A few days after the nurses’ arrival, he told them that there was no employment with the nursing home facilities the nurses had signed a contract with. However, he did mention that he could provide them work through Sentosa Services. It turned out that Mr. Luyun was working as a recruitment contractor for a nursing employment agency called Prompt Nursing Employment Agency or Sentosa Services. Mr. Luyun had his nurse-recruits fill out employment application forms with Sentosa Services (or Prompt). And in his capacity as Prompt/Sentosa Services’ recruitment contractor, he gave the nurses employment at various nursing home facilities. Again taking Mr. Jacinto as an example, he was given work by Prompt (through Luyun) at a nursing home facility called Avalon Gardens. Mr. Luyun also gave work to the other nurses at other nursing home facilities, which nursing home facilities are all managed by a healthcare management company called Sentosa Care, LLC. Sentosa Care, LLC is owned and managed by a certain Bent Philipson. Philipson was the common Chief Operating Officer of all the nursing home facilities that sponsored all the nurses. He signed the employment contracts as representative of each of the nursing home facilities that had contracts with the nurses.

If you check POEA’s (Philippine Overseas Employment Agency) records, more particularly its OFW Info Sheets, you will confirm that Mr. Jacinto’s employer was supposed to be Franklin Center. The OFW Info sheets match the names of employers that sponsored each nurse, and with which the nurses signed their respective employment contracts. However, no one among the nurses was ever employed by their supposed employers. The nurses were all employed by Prompt Nursing Employment Agency, which is doing business as Sentosa Services. If you check POEA’s records, you will not find any document that would show Sentosa Care, LLC as one of SRA’s accredited principals. You will not also find any document that will evidence any Recruitment Agreement between SRA and Sentosa Care, LLC. What you will find will be the list of nursing home facilities that are the accredited principals of SRA, and which nursing home facilities were sponsored and had contracts with the nurses. And most importantly, you will not find any document at POEA that will evidence Prompt or Sentosa Services as SRA’s accredited principal.

If only to make you understand more clearly the arguments of the nurses, please allow me to enumerate some facts:

1. The nurses were given work or employment by Sentosa Services/Prompt through Mr. Luyun and/or Mr. Barry Rubinstein (Prompt/Sentosa Services’ HR Director). The nurses were made to sign employment application forms with Sentosa Services;

2. Sentosa Services/Prompt paid the salaries of the nurses;

3. The nurses received health insurance coverage from Prompt/Sentosa Services;

4. Records show that the nurses received workmen’s compensation insurance coverage from Prompt/Sentosa Services;

5. Prompt/Sentosa Services issued work instructions/memoranda to the nurses;

6. Prompt/Sentosa Services issued the nurses their Form W-2 (annual earning statements for tax purposes)

7. Whenever the nurses had complaints or issues at the nursing home facilities they were working at, the nursing administration always told them to refer their concerns/complaints/issues to their “agency” as they were “agency nurses”;

8. In one particular nursing home facility (Avalon Gardens), the nurses were issued identification cards identifying them as “Agency Nurses”.

In addition to their complaint that the nursing home facilities that sponsored them or had contracts with them did not actually hire them, the nurses had other complaints, which included the following:

1. While the nurses eventually found work or employment through Prompt or Sentosa Services, all of them experienced being unemployed for some time upon their arrival in the United States. Most had no work for at least three weeks, such that whatever pocket money they brought with them had been used up. Thus, when Prompt/Sentosa Services offered them employment, they took it because they had to feed themselves, as well as to send money to their families in the Philippines;

2. Contrary to what SRA’s staff told them in the Philippines that their nursing licenses or permits were ready by the time the nurses arrived in New York, the nurses found out that their nursing licenses or permits were not ready yet. In fact, some of them had to send the application forms themselves after their arrival, as the applications had not yet been filed. This, of course, delayed the start of their being able to work as nurses;

3. Lack of proper orientation or training. Filipino nurses have no experience working in nursing home facilities as there are no nursing home facilities in the Philippines. Most of the nurses were given one-day or two-day orientation. They were immediately sent to work at the floor. This, of course, is a patient safety issue;

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