP.
The three separate lawsuits brought forth by the women are countersuits to actions filed in Small Claims Court by the Rakela Care Agency. The agency is suing the women for the $5,000 placement fee they had stopped paying. At the time, Mendez de la Fuente and Gallego claim they were compelled to sign post-dated cheques payable to the agency. After paying the agency $400 in cash, the agency returned to Mendez Dela Fuente one of the postdated cheques, a process which repeated in December 2008.
The Coalition for Change, an advocacy group supporting the rights of caregivers and temporary foreign workers distributed a media advisory entitled, “Caregivers forced to take the law into their own hands,” at the press conference held on October 6, 2009. They advised other caregivers are pursuing a complaint before the Canadian Border Services Agency and the Ministry of Labour against other agencies, the Central Domestic Agency and Canadian International Immigration Services, for similar forms of exploitation.
Comments (2)
Categories