Think again. Look no further than Louisiana to see teacher slavery is alive and well:
Unions representing teachers in Louisiana have filed a complaint with state authorities alleging that a Los Angeles recruiting firm broke the law by holding more than 350 Filipino teachers in "virtual servitude" in order to hold onto their jobs in five Louisiana parish school systems, including New Orleans' Recovery School District.
The complaint, filed Wednesday by the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and its parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), alleges that Universal Placement International charged Filipino nationals about $15,000 apiece to get jobs — more than 40% of some new teachers' salaries in a few Louisiana parishes — and required that they pay 10% of their monthly salary for two years to keep them.
The two unions want the firm to repay the fees to teachers and want the state to invalidate Universal's contracts and prosecute its officials.
The new filing comes less than three weeks after the AFT issued a report saying that about 19,000 teachers were working in the USA on temporary visas in 2007 — a growing recruitment trend as schools struggle to hire enough highly qualified teachers in hard-to-staff subjects such as math, science, foreign languages and special education. AFT says the field is largely unregulated and suffers from "widespread and egregious" abuses of migrant teachers.
The good ol' H-1B trick so beloved by hi-tech firms has now come to education only worse.
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