Many Filipino healthcare workers in the US live in fear of ICE: 'This is my place of work. I should feel safe'

[markodochartaigh]

7. That's true as well.

The hospital for which I worked for three decades stopped paying time and a half for overtime. They did this retroactively. Our checks were short and they told us that we were now considered management. We were paid nothing for the first hour that we worked over and only straight time for any hours over 80 in two weeks. They got away with this for a decade, lawsuits and appeals to the labor board went nowhere. When I told other nurses that if we had a union this wouldn't happen they looked at me like I had three heads, even though the hospital was stealing from almost every nurse on almost every check. During this time the local newspaper did an investigation of the hospital district’s finances and found that more than one third of all dollars taken in by the hospital district went to administration. Naturally the hospital had difficulty finding enough US nurses, even for the "skeleton staffing" (their actual term) that they were so proud of.