View documentary about island at www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuW-lp4eHkI

Miami, FL-In a case that harkens back to the civil rights lawsuits of the 1950's that ended racial segregation, 19 workers filed a class action complaint today against Fisher Island Holdings, Inc., Fisher Island Community Association, Inc., Fisher Island Club, Inc., and Fisher Island Community Association, LLC with the Miami-Dade County Equal Opportunity Board, charging that the policies and practices in effect on the Fisher Island Ferry Service that operates between the exclusive island to the mainland segregates Haitian, Hispanic, and African-American workers. The complaint questions policies on the island-owned ferry that the workers must take to get to the island.

Named the richest zip code in the nation by Forbes, and profiled this past June in the New York Times Magazine as "Fantasy Island,"Fisher Island is known for its extravagance-including bird-walkers, separate million-dollar condominiums for pets, lush surroundings, and imported sand. The island is only accessible by ferry, excluding the few residents who arrive by helicopter or private yacht. Billed as a paradise for residents and guests, the island attracts some of the world's wealthiest people, such as Mel Brooks, Sharon Gless, Janis Wackenhut (the daughter of the founder of the Wackenhut Corporation), and former Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) executive Michael Tokarz.

According to the complaint filed today:

 Workers are segregated on the ferry and not allowed access to the Resident's Lounge nor, with a few exceptions, are they allowed to drive a vehicle onto the ferry.
 To prevent employee passengers from touching or brushing against the vehicles of residents and guests on the Island, Fisher Island prohibits employee passengers from accessing even their segregated ferry room unless they arrive on the ferry before the vehicles of other passengers begin loading onto the ferry. One worker was fired after he went to the employees' segregated ferry room after vehicles were loaded onto the ferry.
 Employee passengers, including a woman who was six months pregnant, not permitted in the segregated ferry room are forced to stand under an outside deck awning which fails to protect them from heavy rain, debilitating heat, severe wind, and ship fumes.
 Fisher Island residents have cursed at employee passengers who come close to the residents' vehicles, saying things like "don't f-cking touch my car."When a resident became angry after missing her ferry, she yelled at a security guard who was working at the causeway ferry terminal: "F-ck you, you peasant. I'm going to make sure you get fired."

The 19 plaintiffs who filed the complaint are employees of the Fisher Island corporations or contractors bound by Fisher Island policies. They travel as passengers on the ferry to Fisher Island each day they work. They work in the Vanderbilt Mansion as dishwashers, as security guards, landscapers, and housekeepers maintaining the Island's condominiums, the Fisher Island Hotel and Resort, several restaurants, a health, golf and tennis club, and the ferry terminals and ferries.

Following the victory at the University of Miami, where workers won higher wages, health insurance, and a union, housekeepers, landscapers, security guards, and other Fisher Island workers launched a campaign to do the same. Wages on the island hover around $10 an hour, but dip down to $3.25 dollars an hour for tipped employees. Many workers are not promised a secure number of hours of work each week and see their pay fluctuate wildly from a few hundred dollars a week to almost nothing depending on the whims of the managers on the island.

The workers have repeatedly reached out to the Fisher Island corporations and Somerset-the NYC-based private equity firm that has pledged $300 million to make the island "one of the most exclusive addresses in the world"-to commit to high quality jobs on the island and to end discrimination against the island's service workers.

EDITORS NOTE: DVDs of the documentary and copies of the complaint can be obtained by contacting Tanya Aquino at (321) 960-3802 or taquino@seiu11.org

 

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