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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (March 3, 2006)
Observers report rampant worker abuses in Katrina-hit area GULFPORT, Miss. (PAI) — One day in early February, a teenaged worker tacking blue plastic sheeting over gap- ing holes in a Hurricane Katrina-dam- aged roof of a building in Gulfport, Miss., fell off. The teenager — who by federal law is too young to even toil on a job like that — was taken to Memorial Hospital in Gulfport, where nurses tried to get him to take a urination drug test before examining his injuries. But the youngster spoke only Span- ish, the hospital personnel speak only English, and he didn’t understand what they wanted him to do, says Bill Chan- dler of Mississippi Immigration Rights Association. So they threw him out of the hospital. And then, to add insult to injury, the contractor who hired him re- fused to pay him. Abuses like that, numbering in the thousands, are rampant in the Gulf Coast area as workers and residents try to recover from the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita last August and September. Data uncovered by Chandler’s group, Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) and oth- ers show widespread importation and use of out-of-area workers, equally widespread refusal to pay workers, abuse of immigrants, use of illegal child labor, and lack of job safety and health enforcement, among other problems. Worse, as IWJ discovered in a meet- ing with a top Wage and Hour Division official in Washington, D.C., the federal government is unaware of the abuses, and may not be willing to do much about them. The problems in the Katrina-hit area come as the Bush Administration comes under increasing fire from all points of the political spectrum for its poor re- sponse to the millions of people who lost homes, businesses and jobs when the hurricanes hit. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao dis- putes the lack of response. She touts the Department of Labor’s channeling of $274 million in aid in the weeks after the hurricane wrecked New Orleans, along with much of Louisiana and southern Mississippi and parts of Alabama. Even so, 1.2 million people are still displaced from their homes. Of the half of those who are workers, 26.3 percent are jobless, federal figures show. Chao’s response to their plight was that “many have found permanent jobs elsewhere.” By contrast, unions rushed in teams to help not just their colleagues in the stricken states, but other workers. It still has teams there, retraining area workers for new rebuilding-oriented tasks and occupations. Meanwhile, Chandler and others are reporting abuses of workers by contrac- tors hired — without competitive bid- ding — by agencies to undertake the Katrina cleanup and reconstruction. Abuses include: • Outright refusal to pay workers. Chandler’s group, with encouragement by one federal Labor Department worker in Mississippi, has documented such refusals through interviews with more than 1,000 workers. It already re- covered $141,000 in unpaid wages for 65 workers hired by a subcontractor for Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the firm formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. Other times, contractors and subcon- tractors stall on paying workers, who then leave to try to find employers who will pay them. Or the contractors bring the workers in for specific jobs and then when the tasks are done, “they dump them and force them out of the decrepit housing they’re living in” while not paying them, he adds. In New Orleans, contractors got away without paying immigrant work- ers by calling in the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to conduct sweeps just before payday. Workers fled. ICE agents often pose as Occupational Safety and Health Admin- istration inspectors, over OSHA’s protests. “Every immigrant worker has had wages stolen, in many ways,” Chan- dler said. • Lack of wage and hour enforce- ment, especially in Mississippi, the only U.S. state with no Labor Department. That puts the entire enforcement burden on overworked and understaffed federal DOL personnel, who in turn have en- listed Chandler’s group as their eyes and ears in the field, interviewing workers and gathering evidence. “All they (DOL) do is take walk-in cases at their offices in Jackson and on the Gulf Coast,” Chandler said. And im- migrant workers are afraid to approach both offices because the ICE office is right next door. “One result of the lack of enforcement is rampant use of child labor, even in dangerous occupations such as construction, he noted. • Diversion of federal money long before it gets to workers. Chandler gave an example where the federal govern- ment hired KBR to remove debris and fill at a price of $20 per cubic yard. KBR hired a subcontractor for the same task, for $4 per cubic yard. The subcontractor’s managers did not speak Spanish, so they hired bilin- gual “crew leaders” who in turn hired the workers to move the debris at $5-$7 an hour. But neither the crew leaders nor the rank-and-file workers were paid. Chandler’s group argues the “crew lead- ers” are really employees, not “inde- pendent contractors,” and thus, like the rank-and-file workers, should be cov- ered by federal wage and hour laws. • Lack of job safety enforcement. Acting OSHA Administrator Jonathan Snare admitted Feb. 6 that the agency still is giving “technical assistance only” Q } to employers and workers on job safety issues in the hardest-hit areas south of Interstate 10. 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For down payments of less than 20%, mortgage insurance (MI) is required and MI charges apply. All loans are subject to credit and property approval. Program terms and conditions are subject to change without notice. Not all products are available in all states or for all loan amounts. Other restrictions and limitations apply. ©2005 JPMorgan Chase & Co. All Rights Reserved. P-UP 104 2A-7604 10/05 MARCH 3, 2006 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS PAGE 9
