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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2006Exploiting workers to rebuild New OrleansNew York-Activists from the Louisiana Workers Justice Center spoke here in mid-July at meetings on "Rebuilding New Orleans: Community Participation, Worker Justice, and Solidarity." Colette Tippy of the Center described New Orleans workers' continuing dual struggles for jobs with decent pay and safe conditions and for housing. She spoke at Fordham Law School, some of whose students have worked with the Center and helped it conduct a survey of 700 workers. Ten months after Katrina, Tippy said, lack of housing remains a huge barrier to poor and working people returning. Only 50% of housing has been restored, public housing has been torn down, rents have doubled, and reconstruction plans exclude rental housing altogether. She guessed that 40% of the Black population has not returned. Those who have come back suffer high unemployment, lack of schools as well as housing, and lack of health care and other services. Meanwhile, the large contractors who were awarded the rebuilding work have brought in over 25,000 Latino immigrants to work at illegal pay and under illegal conditions. They are housed four people to a hotel room, or with 150 bunks in a hotel ballroom, or even in shells of destroyed cars. In spite of the institutional racism that divides the Black and Latino populations, she said, they sometimes find common cause. At a recent march by public housing residents through the French Quarter to demonstrate poor people's housing needs, both Black and Latino workers came out in support. On May 1, 5,000 workers rallied in what she termed New Orleans' largest demonstration in a long time. Tippy explained that, far from moving slowly as it did with aid, the federal government moved immediately after Katrina to suspend laws protecting workers and local contractors. Several people described the super-exploitation of immigrant workers, who cleaned up the city without protection from the toxins and mold, and without any monitoring by federal agencies. "There was no OSHA, no EPA, no Labor Department," said one Center volunteer. "All you see at workplaces are the immigration authorities rounding people up for deportation, and the police harassing and robbing immigrant workers." The majority of the immigrants are cheated out of some wages, the Center's study found, and they are not covered by workers compensation. Few New Orleans industries are unionized. In spite or because of these conditions, "there is extraordinary organizing going on," including self-organization at shape-ups. The Workers Center aims to aid these efforts, as well as to provide legal and other assistance. It is part of a coalition of groups organizing around the right to return, community-based economic development, neighborhood planning, green spacing, and levee construction. Its study, called "Injustice for All," can be found at www.advancementproject.org. |
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