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Murdoch foam at the mouth.Katrina
washes whitest. Bill Quigley in New Orleans reports tales of
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Six months after Hurricane Katrina,
the Gulf Coast struggles with a new challenge-who will do the
rebuilding? The region is awash in clean-up and reconstruction
projects, but with more than 1.5 million people displaced by
the hurricane, ready hands are in short supply.
In many areas, the tight post-Katrina
labor market has already had stunning effects-construction jobs
regularly advertise starting pay of $15 an hour or more, and
a gig at Burger King might land you a $6,000 bonus.
But even with tight labor markets,
workers in the region are finding conditions-and organizing against
those conditions-challenging.
UNDER THE GUN
The hurricane has created enormous
problems for the Gulf Coast's union workers. Waste Management
Inc.-one of the largest waste services companies in the United
States-is one such example. The company handled trash pick-ups
for the city of New Orleans before Katrina.
But after the storm, FEMA took
over garbage collection for the city and Waste Management secured
several lucrative subcontracts for debris removal. In the process,
the company dumped its unionized workers and replaced them with
temps. Waste Management even set up a camp just north of the
Huey Long Bridge for its temp laborers.
Similar problems have emerged
for bus drivers in New Orleans, where service remains at less
than 20 percent of what it was before the hurricane and at least
500 employees are expected to be permanently laid off.
"We've got so many issues
down here," remarked Mike Parker, a 13-year streetcar operator
and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1560 member who has been
driving a bus since he returned home. "Since FEMA is paying
the bill the company says we're emergency workers. We've got
no seniority, and whenever it benefits them the company says
we have to follow their policy. But when it benefits the operators
against the company, then they say FEMA controls it and they
hold up their hands like they can't do anything."
Meanwhile shipyard workers
in Avondale, Louisiana and Pascagoula, Mississippi have been
pressured by Northrop Grumman to re-open their contracts, not
due to expire until 2007.
Although the Pascagoula workers
refused to reopen, Avondale workers agreed, hoping to close the
wage and benefit gaps that exist between the two sites. Pascagoula
shipyard workers currently earn more, largely because Avondale
was organized more recently, after a bitter struggle with shipyard
owners.
Avondale workers voted four
to one February 7 against a proposal that would have shifted
health care costs to members, substituted bonuses for increases
in base pay, and extended the life of the agreement by several
years.
MIGRANT WORKERS SUFFER
Conditions across the Gulf
Coast have also prompted an unprecedented influx of Latino workers
into the region. This largely immigrant workforce has frequently
been shortchanged by the tangled web of contracting and subcontracting
that emerged in the cleanup effort.
"It's really survival
of the fittest out there--the raging, unregulated free market,"
noted Bill Quigley, lawyer with the New Orleans-based Loyola
Law School Legal Clinic. "Since the hurricane we've really
seen a meltdown of wage and hour laws, OSHA laws, and practically
every other standard that exists for work in this country."
Quigley's colleague Luz Molina
has been involved in several lawsuits trying to reclaim unpaid
wages and help workers injured on the job. She agreed with Quigley's
assessment. "It's a feeding frenzy. The money is going to
the big corporations and not to the workers. There is no quality
control and no oversight of who they are contracting with."
With more than 30,000 Latino
workers flocking to the Gulf Coast after the hurricane, tensions
with local residents have been running high.
"Certainly, people are
upset because the money that is being spent on housing out-of-state
workers could be used for rebuilding housing and housing local
folks who want to return to the area and work," commented
Stephen Bradberry, the head organizer for New Orleans Association
of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
"But there is no side
of this 'blame game' that benefits the local worker being locked
out of the job," continued Bradberry, "or the undocumented
worker getting mistreated, all for the sake of these contractors
putting a few more dollars in their pocket."
DISASTER
PROFITEERING
Indeed, employers on all sides
of the rebuilding efforts are doing all they can to line their
pockets. Northrop Grumman's demands for concessions, for example,
have nothing to do with offsetting the cost of post-Katrina rebuilding.
Although Grumman estimates damage to its Gulf Coast facilities
in excess of $1 billion, the company stands to receive more than
$2 billion of FEMA relief under President Bush's plan.
In October Bush asked Congress
to redirect $17 billion in FEMA funds to other federal agencies
to assist in disaster recovery. With its slice of that money,
the Navy has already promised to increase the payments on Grumman's
existing contracts to cover reconstruction costs.
It is not surprising that Northrop
Grumman is being tended to so well, given the fact that the company
and its executives contributed more than a million dollars to
Republican causes during the last election. And the pattern of
political payback stretches well beyond the defense industry.
The list of large contractors for hurricane clean-up and temporary
housing is a Who's Who of politically connected corporations.
"There is an outlandish
amount of money coming into the region," noted Ishmael Muhammad,
organizer with the People's Hurricane Relief Fund. "But
the money is not getting to people who have really suffered."
"I see it every day when
I'm driving my bus," Parker said. "When I go by the
casinos, they are breaking up perfectly good concrete and paving
to put down this fancy brick. Go down another mile and it looks
like the hurricane just hit yesterday.
"They find money to break
good ground up and can't find money to get the power turned back
on."
SURVIVORS'
PLAN
But amidst the chaos and corporate
giveaways, grassroots activists continue to fight for a different
vision of the Gulf Coast.
"They are really building
a huge problem for themselves by not letting people come home,"
Muhammad said. "They aren't funding a redevelopment plan
that includes poor folks or people of color.
"But the survivors are
developing a plan, and their plan is focusing on the communities
that the city is saying don't need to come back."
Others are also working to
prevent future rip-offs. "The immigrant workers are doing
the job," said Frank Curiel, an organizer with the Laborers.
"The only way to protect them is to organize them."
With six organizers on the
ground and more on the way, the Laborers are already responding
to this opening. "We are positioning ourselves for the future."
noted Darren Johnson, an international rep working out of the
New Orleans local. "We hope to turn the tide in the South."
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