IT firm CEO exploits domestic worker

WASHINGTON, DC — An Indian American chief executive officer of an IT staffing and consulting firm has been charged with callous treatment of a domestic worker who had come from India to work for her.

The US Department of Labor alleges that Himanshu Bhatia, CEO for Rose International and IT Staffing, paid her domestic service worker $400 a month plus food and housing for work being performed during 15-and-half-hours a day, seven days a week, at her home in San Juan Capistrano, Calif.

Bhatia also had other luxury residences in Miami, Florida; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Long Beach, Calif.

According to the complaint filed by the US Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez on August. 22 in the US District Court for the Central District of California, Sheela Ningwal was subject to callous abuse and retaliation.

The worker was forced to sleep in the garage on a piece of carpet alongside Bhatia’s dogs when she was ill, and being left without food when Bhatia left her residence for days, the complaint alleged.

Bhatia also confiscated Ningwal’s passport, restricting her free movement, and only made it available to the worker when she had to travel to perform domestic service duties at Bhatia’s penthouse in Miami.

The department’s Wage and Hour Division found that Bhatia violated the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage and record-keeping provisions from July 2012 to December 2014, as well as the Act’s anti-retaliation provision.

Rose International and IT staffing and consulting firm had more than $357 million in revenue in 2011.