The Southern Poverty Law Center charged today that a New Orleans hotel chain violated federal labor standards by firing the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit alleging the exploitation of Latin American guestworkers who were recruited to fill jobs vacated by Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
First-person accounts of the abuse that migrant workers in New Orleans endured as they cleaned up and rebuilt the city following Hurricane Katrina are detailed. The report describes how migrant workers in New Orleans were cheated out of pay, left hungry and homeless, and even denied medical treatment and benefits after being injured on the job.
H-2B workers were brought to the U.S. to work in defendant's New Orleans hotels. Workers have not been compensated as promised, and U.S. workers are available to perform needed duties.
A federal judge in New Orleans sanctioned a forestry company after finding it exploited the judicial process by continually flouting court orders to turn over information to Southern Poverty Law Center attorneys.
The Southern Poverty Law Center today sued one of New Orleans' wealthiest hotel owners on behalf of Latin American immigrants who were lured through false promises and charged thousands of dollars in fees to fill jobs held by New Orleanians prior to Hurricane Katrina.
The Southern Poverty Law Center on Tuesday praised the Avon Park, Fla., city council for rejecting an ordinance designed to punish undocumented immigrants as well as businesses that hire them and landlords who rent to them.
An ordinance designed to penalize undocumented immigrants, under consideration by the Avon Park, Fla., city council, raises serious constitutional issues and will likely lead to protracted litigation.
A federal court in Tennessee this week issued an emergency protective order against Superior Forestry Service Inc. after its agent threatened to have two Mexican workers deported in retaliation for their participation in the Southern Poverty Law Center's lawsuit against the company.
Alvaro Hernandez-Lopez traveled from his home in Guatemala to work in the United States. Like hundreds of other "guest workers," he performs backbreaking, often dangerous, forestry work in the pinelands across the South.
Migrant farmworker Olivia Tamayo, who endured sexual harassment in the workplace for six years before winning a verdict against her employer, was honored with the first Esperanza Award at a ceremony in Wimauma, Fla.
