Hispanic Workers in NOLA

Lured by the Rebuilding Work, but Struggling to Be Paid

The New York Times
October 17, 2005
The Workers
Lured by the Work, but Struggling to Be Paid
By ROBIN POGREBIN

GULFPORT, Miss., Oct. 14 - The acrid smell inside trailer No. 2 is tough to take for any length of time. The linoleum floor is filthy and bare, aside from a few soiled blankets jammed in the corners. Dishes caked with leftover food are piled high in the sink, attracting flies. Two portable fans are the only things stirring the air.

But six men are living here. They sleep on that floor. They swat away those flies and dodge the roaches at night. They traveled all the way from Guatemala for this.

"It's O.K. for us," said one of them, Francisco Velazquez. "We need money."

One of the many casualties of Hurricane Katrina was the Mississippi work force. There are not enough people left in the area to fill the many jobs there are to do. Those posting "help wanted" signs include the Applebee's in Ocean Springs, Miss., which has been closing at 6 p.m. for lack of waiters, and the contractors enlisted to clear the seemingly limitless debris along the Gulf Coast.

Mr. Velazquez, 45, is one of 32 immigrants housed in three mobile homes who are being paid $8 an hour to tear Sheetrock for 10 hours a day. The men are among hundreds of illegal immigrants who entered the United States hoping to find work in the aftermath of the hurricane.

They are promised good pay, three meals a day and a place to stay, and some contractors make good on this. But the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, an advocacy group, says many do not.

"These workers are superexploited by contractors in horrible living conditions," said Bill Chandler, the president of the alliance. "People are working without any kind of inoculation - tetanus or anti-hepatitis - they don't have goggles, they don't have gloves, they don't have any safety protection at all."

Last month, President Bush made it easier for employers to use a less-expensive hand, suspending the Davis-Bacon Act in the areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The act is a Depression-era law that prohibits federally financed construction jobs from paying wages less than a local average.

Mr. Velazquez and the other men crossed the desert for three nights on foot and stole across the border because they heard about the hurricane and wanted jobs. Mr. Velazquez has 10 brothers, a wife and three grown daughters back home. He said his parents were sick, and when he talked about his father, his eyes filled with tears.

"He's 86 years old and he can't walk," Mr. Velazquez said. "My parents say, 'We need help.' "

Arnoldo Antonio Lopez, 36, another worker in the group, said he paid $70 a month to live in trailer No. 10. He said he would have put up with the poor conditions, but the contractor who hired him did not pay him. "He promised me $7 an hour wages and good food," Mr. Lopez said.

He and the other men went to work for another contractor. But that employer also did not pay, they said. The alliance refused to name any of the employers because it is considering legal action.

"They hadn't eaten for three days when we got to them," said Vicki Cintra, the Gulf Coast outreach organizer for the alliance. "They had no blankets, nothing. They were sleeping on the floor. They had no money to buy food."

So when the alliance offered a way out, Mr. Lopez and the other workers in the group eagerly accepted it. Now they are living at Our Lady of Fatima Church in Biloxi, Miss., where the Roman Catholic nuns took them in.

"They were having many difficulties," said Sister Maryvale Witrago, a nun working at the church. "We wanted to try to help them."

"We're trying to look for other jobs for them, other people who will be more honest," Sister Maryvale added. "If they work, they should receive the money for the work. Because they don't speak English, the bosses think it's easier to keep the money."
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GOOD HOPE, La. - Near this speck on the map southwest of New Orleans, where an oil refinery spouts flames into the sky and alligators are said to lurk in the green canals, sits something that is causing consternation across Louisiana: a camp for out-of-state workers cleaning up after the flood.

The camp, operated by a New York company called LVI Services, is not much to look at: a row of tractor-trailers crammed with bunks, a long line of portable toilets, a couple of R.V.'s and three tents with striped roofs. Gun-packing guards wear black T-shirts reading, "Police."

It is a temporary home for hundreds of LVI's workers, some of whom said they were in the United States illegally. They are commuting into New Orleans, swabbing the mold off walls, ripping the guts out of buildings, removing mountains of soggy debris.

And they are stirring up resentment. Louisianians, from high-level public officials to low-wage workers, have begun to complain about the influx of outsiders they perceive as having come to profit off their pain.

"People from other states, we appreciate their help," said Aubrey D. Cheatham, a union electrician from New Orleans who believes he lost a job to lower-paid workers from outside Louisiana. "But everybody else is getting work, not us."

Workers from all over have been pouring into Louisiana, some bused in by contracting companies, others simply turning up on their own in search of jobs. While nobody seems to know how many are here, there is plenty of work; the federal government estimates it will spend more than $450 million just to clean up hurricane debris.

And as that work continues, Louisianians are casting unhappy eyes on everyone from the giant construction companies that won federal contracts to the small-town builders driving big pickup trucks with out-of-state license plates.

Much of the overt hostility is focused on the army of Latino workers who appear to be doing much of the dirtiest cleanup work, often in the employ of those big companies, and often for less money that local workers might insist on.

State officials have expressed concerns, with Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, calling on Oct. 24 for an investigation of federal contractors, whom she said were hiring "low-wage undocumented workers." And in Kenner, just west of New Orleans, the City Council has passed an emergency ordinance to try to regulate workers' trailers and tents that have mushroomed all over the city.

"We're trying to be as considerate and compassionate as we can be to our out-of-town guests, but we need to preserve the quality of life for our residents as well," said Philip J. Ramon, chief of staff for Kenner's mayor.

Employers point out that they are not required to investigate the authenticity of employees' documents. And as for bringing in workers, some say they have no choice.

"People in the area of impact are disjointed, disoriented," said Burton T. Fried, president of LVI Services.

But in places where LVI will be working for a while, it tries to make a transition to local workers, Mr. Fried said. "The purpose is, forgetting morality, that we don't have to pay per diems, food service, transportation," he said.

The focus on Hispanic immigrants worries people like Representative Nydia M. Velázquez of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Small Business Committee.

"I am afraid the anger and frustration of hurricane victims is going to be turned against undocumented workers, who are being taken advantage of," Ms. Velázquez said.

Louisiana has only a small Spanish-speaking population, which is concentrated in and around Kenner. New Orleans itself is 3.1 percent Hispanic, according to the latest census, and the state as a whole is just 2.4 percent, far less than the national average of 12.5 percent. Therefore many of the newcomers stand out.

The worker encampments are also not hard to spot: next to a cemetery on Airline Highway in Metairie, around the side of a Winn-Dixie supermarket on Williams Boulevard in Kenner, on the campus of Delgado Community College in New Orleans.

There are less formal living arrangements, too. On the west side of City Park, in the north part of New Orleans, campers are parked next to forklifts, tents have sprouted next to dump trucks and hammocks are slung next to front-end loaders. Judging by the license plates on the trucks, many of the inhabitants appear to be from nearby states.

But not all, at least not originally. José L. Garcia and five of his friends were camping recently under a live oak tree, sharing three tents, eating food from a church kitchen and bathing in a plastic garbage can. The men live in Charlotte, N.C., but said most of them knew one other from the Mexican state of Michoacán.

Behind their pickup trucks were two large trailers, which the men use to transport debris to a dump. They get $10 for every reeking refrigerator they throw out, Mr. Garcia said, but they do not want to do that work anymore - it makes them smell too bad.

Hard and unpleasant as cleanup work is, there are Louisianians willing to do it, said Barry Kaufman, the business manager of Construction and General Laborers' Local 689 in New Orleans. Mr. Kaufman has said he has at least 2,000 people willing to take cleanup jobs, although many of them - and the local's hiring hall - are now displaced in Baton Rouge, more than an hour's drive from New Orleans.

"The local guys are trying, but there's nowhere for them to stay," Mr. Kaufman said, adding that one of the camps "looks like Little Mexico."

The situation is new to Louisiana, which has little tradition of attracting large numbers of transient workers, unlike Florida and other booming areas, said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Economy.com. The stagnant economy here has not provided many job opportunities since 2001.

The complaints also reflect the widespread frustration over the continuing lack of housing in the area. Tens of thousands of houses were destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, leaving their former residents adrift. Businesses of all sorts are frantically advertising for workers, even as the jobless rate for Louisianians jumped to 11.5 percent in September, from 5.8 percent in August.

It was the promise of housing, as much as anything, that prompted Mr. Cheatham, the union electrician, to take a job wiring a tent city for a subcontractor at the Naval Air Station at Belle Chasse, south of New Orleans, he said. He had lost his house near Lake Pontchartrain to flooding, along with his car; his family was scattered.

Life on the base was tough, he said, but he was particularly troubled by the presence of a large number of people he believed to be illegal immigrants, some of whom were working at the base, others of whom arrived each night on buses for meals. (The Navy said it allowed its contractors to house workers on the base.) "I called immigration several times to complain," Mr. Cheatham said.

Then, abruptly in their view, the subcontractor, BE&K, fired Mr. Cheatham and his fellow union electricians. The electricians, who make about $22 an hour plus benefits, said they believed that their jobs were taken by lower-paid, illegal workers.

Their boss, Albert Knight of Knight Enterprises in Lacombe, La., complained to Senate Democrats, who demanded an investigation. And, in fact, federal officials have since found more than two dozen illegal workers at the base, although only two worked for BE&K, which says it did not replace the electricians with lower-paid workers.

According to an August report by the Government Accountability Office, enforcement of workplace laws has become a low priority for federal immigration authorities, which fined only three companies for improper hiring in the 2004 fiscal year, down from 417 in the 1999 fiscal year. Arrests have also plummeted.

For workers, company-provided housing can be as much a curse as a blessing, said Frank J. Curiel, an organizer for the Laborers International Union. Some workers have been cast into the street with nowhere to go, he said, while others cannot quit their jobs because they would become homeless.

It is not hard to find such people, as Mr. Curiel demonstrated by striking up a conversation with three men outside an LVI building down the road from the housing camp. The men said they were making $10 an hour cleaning up debris and were bunking at the camp, which they said had an atmosphere like a jail.

One man, a Honduran who said he was afraid to give his real name, said he wanted nothing more than to return to Houston, where he had lived for six months. But he did not have enough money after sending most of his last paycheck back to his family.

The man said he did not like working with strong chemicals and had been having health problems. When he did not want to work one day, he said, his supervisor told him that he was fired and that he had to leave the camp. He was not sure what he would do next.

One of his friends, a teenager who gave his name as Valentine Morales (which was not the name on the plastic ID tag he was wearing), said he was from the Mexican state of Chiapas and had been living in Springfield, Mass. He had heard there was a lot of work after the hurricane, he said, so he took a bus to Mississippi and made his way to Louisiana.

Soon, he will move on to Florida, the young man said. "I used to be a farm worker," he explained, "but now I do cleanup work."
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