Domestic Worker Given Back Pay in Rare Win

To the surprise of just about everyone involved, a Superior Court judge has awarded more than $47,000 in back wages to an illegal immigrant from Indonesia who said she was exploited by a Carson couple who employed her as a live-in housekeeper for nearly three years.

Yuni Mulyono’s victory is unusual, but her complaints are commonplace in the shadow world of domestic employment, in which hiring arrangements are often informal, written contracts and pay stubs are rare and the boundaries between work and free time are frequently blurred. The vast majority of cases do not even make it to trial, experts say.

Judge Jack W. Morgan, a Republican appointee of Gov. Pete Wilson, rejected the Carson family’s depiction of Mulyono in court papers as an ungrateful “guest” in their home who spent her time engaging in “vacation and leisure time activities.”

In his May 23 ruling, which followed a four-day civil trial, Morgan accepted the former housemaid and nanny’s word that she was indeed an employee. The 31-year-old Mulyono said she worked 65 hours a week and made $100 a month. Morgan then entered a judgment of $47,827 in favor of Mulyono, along with interest and legal fees.

Moreover, the judge rejected as a “nonissue” Mulyono’s immigration status. “Whether or not a person is in the United States legally or not does not impact upon their ability to seek minimum wage for services performed,” he ruled.

Advocates hope that Mulyono’s case will embolden other employees to come forward if they believe they are being treated unfairly.

“It’s a real shining example to workers that there is hope,” said Cristina Riegos of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, which helped Mulyono get a lawyer.

Her former employers, Lina Nilam and her husband, Reginald Hall, both employees of Tiernay Metals, an aircraft parts manufacturer in Redondo Beach, declined to comment through their attorney, Phillip Balikian of Torrance. The couple are weighing a possible appeal, said Balikian, who stressed that the pair still contend that Mulyono spent her days “lounging around”--a frequent allegation in such cases.

“A lot of people tend to think this is a cushy job, that the worker gets to sit around at home all day and watch TV,” said Michelle M. Yu, the Los Angeles attorney who represented Mulyono on a pro bono basis.

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Nowhere is the dependence on immigrant domestic help more pronounced than in Southern California, where, a generation ago, African American women predominated in an occupation that today is mostly the domain of Latinas from Mexico and Central America.

“It’s pretty clear that paid domestic work is one of the bedrocks of the cultural lifestyle and economy in Los Angeles,” said Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, a USC sociologist who has studied the phenomenon.

Employers range from single immigrant women who themselves work as domestics to wealthy homeowners in Beverly Hills and Malibu. The ranks include undocumented workers, legal immigrants and naturalized U.S. citizens.

But lawful status does not guarantee fair wages or open the complex avenues of redress, advocates say.

Live-in positions, experts say, represent the most exploitation-prone segment of domestic employment. These workers, typically non-English speakers, are often isolated in suburban homes, dependent on bosses for transportation, and cut off from networks of other immigrants, thus deprived of knowledge about prevailing wages and conditions. Distinctions between work hours and free time are especially ill-defined for live-in workers.

Mulyono said her employers forbade her from leaving the home without their permission. Though she had many opportunities to walk out, she says she was intimidated and had no place to go.

Her former employers maintain that she was free to leave any time. In court papers, the couple said they treated Mulyono like a member of their family, taking her on outings and to English classes--assistance that Mulyono acknowledges.

A native of rural Sumatra, Mulyono is the eldest of eight children of an impoverished farming family. She went to work at age 15, eventually finding a position as a live-in maid in the capital city of Jakarta. She had a daughter, Zustina, who will be 6 next month, but was divorced from the father soon after the birth. Her daughter remains with her family in Indonesia; Mulyono has not seen her since she came to the United States 4 1/2 years ago.

It was while working in Jakarta, Mulyono said, that she learned of the opportunity in California. A cousin was working in Jakarta as a maid for Lily Nilam, the sister of Lina Nilam, her eventual employer in Carson. The cousin heard that the Carson couple were seeking an Indonesian maid.

Mulyono says she interviewed for the job with Nilam’s two sisters, who told her that she would be paid the equivalent of about $100 a month in cash and that the employers would provide room and board. Mulyono says she was told her salary package equaled the minimum wage in California. It was four times her monthly salary in Jakarta. She agreed to remain for five years.

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“For me this was a chance to better myself and to do more for my daughter and my brothers and sisters,” said Mulyono, who proudly notes that her income allowed three siblings to complete high school--an opportunity she never had. Her salary was paid to her brother in Indonesia, Mulyono said. According to Mulyono, the Nilam family in Jakarta hired a consultant to obtain her a passport and visa and purchase her airline ticket. She says she was even given a new identity for reasons that remain unclear: Her real name is Sriyani. (Indonesians typically have one name.)

She arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on Dec. 5, 1992, with a six-month tourist visa, and was met by her future employers, who immediately took her to Carson.

Lina Nilam and her family deny procuring a passport, visa or any paperwork for Mulyono, said their attorney Balikian. According to her former employers, it was Mulyono who approached the family in Indonesia and asked if she could stay with their relatives here.

Once here, Mulyono said, she generally worked seven days a week, 11 hours a day on weekdays, four hours on Saturdays and six on Sundays.

Her responsibilities included cleaning, cooking and doing laundry; dressing and feeding the couple’s young daughter; and caring for the family’s two dogs.

Beginning in January 1994, Mulyono said, the family allowed her to take an English class each Saturday. Her employers drove her to and from the sessions at a nearby community college.

Mulyono said she began talking with other immigrant laborers in the class and started to question whether she was getting a fair deal. She befriended a Mexican immigrant, Marco Rodriguez, who encouraged her to confront the couple.

“They were really angry with me,” Mulyono recalled. “She [Lina Nilam] told me, ‘We will send you back to Indonesia.’ ”

Ultimately, Mulyono said, her employers agreed to allow her to go out one Sunday a month from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m.

Finally, on Sept. 19, 1995, Mulyono decided that she had had enough and packed her bags. But, according to Mulyono, Nilam came home unexpectedly, kicked her out of the house and allowed her to take only her purse. Mulyono went to live with Rodriguez.

“I join you in sorrow,” Lina Nilam wrote in a subsequent letter to Mulyono’s parents in Indonesia. “Yani was overcome by the high-sounding promises of a man whom she had not know[n] all that long, to the point that she prioritized her freedom and the illusion of obtaining a better life outside of here, forgetting you both, her brothers and sisters, and her child in the village, all of whom may never meet Yani again in Indonesia.”

Mulyono’s future remains cloudy. She is working in a sandwich shop, but recently completed a cosmetology course and hopes to be a beautician. She has a close circle of friends, including Rodriguez. She says she would like to settle in Southern California and send for her child, but her immigration status makes such a move impossible. She has no passport--she says the document was left behind in her employer’s home--no driver’s license and is living under a name that is not even hers. Even if the judgment holds up on appeal, it could be some time before she sees the back wages.

“This has all been very difficult for me,” she said, “but I do hope things will be better now.”