“Is this the French bakery of your dreams?” Easy Reader restaurant critic Richard Foss asked in a 2012 review of the newly opened L’Amande French Bakery in Rolling Hills Plaza in Torrance. He concluded it was.
“I have dreamed of a haven where the baguettes and croissants are coming out of the oven all day and you can have them with a cup of fiercely strong coffee and be transported to Paris. This year, I have gotten my wish,” Foss wrote.
Last December, the Filipino Asian Journal printed a similarly glowing review of the bakery, focused on L’Amande owners Ana and Goncalo Moitinho De Almeida. The Rolling Hills Estates couple met at the Glion Hotel School in Switzerland, where they studied to become bakery chefs, according to the article. He was born in Africa to a Portuguese father and French mother. She was born in the Philippines and sent to the Swiss culinary school at age 16.
But a less flattering picture is contained in a 62-page complaint, filed last Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of 11 Filipinos who worked at the couple’s Torrance and Beverly Hills bakeries. The suit was filed by the Los Angeles law firm of Latham and Watkins and the public interest law firm Asian Americans Advancing Justice with the help of a workers comp attorney.
Among the lawsuit’s 27 complaints are human trafficking and multiple Fair Employment and Housing Act violations. The lawsuits asks in excess of $1 million in unpaid wages. The employees were allegedly working for below minimum wage and were denied overtime pay.
Efforts to contact the Moitinho De Almeidas for a response to the lawsuit were unsuccessful.
According to the lawsuit, the 11 workers, — four women and seven men — “are victims of defendants’ scheme… to fraudulently induce the workers to leave their homes and families in the Philippines and move to Los Angeles. The workers were told they would work as skilled bakery chefs and managers, but when they arrived … they were forced to work for defendants in illegal, oppressive, and discriminatory conditions as domestic servants, physical laborers engaged in landscaping and building maintenance, and retail bakery workers doing a substantial amount of menial work at defendant’s French bakeries.”
The suit alleges that the couple told the workers that if they quit work they would need to repay $11,000 allegedly spent to bring them to Los Angeles.
The lawsuit also alleges violations of immigration laws. The workers were admitted to the U.S. under E-2 visas, which are meant for immigrants with “specialized skills” or workers serving in “supervisory” positions.
Last year, the California Department of Industrial Relations ordered the bakery to pay $245,000 in unpaid overtime wages to its employees. The order is under appeal.
During the State’s investigation, the lawsuit alleges, the couple “instructed the workers to lie to the investigators and other government officials and, when the workers refused, they retaliated against them, including wrongfully firing five of them, leaving the workers with no livelihood and too afraid to return home to the Philippines because of defendants’ threats.
“[The] defendants threatened to harm the workers and their families back in the Philippines where defendants bragged about their political clout,” the suit alleges. ER
