One day in early February, a teenaged worker, tacking blue plastic sheeting over the gaping holes in a Hurricane Katrina-damaged 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 workers tried to get him to take a drug test before examining his injuries, by giving him a small cup to urinate in.
But the teenager spoke only Spanish, the hospital personnel speak only English, and he didn't understand what they wanted him to do, says Bill Chandler of Mississippi Immigration Rights Association. So they threw the teenager out of the hospital. And then, to add insult to injury, the contractor who hired him refused to pay him.
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Abuses like that, numbering in the thousands, are rampant in the Gulf Coast area as workers and residents try to recover from the billions of dollars in damages caused by Hurricane Katrina late last August, quickly followed by Hurricane Rita in September.
Data uncovered by Chandler's group, unionists, Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) and others show widespread importation and use of out-of-the-area workers, equally widespread refusal to pay the 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 meeting with the Bush administration's top Wage and Hour division official in Washington, 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 Bush?s government comes under increasing fire, from all points of the political spectrum, for its terrible response to the millions of people who lost homes, businesses and jobs when the hurricanes hit.
Labor Secretary Elaine Chao disputes the lack of response. She touts DOL'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.
But 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, AFL-CIO unions rushed in teams to help not just their colleagues in the stricken states, but other workers. It still has teams there. Change to Win is retraining area workers for new rebuilding-oriented tasks and occupations.
Meanwhile, Chandler and others are reporting abuses of workers by contractors hired--without either labor safeguards or competitive bidding--by Bush administration 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 recovered $141,000 in unpaid wages for 65 workers hired by a subcontractor for Kellogg, Brown and Root, which itself is a subsidiary of Halliburton, the firm formerly headed by Vice President Cheney.
* Lack of wage and hour enforcement, especially in Mississippi, the only U.S. state with no Labor Department. That puts the entire enforcement burden on over-worked and undermanned federal DOL personnel, who in turn have enlisted Chandler's group as their eyes and ears in the field, interviewing workers and gathering evidence.
* Diversion of federal money long before it gets to workers. Chandler gave an example where the federal government 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.
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The subcontractor?s managers did not speak Spanish, so they hired bilingual "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 have been paid. Chandler?s group argues the "crew leaders" are really employees, not independent contractors, and thus, like the rank-and-file workers, covered 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" to employers and workers on job safety issues in the hardest-hit areas, south of Interstate 10. That includes New Orleans, a key oil refining and importation area, where Katrina smashed into tanks, pipelines, docks, storage sites, wells and rigs and other facilities.
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Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.
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One day in early February, a teenaged worker, tacking blue plastic sheeting over the gaping holes in a Hurricane Katrina-damaged 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 workers tried to get him to take a drug test before examining his injuries, by giving him a small cup to urinate in.
But the teenager spoke only Spanish, the hospital personnel speak only English, and he didn’t understand what they wanted him to do, says Bill Chandler of Mississippi Immigration Rights Association. So they threw the teenager out of the hospital. And then, to add insult to injury, the contractor who hired him refused to pay him.
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Abuses like that, numbering in the thousands, are rampant in the Gulf Coast area as workers and residents try to recover from the billions of dollars in damages caused by Hurricane Katrina late last August, quickly followed by Hurricane Rita in September.
Data uncovered by Chandler’s group, unionists, Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) and others show widespread importation and use of out-of-the-area workers, equally widespread refusal to pay the 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 meeting with the Bush administration’s top Wage and Hour division official in Washington, 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 Bush?s government comes under increasing fire, from all points of the political spectrum, for its terrible response to the millions of people who lost homes, businesses and jobs when the hurricanes hit.
Labor Secretary Elaine Chao disputes the lack of response. She touts DOL’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.
But 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, AFL-CIO unions rushed in teams to help not just their colleagues in the stricken states, but other workers. It still has teams there. Change to Win is retraining area workers for new rebuilding-oriented tasks and occupations.
Meanwhile, Chandler and others are reporting abuses of workers by contractors hired–without either labor safeguards or competitive bidding–by Bush administration 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 recovered $141,000 in unpaid wages for 65 workers hired by a subcontractor for Kellogg, Brown and Root, which itself is a subsidiary of Halliburton, the firm formerly headed by Vice President Cheney.
* Lack of wage and hour enforcement, especially in Mississippi, the only U.S. state with no Labor Department. That puts the entire enforcement burden on over-worked and undermanned federal DOL personnel, who in turn have enlisted Chandler’s group as their eyes and ears in the field, interviewing workers and gathering evidence.
* Diversion of federal money long before it gets to workers. Chandler gave an example where the federal government 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.
online pharmacy order lipitor without prescription with best prices today in the USA
The subcontractor?s managers did not speak Spanish, so they hired bilingual “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 have been paid. Chandler?s group argues the “crew leaders” are really employees, not independent contractors, and thus, like the rank-and-file workers, covered 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” to employers and workers on job safety issues in the hardest-hit areas, south of Interstate 10. That includes New Orleans, a key oil refining and importation area, where Katrina smashed into tanks, pipelines, docks, storage sites, wells and rigs and other facilities.
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Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.