Infoshop News (news.infoshop.org) February 17, 2006
New Orleans -- “Latino para barato! Mecanico!” calls out William, a friendly 20-something man wearing a New Orleans baseball cap, as a truck pulls into the gas station across from the towering pedestal with a statue of Robert E. Lee on it on the outskirts of downtown New Orleans.
William isn’t quick enough to make it over to the truck, and his offer of a “cheap Latino mechanic” is drowned out by other workers as about six men jump into the back of the truck and it peels off.
William and the 150 or so other men congregating around Lee Circle are the true face of the rebuilding of New Orleans, a city where surreal scenes like long lines of white FEMA trailers inching along railroad overpasses and houses jumbled against each other like discarded toys are now common.
William made the dangerous trek across mountains and deserts to come here from his native Guatemala for a chance to earn some money rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina. He is not alone. Scores of Latino immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and even South America and the Caribbean have come to New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast to participate in the massive rebuilding.
Some immigrated to the U.S., almost always without documents, specifically because of Katrina. Others came from Texas, the Midwest, or other states where they were already working, often at the behest of recruiters who promised them good wages and housing. Latino immigrants compete for the Katrina-related jobs with some immigrants from Asia and Africa and a significant number of local black residents. The local residents say they have trouble getting hired since, they say, Latinos will work for less and keep quiet about bad working conditions.
“Me being black, they’re not going to pick me,” said John Pace, 47, a New Orleans resident who is trying to earn money to repair his damaged house. “They’ll hire four Mexicans instead of me, because it’s cheap labor.”
As Pace complains about Mexicans, he gestures good-naturedly toward a quiet, thin man with intense green eyes who was his partner on a recent job. The man, Wilson, 33, is actually Honduran. He came here three months ago with his brother from the Honduran capitol of Tegucigalpa to raise money to send back to their family. There is a large Honduran community in New Orleans; ironically many came after being displaced from their country by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 only to be slammed again by Katrina. More Hondurans have come to New Orleans since Katrina to join the existing community and look for work.
Even with the Honduran population, before Katrina New Orleans was one of few major cities with a negligible Latino population, only three percent in the 2000 census. Now the influx of immigrant workers has created a new demographic, and new racial tension. If many of the workers stay the whole ethnic face of the city could be significantly shifted, especially since many black residents are afraid they won’t be able to come back because their neighborhoods are not being redeveloped. Mayor Ray Nagin angered many by saying, “How do I make sure New Orleans is not overrun with Mexican workers” at a Town Hall meeting in October.
It’s true that various, often fly-by-night subcontractors have largely opted to recruit Latinos from other states and newly arrived immigrants, rather than hire local residents. At 8 or 9 a.m., the corners surrounding Lee Circle are packed with men of various races. But by midday most of the Latinos have been hired and only a crowd of black men remain. By 10 a.m. Pace had been waiting five hours and hadn’t been hired.
But the situation for immigrant workers is far from desirable. Partly because of their undocumented status and limited English, immigrant workers are especially vulnerable to unscrupulous subcontractors, who often enjoy virtual anonymity since they are hired by other subcontractors on various levels who at the top of the ladder are paid by US government agencies or private owners and developers.
There are rampant reports of Latino immigrants not being paid what they were promised for their work, or not being paid at all. When they are cheated, they have little recourse since they are undocumented and most of the work is off the books, without written contracts. Last fall the Southern Poverty Law Center filed two lawsuits against contractors, LVI Environmental Services of New Orleans and its subcontractor D&L Environmental and Belfor USA Inc. for violating workers’ rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The lawsuits allege the workers worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week cleaning up schools (in the case of LVI and D&L) and hospitals and Tulane University buildings (for Belfor), but weren’t paid overtime or even minimum wage.
Workers at Lee Circle say LVI brought about 200 workers from Texas to the gulf. Then, they say, it laid off all the undocumented workers, claiming the company was being harassed by immigration authorities.
One of the plaintiffs in the LVI case, Adrian Salazar, told reporters he was promised $13 an hour plus overtime, room and board, but in reality he was only paid $9.50 an hour, wasn’t paid at all for one full week and had to pay for his own hotel accommodations.
“Many contractors don’t want to pay,” said Roberto, 26, from Michoacan, Mexico, waiting for work at Lee Circle. “I have a lot of friends who weren’t paid. They were lied to and told they’d get $80 for a day, then they were only given $50. There’s nowhere they can go since they don’t have papers.”
Roberto said he advises workers to get signed contracts from employers, and to get their cell phone numbers and license plate numbers. He said New Orleans police have been helpful with filing reports about employers who don’t pay; but still it is extremely difficult to enforce action against them.
“There’s no help for these people, if you have an accident and you don’t speak English and know how to ask for help, what do you do?” asked “Joe,” who grew up in Cancun, Mexico and has lived in Iowa for years before coming to the Gulf Coast “for the hell of it.”
“If you don’t speak English and you don’t ask for a mask or water, you won’t get anything,” Joe said. “People are working without protection, breathing in dust that’s really bad for the lungs. The houses are full of asbestos. If you work for three months and then get sick, all the money you made won’t even cover your healthcare.”
The work is heavy, grueling and dangerous: moving and disassembling large appliances and pieces of furniture; tearing down rotten wood and sheetrock; clearing endless piles of debris; dealing with rusty metal and nails, industrial and chemical hazards and copious mold the whole time.
“Sometimes you find poisonous snakes in the houses,” said Joe. “My friend found a body in one house. The smell was so bad he had to throw his clothes away.”
Joe added that companies “will really jerk these guys around. [The worker] will say do you want me to break [disassemble] this toilet. They’ll say yes. Then you break it and they say that wasn’t supposed to be broken, you have to pay for it.”
Workers at the Lee Circle said they typically earn about $8 to $10 an hour or about $100 to $150 a day. Right after Katrina the pay was much higher, but since more workers have arrived it has gone down.
Despite the arduous and health-compromising nature of the post-Katrina work, those wages aren’t any different than the national mean of $10 an hour for day laborers nationwide, as reported in a recent study called “On the Corner” by the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And in New Orleans, high housing costs and the cost of living mean it isn’t easy to save money.
Early on contractors were putting workers up in emergency shelters meant for displaced residents, causing a national scandal. Some workers are paying $800 a month for a house with no heat, electricity or water. Most apartments, houses and hotel rooms cost a lot more. “It’s like you’re working just to pay the rent, so what’s the point?” said Roberto.
Many workers camp out in the city park amongst trashed and abandoned cars. The price is right, but they are exposed to the elements and the risk of violence. Immigrant workers are often robbery targets since people know they have a lot of money.
Meanwhile even if immigrant workers want to leave New Orleans or the gulf it can be extremely difficult because they were often transported to the area by a contractor, and don’t have funds or information on how to go elsewhere.
“If you don’t have papers, you don’t want to risk the Greyhound,” said William.
Joe said he often rents a car and charges workers $150 to drive to Miami.
“I don’t make any money it but I want to help them out,” he said. “We’re all human.”
--------- Kari Lydersen is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, In These Times, LiP Magazine, Clamor, and The New Standard.
Infoshop's page on Hurricane Katrina Mutual Aid Relief http://www.infoshop.org/hurricanekatrina.html
Additional articles by Kari Lydersen at Infoshop News:
* Kansas Education Shortchanged by Corporate Tax Breaks http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2006kansas_education
* Paramilitaries and Palm Plantations: A Murderous Combination in Colombia http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20051225225156434
* Katrina's Environmental Devastation Adds to a Legacy of Environmental Racism http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20051017081945776
* Don't Eat That Fish! More Mercury Will be the Legacy of New Coal-Burning Plants http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20050922095709940
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