FOUR men have sued JN Saipan CNMI LLC, Big Boy Marine Sports Inc., MD Jashim Uddin and Nasmun Nahar Fatema in federal court for labor violations and for requiring them to pay recruitment fees.
Uddin and Fatema are president and vice president of JN Saipan.
The plaintiffs are Mohammad Arman, Abul Kalam Azad, Kowsar Halim, and Habibur Rahman.
Represented by attorney Richard Miller, they are alleging violations of the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act or FLSA, breach of contract, fraudulent misrepresentation, quantum meruit and unjust enrichment.
The plaintiffs alleged that defendants enticed them to come to Saipan to work for them under the CW-1 visa program, fraudulently extracted exorbitant recruitment fees from them, intentionally withheld earned wages from them for long periods of work since 2017, and threatened to have them deported if they complained about their treatment or the recruitment fees.
The lawsuit alleged that in 2015, Fatema and a man named Firoz Alam contacted each of the plaintiffs in Bangladesh and recruited them to come to work on Saipan for her husband, Uddin.
The defendants demanded steep recruitment fees from each plaintiff, ranging from $12,500 to $15,000, the lawsuit stated.
It added that the company that petitioned for the plaintiffs was Big Boy Marine Sports Inc. At the time, Uddin was a manager for Big Boy.
In or about November 2015, each plaintiff signed an employment contract with Big Boy to clean vehicles and equipment on Saipan, the lawsuit stated.
Azad, Halim, and Rahman arrived on Saipan on May 30, 2016 while Alam arrived on Aug. 8, 2016.
According to the lawsuit, Fatema accompanied Azad, Halim, and Rahman on their flight to Saipan.
She gave each of them an envelope with $8,000 to put in their carry-on luggage. After they passed immigration inspection at the Saipan airport, she confiscated all the cash, the lawsuit stated.
The next day, Uddin took the men to the Social Security office to apply for Social Security cards.
He told them that if asked about a recruitment fee, they should deny they paid any and say that JN Saipan paid all the visa-processing and travel costs.
When the men’s Social Security cards were issued, Uddin confiscated them, the lawsuit stated.
“Plaintiffs initially were housed in a two-room apartment in San Vicente village. There were three men (Plaintiffs plus two others) to each small room, and not enough beds to go around. Uddin would not let plaintiffs go to the local mosque unaccompanied, for fear that other Bangladeshis would ask them about their situation. When Uddin accompanied them to the mosque, he warned them not to mention to anyone that they had paid a recruitment fee,” the lawsuit stated.
When the landlord in San Vicente kicked out the plaintiffs for nonpayment of rent, Uddin moved them to an abandoned barracks in Garapan, where the four of them shared two small, windowless rooms with two other men, the lawsuit stated.
After the workers moved to the Garapan barracks, Uddin only occasionally found work for them, and it involved bush cutting or housecleaning, the lawsuit added.
Only then would Uddin give the men some cash to buy food, the lawsuit stated. “Much of the time, the men were starving.”
Since 2017, “plaintiffs have endured long periods when they were not taken to a job site, were given no work, and received no pay.”
Uddin, the lawsuit stated, also extorted additional fees from plaintiffs to renew their CW-1 permits, but the permits were not renewed and on information and belief Uddin never petitioned U.S. Citizenship Immigration Services to renew them.
On Jan. 21, 2021 the plaintiffs filed complaints against Uddin and JN Saipan with the CNMI Department of Labor.
About two weeks later, Fatema visited the plaintiffs’ homes in Bangladesh and threatened to have the plaintiffs thrown in jail on Saipan unless the plaintiffs dropped their cases, the lawsuit stated.
Arman said JN Saipan owes him $12,000 in full-time and overtime wages.
Azad is owed more than $30,000 in back wages from late December 2017 through September 2018, the lawsuit stated.
It also stated that the defendants owe Halim about $50,000 in wages.
As for Rahman, the defendants owe him more than $6,000 in back wages, the lawsuit stated.
The plaintiffs are demanding a jury trial and have asked the District Court for the NMI for an order awarding them damages, restitution for unjust enrichment, and reasonable attorney’s fees as provided by the FLSA as well as the costs of the lawsuit.
