Security guards want ex-employer forced to produce documents

Security guards who are suing a former employer wants him compelled to produce some documents that they want to examine and show in court in connection with their lawsuit against him.

Mun Su Park, the lawyer for 14 security guards, asked the U.S. District Court for the NMI to direct their former employer, Muhammad Nurul Islam Bhuiyan, owner of Island Protection Service, to produce the documents before the Aug. 23 pretrial conference.

Those documents include the employer’s records on their total hours worked each workday and each workweek, regular hourly pay rate for any week when overtime is worked, and total overtime pay for the workweek, security guards service agreements, and tax or business gross revenue tax records.

The security guards are suing Bhuiyan on allegations that they paid recruitment fees totaling $130,262 before coming to Saipan and that they were promised green cards.

If Bhuiyan fails to comply with the order, the court should sanction him, Park said.

Park said plaintiffs submitted their request last Sept. 18 for Bhuiyan to produce the documents. However, he said, Bhuiyan failed to produce the documents requested.

Instead, Park said, Bhuiyan produced a large volume of documents in the evening of May 17, 2019, shortly before the May 20, 2019 settlement conference. Nonetheless, Bhuiyan’s responses were inadequate and incomplete, Park said. He said he waited a few more weeks, but no further documents were produced.

Park said they are not aware of any CNMI or federal law that makes tax returns privilege.

He said if Bhuiyan has any legitimate privacy concerns about financial records for the businesses under his name, the privacy can be adequately protected by a court order.

In response to the lawsuit, Bhuiyan, through counsel Janet H. King, asserted that he is not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act because his company is a small business.

Bhuiyan said his company, Island Protection Service, that he formed in 2008 does not have gross sales of $500,000 a year and therefore, the District Court does not have jurisdiction over the FLSA claims raised by his former employees.

To qualify for coverage under the FLSA, Island Protection Services must have an annual gross volume of sales or receipts in the amount of $500,000 or more, King said.

In his declaration in court, Bhuiyan said eight of the 14 employees are his relatives.

Bhuiyan said the allegation that he has annual gross revenues of more than $500,000 is untrue and that he only provides security service to local businesses on Saipan and he never sought business outside the CNMI.

The plaintiffs are suing Bhuiyan and his company for allegedly not paying them the minimum wage and overtime and charging them with immigration filing fees.

The security guards are claiming unpaid wages and overtime compensation in an amount ranging from $3,355 to $21,593, or for a total of $214,505.

The 14 plaintiffs are Shomon Ullah Monshi, Syful Islam, Nasir Uddin, Mohammed M. Billah, Addullah Al Mamun, Abdullah Al Mahamud, MD Rabi Ullah, Maksudur Rahman, Amir Rasool, Hemayet Hossen, MD Shahidul Islam, Billah Hossen Sarkar, Khirul Basher, and Muhammad Solaiman Munshi.

The security guards also asked the court to stop Bhuiyan from threatening and terrorizing them and their family members in Bangladesh.