Teachers say jobs promised

• By BILL LODGE AND KORAN ADDO
• Advocate staff writers
• Published: Nov 7, 2009 - Page: 1A

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A second attorney for Filipino teachers recruited to work in East Baton Rouge Parish has complained that some did not receive promised jobs and that the school district provided federal labor officials false reports about their situations.

In addition, a Los Angeles recruitment firm, Universal Placement International, is accused of steering the educators into large fees and debts and hiding those transactions from federal authorities.

That firm is managed by a convicted felon, according to records attached to the complaint. Additional records in that complaint show that Universal Placement paid the East Baton Rouge Parish School System $20,241 to fly seven recruiters to the Philippines in November 2007.

Jan Pineda, 29, is a college graduate and certified educator who was teaching technology and home economics in the Philippines in early 2008, when she responded to a newspaper advertisement for educators who wanted to work in Louisiana.

Pineda said Friday that she borrowed more than $17,000 from a Philippine lender recommended by an affiliate of Universal Placement after meeting with Baton Rouge recruiters, who included Liz Duran Swinford.

Pineda said Swinford indicated she would have a job in Baton Rouge in one of her chosen fields.

Swinford, associate superintendent for the local school system’s office of human resources, also was among system officials whose names were listed for the recruiting flight that Universal Placement financed in November 2007.

A request for comment was left on Swinford’s voice mail Friday, but she did not respond.

School Board attorney Domoine Rutledge also did not reply to a voice mail request for comment.

Baton Rouge attorney Jeri Flynn said she filed a complaint Thursday with the U.S. Department of Labor in New Orleans on behalf of Pineda and 44 other Filipino teachers whose dreams of a new life in Baton Rouge ended badly. She said those dreams turned into a nightmare of unemployment, isolation from family and friends, inability to pay huge debts to Universal Placement and associated firms.

Flynn has more than 30 years experience in immigration law, but she said the teachers’ situation is so serious that she represents them for free.

“I have nothing to gain in this, period,” she said.

A similar complaint was filed last month by a Washington lawyer for a teacher union.