Haitian Business Crushed--Not By Earthquake, But By Home Depot

[Blue_Tires]

We don't want Haitians working here."

By Al Norman

A Haitian immigrant who built a multi-million business in New Jersey is now fighting to survive financially--a victim not of the recent earthquake in his native country---but of racial discrimination in America that was every bit as devastating.

In a lawsuit filed last April in Essex County, New Jersey, Ludin Pierre, the minority owner of the Arescue Staffing Agency, a business that supplied temporary workers primarily to Home Depot, charged that the giant home improvement retailer and two national staffing agencies conspired to steal away his workers. Pierre calls it "tempnapping"---a process in which a temp worker is "kidnapped" away from one temp agency to perform the same work at another.

Pierre's temp agency, then known as Cosmo Temps, was based in Irvington, New Jersey. Cosmo fed Home Depot with temporary workers for the retailer's international distribution centers in Cranbury and Dayton, New Jersey, and Montgomery, New York. At its high point, Cosmo was providing Home Depot with 200 workers--representing 80% of Cosmo's business. Under Cosmo's agreement with its workers, the workers were not allowed to work for Home Depot for 90 days after their last day working for Cosmo.

Around 2005, Home Depot began working with two national temp companies, allowing these companies to open site offices inside Home Depot's distribution facilities. Cosmo was literally left out in the cold. Home Depot told Cosmo it could become a "secondary supplier" to one of the national temp chains. Cosmo signed under the national chain as directed by Home Depot managers, with the stipulation that the national temp chain would not hire any Cosmo employee who was assigned to Home Depot.

Pierre says that one of the national chains, Staffmark, sent a letter to Cosmo's workers requiring them to terminate their employment with Cosmo, and shift to Staffmark---or lose their assignment with Home Depot. In 2009, Staffmark notified Cosmo that all its workers at Home Depot were being terminated. "These three giants chopped our company in three," Pierre explains, "and each one holds a piece for the sole benefit of Home Depot." In his lawsuit, Pierre charges that "the loss of business caused by....tempnapping is causing irreparable injury...It is having the effect of destroying (my) business, as well as destroying existing employee relations and the business' reputation." Pierre asserts that these companies broke their contractual agreements, and "have not played by the rules of the game."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-norman/haitian-business-crushed_b_465221.html