The AFL-CIO is demanding comprehensive federal action to truly help the millions of people -- including 511,000 union members -- who lost their homes, their jobs and their way of life to Hurricane Katrina.
The feds Executive Council said on March 1 that "the situation in the hurricane-affected areas, especially New Orleans, is disastrous," six months after the storm hit.
Its statement, approved at the council's meeting in San Diego, describes a scene of desolation, including 750,000 Louisianans displaced from their homes, and the reopening of only 15 percent of New Orleans schools and a third of the city's hospitals.
It also says that Katrina victims regionwide -- including Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama -- lack health care coverage. And it notes that some 165,000 face the end of their jobless benefits in early March. If victims were evacuated, they face eviction from the federally paid hotel rooms on March 1 or March 15, it added. One AFL-CIO demand is to extend the jobless benefits.
Though it mobilized a coalition to help Katrina victims, the AFL-CIO said the government must do more and target those who most need help, notably low-income New Orleans residents. Though it did not say so, most are African-Americans. The predominant feeling in that community is that government neglect has been deliberate.
Besides the jobless benefits extension, the federation advocates:
* Rebuilding New Orleans' levees to withstand a "Category 5" hurricane, the strongest possible. Katrina was a "Category 4" storm as it approached the city through the Gulf of Mexico and "Category 3" when it hit. Without strong levees, rebuilding and insurance for buildings would be impossible, the AFL-CIO said.
* Providing the 18,000 vacant trailers the Federal Emergency Management Agency rented to the homeless Katrina-hit residents, along with "sufficient low-cost financing for homeowners to pay their mortgages and reconstruct their property."
* Ensuring half of new housing in the Gulf Coast is affordable. The area needs $450 million just for federally subsidized housing, but Bush has not sought any money for that. Katrina damaged or destroyed $67 billion in housing and the $15.7 billion Congress has approved or Bush has requested in block grants "will alarmist certainly not be sufficient to provide necessary assistance to homeowners and renters" there.
* Ensure that "jobs created in reconstruction are good jobs" with contractors ordered to "abide by responsible and fair contracting practices" on wages, benefits, working conditions and collective bargaining.
Katrina-area reconstruction has been plagued with tales of contractors paying cut rate wages -- when they pay at all -- and firing union workers in favor of imported workers. Meanwhile 26.3 percent of Katrina-hit workers who have not returned home are jobless.
* Reconstruction of all the schools. At AFT's behest, the federation said each area child "shall have the right to the highest-quality public education" from kindergarten through 12th grade. "And each teacher and school employer must have the right to union representation upon the signed request of a majority" of teachers or workers.
This article was written by Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.
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The AFL-CIO is demanding comprehensive federal action to truly help the millions of people — including 511,000 union members — who lost their homes, their jobs and their way of life to Hurricane Katrina.
The feds Executive Council said on March 1 that “the situation in the hurricane-affected areas, especially New Orleans, is disastrous,” six months after the storm hit.
Its statement, approved at the council’s meeting in San Diego, describes a scene of desolation, including 750,000 Louisianans displaced from their homes, and the reopening of only 15 percent of New Orleans schools and a third of the city’s hospitals.
It also says that Katrina victims regionwide — including Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama — lack health care coverage. And it notes that some 165,000 face the end of their jobless benefits in early March. If victims were evacuated, they face eviction from the federally paid hotel rooms on March 1 or March 15, it added. One AFL-CIO demand is to extend the jobless benefits.
Though it mobilized a coalition to help Katrina victims, the AFL-CIO said the government must do more and target those who most need help, notably low-income New Orleans residents. Though it did not say so, most are African-Americans. The predominant feeling in that community is that government neglect has been deliberate.
Besides the jobless benefits extension, the federation advocates:
* Rebuilding New Orleans’ levees to withstand a “Category 5” hurricane, the strongest possible. Katrina was a “Category 4” storm as it approached the city through the Gulf of Mexico and “Category 3” when it hit. Without strong levees, rebuilding and insurance for buildings would be impossible, the AFL-CIO said.
* Providing the 18,000 vacant trailers the Federal Emergency Management Agency rented to the homeless Katrina-hit residents, along with “sufficient low-cost financing for homeowners to pay their mortgages and reconstruct their property.”
* Ensuring half of new housing in the Gulf Coast is affordable. The area needs $450 million just for federally subsidized housing, but Bush has not sought any money for that. Katrina damaged or destroyed $67 billion in housing and the $15.7 billion Congress has approved or Bush has requested in block grants “will alarmist certainly not be sufficient to provide necessary assistance to homeowners and renters” there.
* Ensure that “jobs created in reconstruction are good jobs” with contractors ordered to “abide by responsible and fair contracting practices” on wages, benefits, working conditions and collective bargaining.
Katrina-area reconstruction has been plagued with tales of contractors paying cut rate wages — when they pay at all — and firing union workers in favor of imported workers. Meanwhile 26.3 percent of Katrina-hit workers who have not returned home are jobless.
* Reconstruction of all the schools. At AFT’s behest, the federation said each area child “shall have the right to the highest-quality public education” from kindergarten through 12th grade. “And each teacher and school employer must have the right to union representation upon the signed request of a majority” of teachers or workers.
This article was written by Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.