Thomas Breen photo
Edith Carapia (right) and ULA organizer John Lugo.
Monday’s protest.
A former housekeeper at a Chapel Street hotel has filed two anti-discrimination complaints against her old employer for allegedly firing her for speaking out about years of workplace prejudice against Mexican employees.
On Monday afternoon, the housekeeper, Edith Carapia, was joined by two dozen supporters from the local immigrant rights advocacy group Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA) in a protest outside The Study at Yale at 1157 Chapel St.
Carapia and her lawyer, James Bhandary-Alexander of New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA), said they have filed two legal complaints against the Study in relation to Carapia being fired in November from her job as a housekeeper at the boutique hotel.
They’ve filed one complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and one with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO). The complaints allege that the hotel fired her for protesting discrimination that she and other Mexican and Ecuadorian employees at the hotel had allegedly experienced for years at the hands of the hotel housekeeping department’s manager, Santiago Castillo.
“They used the excuse that I was not following the orders from the managers,” Carapia said in Spanish, as translated into English and through a megaphone by ULA organizer John Lugo. “Which was a lie. The reality is I was fired as retaliation because I was advocating for my rights.”
The Study’s general manager, Anthony Moir. declined to comment for this story.
Lugo and NHLAA Attorney James Bhandary-Alexander.
Carapia, a 45-year-old native of Puebla, Mexico, said Castillo and his friends frequently stole her and her Mexican and Ecuadorian colleagues’ tips and assigned them extra-long shifts while cutting breaks for Peruvian employees. Castillo is Peruvian.
Bhandary-Alexander said a review of Carapia’s personnel file shows that, just six months into her job at the Study, Carapia submitted her first complaint to the hotel’s human resources department about unfair treatment from Castillo.
For nine years she continued to speak up to human resources about the discriminatory workplace environment, Carapia and her lawyer said. And then, after one too many complaints, she was fired last November.
“The manager says that nothing is happening here,” she said. “But that’s a lie. There is a lot of wrong things happening in this place.”
Bhandary-Alexander said that Carapia asked him three questions when she first approached legal aid after she had been fired: Is it legal for my employer to give me more work because I’m Mexican? Is it legal for my employer to steal my tips because I’m Mexican? Is it legal for my employer to fire me for speaking out against discrimination?
“What do you think is the answer?” he said to the protesters lined along the sidewalk in front of the hotel entrance.
“No!” they shouted in unison.
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch part of Monday’s protest.
I support the boycott but few here can afford this hotel in the first place.