Immigrant Workers: Exploited In the Gulf Cleanup

Peter Rousmaniere blogs so I don't have to. Peter, over at Working Immigrants, writes about a new study by researchers at Tulane University and the University of California, Berkeley that reveals that undocumented workers are being abused even as they provide critical help to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the most costly natural disaster in American history.

Among their problems:

Workers reported working with harmful substances (29 percent) and in dangerous conditions (27 percent) while 19 percent said they were not given any protective equipment for dangerous work.

Only 9 percent of undocumented workers have health insurance compared to 55 percent of documented workers. 83 percent of documented workers said they received medications when needed compared to 38 percent of undocumented workers.

Meanwhile, another study showed similar findings. Risk Amid Recovery: Occupational Health and Safety of Latino Workers in the Aftermath of Gulf Coast Hurricanes, is the result of a joint project between UCLA-Labor Occupational Safety and Health Project and the National Day Laborers Organizing Network and was made possible with funding from National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences.

Risk Amid Recovery was based on interviews with 53 immigrant workers and 28 community, union, church, and relief workers in Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi; and in Slidell, New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Kenner, Louisiana from December 2005 through February 2006. The researchers found that

Like other workers and returning residents, Latino workers confronted a variety of hazards. The most frequently mentioned of these was mold; other toxic exposures and safety hazards were also common. Most workers, however, received neither health and safety training nor protective equipment. Respiratory, skin and other health problems incurred on the job were exacerbated by unsanitary living conditions. Most workers lacked access to medical services. Many reported wage violations and harassment, including threats of deportation and denial of access to shelter facilities.

There were many reasons that these hazards were tolerated; fear of losing a job or housing being the main ones.

Mississippi: "A Tempest of Long-term Health Danger"

This is upsetting on so many different levels.

First, there's employers' refusal to comply with safe practices and federal regulations when demolishing asbestos containing building in the hurricane damaged gulf states:

Workers descend on the area with heavy equipment like backhoes and debris trucks. They tear the buildings apart and load debris, creating clouds of pulverized construction materials they breathe in and that scatters with the wind throughout the neighborhood.

Public health, according to the employees, was further compromised by open-air debris trucks hauling and scattering along the roads potentially asbestos-containing refuse to landfills meant only for safe construction and demolition waste.

The contractors who came forward said workers are not wearing the proper equipment on structures that may contain asbestos. They said workers should be wearing face masks and full body suits.

Other workers said regular dust masks were not good enough for buildings that may contain asbestos and contractors should be handing out dual cartridge respirators to employees.

They said the disposable face masks commonly used on sites were as useful at blocking asbestos fibers as wearing no protection at all.

Victoria Cintra, a spokeswoman for Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, said she also knows of widespread violations and the immigrant laborers her group represents are being put at unacceptably high risk.

"These violations are terrible," Cintra said. "People are going into houses and removing God knows what and they are doing it at best with Latex gloves. (The companies and regulators) have no regard for the future that the immigrant community will be going through in 15 or 20 years."

And the federal agencies that are supposed to be overseeing the safety of the operations are not doing their jobs.

According to spokesmen with both Mississippi's Department of Environmental Quality and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, neither agency is sending enforcement officers to make sure that employers are complying with asbestos regulations.

"Specifically, in regards to asbestos, we do not have OSHA compliance officers south of I-10 with that as an assignment, no," said Jesse Baynes, OSHA assistant area director in Jackson.

"We are not in an enforcement mode south of I-10 unless there is an investigation of a fatality or a complaint. It is still an area under a federally declared disaster."

Baynes said OSHA had received asbestos complaints but none with locations of ongoing violations that they needed to investigate.

"We have heard that employers are not always reaching standards but not with the specificity that we can go out and check to see whether they really are or not," Baynes said.

Both agencies maintain that complying with asbestos regulations is the responsibility of the companies doing the work and not that of the government. They say they will enforce the laws when a company is caught shirking its duties under regulation.

"Everything we do involves (companies) self-reporting," said Dwight Wylie, with DEQ's air division. "They file stuff with us. We don't check."

Hello?

"We are not in an enforcement mode south of I-10....It is still an area under a federally declared disaster." Which employers can get away with blatent violations of health and safety laws?

"Complying with asbestos regulations is the responsibility of the companies doing the work and not that of the government." So is driving safely, but that doesn't stop me from getting a ticket.

"Everything we do involves (companies) self-reporting," said Dwight Wylie, with DEQ's air division. "They file stuff with us. We don't check." Um, are we still in the United States. Last I checked, we were supposed to actually enforce the law, not wait for the evildoers to turn themselves in.

Anyone from federal EPA, OSHA or Congress home? Hello?

And then there's this little loophole:

"Debris on the ground is not subject to regulation," Wylie said.

Work site supervisors said the law defines a structure with two walls and a roof as a structural demolition project while a house that has been flattened is debris.

That distinction has opened up a de facto incentive to call structures debris and get it into unspecialized landfills as quickly as possible.

The employees who came forward said they knew of incidents in which structures with easily identifiable asbestos siding that were standing were destroyed and were treated as debris.

The employees said the companies doing that were in the business of hauling debris and anything that slowed them down meant less profit.

Steelworkers and Environmental Justice Partners Show How to Clean Up Toxic Properties in New Orleans

By Special Correspondant Jim Young

Neighborhood contamination in the wake of Katrina has lingered so long without government intervention that two unusual partners have joined forces to do something about it. On March 23, the United Steelworkers (USW) union and Dillard University’s Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ) announced the kick-off of A Safe Way Back Home project, an environmental neighborhood clean up and outreach campaign.

The first phase of the project, which ran from March 23-26, removed tainted soil from properties on a ravaged and almost-empty block on Aberdeen Road in New Orleans East. The contaminated dirt was taken away by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Sidewalks, curbs, and streets were pressure washed until all accumulated sediment was removed. Each lot was re-landscaped with graded river sand and fresh sod.

Participants included residents, college students and Steelworkers who have received certificate training in Hazardous Materials handling in programs funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

“This demonstration project serves as a catalyst for a series of activities that will attempt to reclaim the New Orleans East community following the devastation caused by hurricane Katrina. Ultimately, it is the government’s responsibility to provide the resources required to address areas of environmental concern and to assure that the workforce is protected,” said Dr. Beverly Wright, DSCEJ’s executive director.

“FEMA should replicate this demonstration project on thousands of blocks in hundreds of neighborhoods across the City of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region,” added United Steelworkers President Leo W. Gerard. “Only the federal government has the resources and authority to lead such a massive undertaking. But it has to be done. The human dignity and economic security of the people of the Gulf Coast depends on it.”

Both the USW and DSCEJ say FEMA should allocate a portion of the billions of dollars recently appropriated by Congress to clean up environmental contaminants in the region. They maintain the agency should provide the work force and materials necessary to complete the remediation. And it should sponsor and fund the NIEHS Hazardous Waste Worker Training Program and Minority Worker Training Program as models for educating cleanup workers about how to identify, control and prevent numerous potential health hazards.

DSCEJ and USW launched A Safe Way Back Home following an analysis of sediment samples taken by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at two properties on Aberdeen Road. The results showed that all but one sample contained at least one chemical at a higher concentration than the Louisiana Risk Evaluation Corrective Action Program (RECAP) screening levels for residential soil. The analysis was conducted by the firm of Glenrose Engineering, Inc. of Austin Texas.

Chemicals exceeding RECAP standards included:

• Heavy metals (arsenic, zinc, barium, cadmium). Arsenic levels were greater than 40 times the Region 6 EPA soil cleanup level for residential areas. This level is set at 0.39 milligrams/kilogram (mg/kg) to protect against cancer. The levels also exceeded the state guidelines for clean-up used by Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ). This level is set at 12 mg/kg.
• Diesel range organics. At both sites the levels greatly exceed the state guidelines for clean-up in residential areas used by LDEQ of 650 micrograms/kilogram (ug/kg). At 8750 Aberdeen the level was found to be more than twice the state clean-up level.
• Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (benzo[a]pyrene and benzo[b]fluoranthene). At one site, the level of the cancer-causing PAH Benzo[a]pyrene significantly exceeds the state guidelines for clean-up in residential areas used by LDEQ and EPA of 330 (ug/kg).

These results, when compared to other US EPA data from across the city of New Orleans, appear typical of post-Katrina New Orleans. But that doesn’t make them safe -- they represent both acute and long-term health hazards. (See also an analysis with similar conclusions conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council.)

“There are no acceptable levels of contamination for the thousands of hurricane victims now living in what resembles a sludge pit – no matter what state and federal environmental officials say,” noted Gary Beevers, Director of USW District 13, which encompasses Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas. “The government was doing next to nothing to remedy these hazards, so the Steelworkers felt like we had to step in and take some action.”

A Safe Way Back Home is the product of a strategic partnership between labor, environmental and community organizations. It offers neighborhood residents whose homes were flooded by Hurricane Katrina an opportunity to work with local Steelworkers and environmentalists to take a proactive approach to cleaning up their neighborhoods.

Health and Safety training and equipment was provided to all volunteers before starting the Safe Way Back Home project. The training is supported by grants from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to Dillard University, home of DSCEJ, and to the Steelworkers’ Tony Mazzocchi Center for Safety, Health & Environmental Education.

“The failure to adequately respond to the devastation caused by Katrina has had disastrous environmental and health consequences,” said Jim Frederick, Assistant Director of the Steelworkers’ Department of Health, Safety and the Environment. “Thousands upon thousands of residents continue to suffer exposures to contaminated soil, unsafe water and toxic mold.”
Frederick said the Steelworkers will continue providing Hazardous Materials training for small and disadvantaged businesses and contractors involved in demolition, debris removal, mold remediation, and clean-up.

More Information:

Analysis: Health risks in Katrina's wake, United Press International March 27, 2006
By Olga PierceUPI Health Business Correspondent

New Orleans Activists Starting From the Ground Up, Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2006, By Ann M. Simmons, Times Staff Writer

Finding Work In New Orleans: Good News or Potential Tragedy?

Remember a couple of weeks ago I was complaining about OSHA's focus on the health and safety concerns of the large contractors and their failure to address the health and safety concerns of the mostly Latino workforce who are working on the smaller jobs throughout New Orleans and the Gulf Coast? (here and here)

Well, this is what I was talking about. The Washington Post had an article yesterday about how difficult it is for immigrant workers to find work. But that's just the beginning of their problems:

For those who find work, conditions can be abominable, with laborers such as Rico Barrios and his wife, Guadalupe Garcia, slashing through the cough-inducing mold on walls in flooded Lakeview with only thin masks to shield their lungs, even though she is pregnant. "It's hard," said Barrios, who is from Mexico City, his face glistening with sweat.

I can't tell whether this story is supposed to be happy or tragic:

Around midday, across from a church in eastern New Orleans, they spotted a woman in a garage, struggling with an armful of splintered wood. "I make you good price," Medina told her.

"How good?" Marie Croson responded.

Their first bite. Medina whispered something to Gonzalez and then blurted out, "Eight hundred dollars."

Then Croson was interested. She has been trying for weeks to get her house gutted. A church group from out of state had offered to do the work at no charge, but it backed off upon learning she had insurance, even though she has yet to receive a penny from her policy. A neighbor was demanding $4,000 to do the job, way more than she could afford.

"Bleach, too?" she said.

"One thousand dollars, and we finish at 5, 6 o'clock," Medina said.

She nodded her head and Arturo raced into the house, punching his bare fist through rotting drywall before the word "deal" had slipped out of Croson's mouth.

Two other friends, trailing in a separate car, joined them. After paying for gas, they'll each make about $150 -- their biggest payday in weeks.

"That was god-sent ," Croson told her friend Joyce Bennett.

Behind her, Arturo was emerging with an armload of mold-spotted muck that used to be Croson's living-room wall. A smile spread across his face. It was his first of the day.

Sounds like they could use a bit of "assistance" from OSHA.

OSHA In The Gulf: From Bad To Worse

I reported a couple of days ago about how OSHA is failing to protect immigrant day laborers in the Gulf, spending most of its time and resources focusing on "Annex work" -- addressing the generally less severe safety problems with federal employees and FEMA contractors who fall under the Worker Safety and Health Support Annex of Homeland Security's National Response Plan.

Meanwhile, thousands of mostly immigrant day laborers are doing the extremely dangerous job of demolishing buildings without basic personal protective equipment (like respirators).

Turns out the situation is even worse than I had heard.

You may recall that OSHA awarded (with much fanfare) $5 million in Disaster Response and Recovery Training Grants at the end of September

to provide critical health and safety training for workers who are engaged in disaster response, clean-up and rebuilding activities in the hurricane-impacted Gulf States region. The grants will help train workers to avoid hazards related to confined spaces, electrical work, construction, hand and power tools, heavy equipment operation, slips, trips and falls, mold, water contamination, respiratory, chemical and biological hazards, and animal and insect bites.

Well according to one observer working in the Gulf region, OSHA didn't really mean training for all workers down there in the Gulf states.

The training dollars recently provided by OSHA to train hurricane workers will not allow us to train non-federally funded groups, the ones who need the training the most. The double irony here is that we've made every effort to entice those federally-led contractors to offer appropriate training by giving them free training or even pay their people to do the training-- they refused!

And, according to the same observer, things aren't so great for employees of the big contractors either:

I witnessed a so called "HAZCOM" (hazard communication) training session for un-skilled debris removal/demolition workers, conducted by EE&G, a lead subcontractor to Philips and Jordan, a $500 million US Army Corps prime contractor. The training was 15 minutes long conducted under a crowded tent. The instructor informed the workers that they neither need to wear Tyvek suites nor go through decontamination because hazardous conditions no longer exist.

Sounds to me that unless you're lucky enough to be working for one of the companies who happen to give a shit, you're may be out of luck down there when it comes to training, proper personal protective equipment or safe working conditions.

One thing that's missing here: Any idea of how many workers in the Gulf -- especially immigrant day-laborers -- are getting hurt. Even in the best of times and circumstances, it's difficult to get an accurate picture of workplace injuries among immigrants because they're afraid to report or too intimidated.

In the Gulf, however, it's worse. First aid and hospitals are few and far between, there is still no easy way to communicate or telephone in many areas and the community organizations and churches that provide some support elsewhere don't exist in many parts of the recovery area. On top of all this, they aren't even getting support from OSHA or OSHA grantees if they're not working for one of the "official" Annex contractors.

As I often remind people, we are in a situation in this country right now where we have no effective Congressional oversight of what OSHA is -- or is not -- doing down in the Gulf right now. Democrats can't call hearings without Republican permission. And the Republicans are not about to allow anyone to look into more malfeasance when they're already have a few, um, er problems with ethics, corruption and mismanagement. All we're left with is a lousy blogger, and hopefully some journalists who are concerned enough to pick up on this.


Related Stories

• OSHA/FEMA Failing To Protect Day-Laborers In The Gulf, December 5, 2005
• Workplace Hazards and Abuse in the Gulf: Part Deux, November 15, 2005
• After Katrina: The Bad Times Continue to Roll, November 14, 2005
• Gulf Worker Exploitation: The Plot Thickens, October 22, 2005
• Gulf Recovery: Paying The Price For Lower Costs, October 20, 2005
• Katrina Workers in Peril: Will We Repeat Mistakes of 9/11 Cleanup?, September 19, 2005
• Hurricane Katrina Workplace Safety and Health Resources, September 13, 2005

OSHA/FEMA Failing To Protect Day-Laborers In The Gulf

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's effort in the New Orleans area is failing to protect day laborers and others who are not working for companies that are under FEMA contract, according to some OSHA state plan officials who have been volunteering in the recovery effort. Most of these workers are immigrants who speak limited English.

OSHA is operating under the Worker Safety and Health Support Annex of Homeland Security's National Response Plan., under which OSHA personnel addresses "protection of worker safety and health for all emergency responders and response organizations during potential and actual Incidents of National Significance." OSHA personnel is also expected to assist in "identification and characterization of incident hazards, assessments and analyses of health risks and exposures to responders, medical monitoring, and incident risk management."

The problem, according to the state-plan volunteers, is that OSHA is putting almost all of its effort into what is referred to there as "Annex" work: Minding and monitoring the activities of federal employees and contractors working under FEMA contracts -- but ignoring the hazards faced by the huge day labor workforce in New Orleans that is working for non-FEMA contractors, also known as "non-Annex" work.

According to one state plan volunteer:

These contractors are hired by homeowners to mostly do demolition work on the thousands of homes that need to be torn down. The day workers are dumped off in a neighborhood in the morning, told to tear the houses down, and picked up at night. They are given no PPE [personal protective equipment -- respirators, gloves, boots, etc] of any kind despite doing hazardous work in mold infested structures.

OSHA personnel is not addressing the hazards that these workers face unless there is an injury or a complaint, and given that most of these workers are immigrants who are easily inimidated and have limited knowledge of their rights, complaints are unlikely. Demolishing these structures is extremely dangerous. Not only are many of the buildings unstable, but they're filled with mold at levels rarely seen before, asbestos, lead and the residue of petroleum and other toxic chemical spills, in addition to safety hazards from falls, confined spaces, hazardous machinery and electrical hazards.

The problem is not a shortage of PPE, but to whom it is distributed. Some of the state-plan personnel have been forced to distribute PPE on their own. One of the state plan inspectors told of a team leader who was so moved by the desperate state of the day workers there that he stayed on for a few extra days on his own dime and bought cases of N95 respirators from Home Depot and drove thru Louisiana and Mississippi giving them out with a church group. That apparently didn't sit so well with a FEMA employee who got into a shouting match with him because she couldn't understand why he was helping the day laborers.

What we seem to be dealing with here is not a personal failure on the part of OSHA personnel, who by all reports are working hard under extremely difficult conditions, but a failure of OSHA and FEMA policy and willingness to address the huge issue of day-laborer health and safety in the Gulf region. Whether it's due to resource constraints, or just insensitivity, the day laborers are paying the price.

As one observer put it,

What at first seemed to some of us as a breakthrough (the Worker S&H Annex) in having the National Response Plan recognize the importance of responder safety and health has instead turned into a mechanism to legitimize the de-clawing of OSHA and placing the agency under the command and control of FEMA.

One state plan inspector reported that even the "Annex work" is frustrating because they're unable to enforce anything and FEMA/OSHA is very sensitive to any behavior that may be too "assertive." OSHA claims it's "not their job" to give out PPE. At least one contractor was found to be deducting the cost of PPE from workers' paychecks. (And wasn't there supposed to be a standard requiring employers to pay for workers' personal protective equipment?)

Another inspector noted that the Spanish-speaking workers he was assisting had trouble understanding the OSHA respirator fact sheets. One glance at OSHA's "Quick Card" on respirators, and it's easy to understand why they're having problems understanding the information, even when it's in Spanish:

The appropriate respirator will depend on the contaminant(s) to which you are exposed and the protection factor (PF) required. Required respirators must be NIOSH-approved and medical evaluation and training must be provided before use.

The main thing these workers wanted to know was why they needed respirators, information that seems to be missing from the OSHA materials. The state-plan volunteers ended up developing their own fact sheets that were apparently much better understood by the Spanish speaking laborers.

FEMA, meanwhile, seems to be primarily interested in using OSHA to monitor the air to ensure that none of the FEMA contractors get sued later on by workers who may have health problems. As I reported last month, Gulf Coast recovery contractors are pushing Senate bill 1761 that would "streamline" contractor-liability laws and push all related lawsuits into the federal court system.

I can't help but think that what we're seeing here at least partly a result of OSHA's deliberate refusal to talk to or work directly with workers or labor organizations over the past five years. AFL-CIO representatives have been repeatedly rebuffed by OSHA when they've offered to sit down and develop a Gulf recovery plan that makes sense considering the wide variety of hazards and the diversity of the workforce.

It's easy to lose touch with what workers' issues -- lack of training, equipment, resources, ability to understand English, or read in either language -- when you spend all your time and energy creating Alliances with employer associations whose representatives rarely rub elbows with people who actually get their hands dirty, can't understand English, aren't knowledgeable about the hazards or their rights, and can't afford to buy respirators or understand why they're needed.

There's a price to pay for such arrogance -- unfortunately, it's the day laborers who seem to be paying it.

New Orleans: Kick 'em When They're Down

It never ceases to amaze me how, whenever a crisis hits, Republicans instinctively go after the very workers that society depends on to pull them out: public employees. It happened after 9/11 and now it's happening again in New Orleans.

Gulf Coast Watch blog reports that SEIU Local 21 led a successful charge against Louisiana Senate Bill 5 which would have

allowed parishes and municipalities to slash wages for teachers, water and sanitation workers, social workers, and other public employees for up to six months AFTER a declared state of emergency was terminated

Republican Senator Tom Schelder withdrew the bill after the legislature was hit by flood of emails and phone calls by a very nice coalition that came together to oppose the bill:

Opposition to this bill was supported by the Black Chamber of Commerce, the Northern and Central Louisiana Interfaith Network, and members of newly formed NOAH (New Opportunities for Action and Hope), founded by community and labor organizations in Louisiana in order to ensure that as LA rebuilds

Watching Out: Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch

The Institute for Southern Studies has started a new webpage and blog called Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch "a new project to document and investigate the rebuilding of the Southern Gulf in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita"

Through much of the Gulf Coast coast, there's now an eery silence. The hurricanes have left, the flood waters have receded, and the TV cameras are nearly all gone.

But for the people of the hurricane-ravaged South, the struggle for their region's future has just begun.

While residents are focused on picking up the pieces, a handful of powerful interests -- well-connected contractors, unscrupulous developers, and ambitious politicians -- are cutting deals, making plans and seeking to capitalize on the disaster.

But who's watching them?

We are.

Good. Someone needs to do it.

Workplace Hazards and Abuse in the Gulf: Part Deux

More today on the struggles of workers in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast. First, Amanda Schaffer at Slate writes about "Katrina Cough."

Katrina cough is a constellation of symptoms—coughs, sore throats, runny noses, and respiratory trouble. As I mentioned in my yesterday's review of Gulf Coast problems, many downplay its seriousness, although it can be dangerous for people with asthma, respiratory illness, or compromised immune systems.

Schaffer has been paying close attention to what happened after during the World Trade Centers cleanup.

Following 9/11, the EPA and OSHA failed to safeguard nearby residents and workers at Ground Zero from unnecessary exposures to asbestos, lead, glass fibers, concrete dust, and other toxins. The damage was caused not by a few days of rescue work, but by weeks and months of cleaning up the site or living nearby. The EPA offered assurances that the air outside of Ground Zero was safe to breathe—even though, as the agency's inspector general found in 2003, the agency "did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement." The EPA also caved to pressure from the White House Council on Environmental Quality "to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" from its public announcements about the disaster. And in overseeing work at Ground Zero, OSHA decided not to enforce workplace health rules as it regularly would have, but instead acted primarily as an "adviser" to employers. As a result, the agency did not ensure that workers wore proper protective gear, especially respirators, though the equipment was widely available on the site. (For more on respirators and Ground Zero click here.)

The EPA is again downplaying the risks to Katrina survivors. Many of the educational materials prepared by EPA aren't reaching the people who need them, and although the American Lung Association estimates that more than 16 percent of New Orleans children suffered from asthma, EPA has not told parents to keep children away until the cleanup has significantly progressed. People working on houses are unable to find enough protective respirators and are instead using paper dust masks that can trap the contaminents in the mask, making the problem worse.

And then in a potentially tragic deja vu,

Also troubling is the lack of protection for recovery workers hired by contractors. Subra says the workers she has seen have no respiratory gear. Contractors are reportedly hiring the workers, many of them Latino immigrants, in nearby cities like Houston. "I know men who have gotten so sick with diarrhea, skin inflammations and breathing problems they can't work. … The contractors just hire more," said Juan Alvarez, director of the Latin American Organization for Immigrant Rights in Houston, in a letter sent to Congress by the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health and other groups.

Meanwhile, over at Salon, Roberto Lovato writes about the Gulf Coast Slaves of KBR, "a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton that was awarded a major contract by the Bush administration for disaster relief work."

Workers, many of whom are undocumented immigrants, report not being paid, not being fed, being kept captive on the military bases they're working on, and being thrown out on the streets after being kicked out of promised jobs. The job brokers and sub-contractors claim they can't pay the workers, because they haven't been paid by their contractor. On top of the heap stand Halliburton and KBR atop "a shadowy labyrinth of contractors, subcontractors and job brokers, overseen by no single agency, [who]have created a no man's land where nobody seems to be accountable for the hiring -- and abuse -- of these workers."

Meanwhile, it's almost impossible to hold Halliburton/KBR responsible:

Halliburton/KBR is the general contractor with overarching responsibility for the federal cleanup contracts covering Katrina-damaged naval bases. Even so, there is an utter lack of transparency with the process -- and that invites malfeasance, says James Hale, a vice president of the Laborers' International Union of North America. "To my knowledge, not one member of Congress has been able to get their hands on a copy of a contract that was handed out to Halliburton or others," Hale says. "There is no central registry of Katrina contracts available. No data on the jobs or scope of the work." Hale says that his union's legislative staff has pressed members of Congress for more information; apparently the legislators were told that they could not get copies of the contracts because of "national security" concerns.
"If the contracts handed out to these primary contractors are opaque, then the contracts being let to the subcontractors are just plain invisible," Hale says. "There is simply no ability to ascertain or monitor the contractor-subcontractor relationships. This is an open invitation for exploitation, fraud and abuse."

After Katrina: The Bad Times Continue to Roll

If you're a worker, resident or tree in New Orleans or on the Gulf Coast, things aren't going so well these days. A series of recent articles in a variety of newspapers tell stories of contamination of the water and land with toxic chemicals, dangerous molds that may already be causing disease, workers without proper safety equipment who often don't get paid for the work they've done, and corporations involved in the cleanup who want Congress to free them of any liability for damage that they may cause.

The contamination that has gotten the most attention comes from the 1 million gallons of oil spilled from a Murphy Oil Corp. storage tank, which left unsafe levels of diesel and oil-related organic chemicals in sediment. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease

said that people should not move back into homes where oil is visible and that they should use protective gear when they are working around contaminated homes. The agency said studies have shown that if someone touches oil substances with their bare skin they may suffer from rashes and be at a slightly higher risk of skin cancer.

EPA has also found high levels of arsenic, diesel fuel and other petroleum-based chemicals around the refinery.

Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle reviewed data from the National Response Center which showed

that the two storms caused at least 595 spills, incidents that released untold amounts of oil, natural gas and other chemicals into the air, onto land and into the water.

The quantity and cumulative magnitude of the 595 spills, which were spread across four states and struck offshore and inland, rank these two hurricanes among the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. Some have even compared the total amount of oil released — estimated at 9 million gallons — to the tragedy of Exxon Valdez.

***

"This is about the tenth disaster I have responded to, and this is the worst I have ever seen," said Wally Cooper, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's on-scene coordinator, in charge of overseeing the Murphy Oil spill cleanup. "This is worse than the worst-case scenario."

Mother nature is only partly to blame for the high number of chemical tanks that ruptured during the storm:

"A high proportion of them are not properly tied down," Ivor van Heerden, the center's director, said in a November 2003 report in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "Imagine a storage tank full of diesel lifted by floodwaters,shearing its hoses, and its pipes working loose, and leaking."

Environmentalists say faulty equipment, not the hurricanes, was to blame for many of the spills. For the activist community, the storms' environmental impact has refocused efforts from day-to-day pollution and on to bigger issues such as whether energy infrastructure should be located along a hurricane-prone coast, said Denny
Larson, coordinator for the Refinery Reform Campaign.

"People have said for years that they shouldn't have facilities in low-lying coastal areas where contamination risks are great," Larson said. "It's ... the poorest possible choice." As Congress considers building new refining capacity, environmentalists are already pushing for lawmakers to require companies to have plans for natural disasters. The design of storage tanks also is likely to be a topic in the storms' post-mortem, experts say.

In order to understand the possible long-term effects of the contamination in New Orleans, the Dallas News reviewed the EPA test results of every chemical test at every site in Orleans Parish through Oct. 1 and compared them with the EPA's screening levels for residential soil. The News found high levels of cancer-causing arsenic, benzo(a)pyrene, benzo(b)fluoranthene, the banned insecticide dieldrin and lead.

Although early reports from EPA claimed that the water in New Orleans was no more polluted that normal flood water,

Contaminated sediment was always a more serious long-term worry than floodwater, since the water was quickly removed. In September, experts advised the EPA that toxic dust could spread as the sediment dried.

Buildings in New Orleans are now contaminated with mold and the toxic "soup" has dried into toxic mud, creating all kinds of new problems:

That debris includes a thick layer of dried mud that cakes much of St. Bernard and lower Plaquemines parishes and vast areas of Lakeview, the 9th Ward and eastern New Orleans. As the mud crumbles to dust and goes airborne or people come into contact with it on the ground, there is increasing concern it could be harmful to humans. Some sediment samples have contained arsenic, lead and petroleum products, and EPA officials said residents should avoid contact if possible.

Mold is being detected in previously unseen levels. According to Physicians for Social Responsibility, "preliminary testing results indicate that the indoor mold spore count in flooded homes is reaching 2.5 million; a count of more than 50,000 is considered severe by the National Allergy Board" and stores have run out of the recommended respirators.

The mold be be causing what is coming to be called "Katrina Cough," according to the Los Angeles Times:

Dr. Dennis Casey, one of the few ear, nose and throat doctors seeing patients in New Orleans, called the condition "very prevalent." And Dr. Kevin Jordan, director of medical affairs at Touro Infirmary and Memorial Medical Center in downtown New Orleans, said the hospital had seen at least a 25% increase in complaints regarding sinus headaches, congestion, runny noses and sore throats since Katrina.

In most cases, Casey said, patients appear to be "allergic to the filth they are exposed to." Those allergies make the patients more susceptible to respiratory illness, including bacterial bronchitis and sinusitis.

Among the public, the condition is known alternately as "Katrina cough" and "Katrina's revenge" — much to the consternation of physicians who feel the monikers paint a needlessly alarming portrait of the environment

***

But the condition could be more serious for people whose health is otherwise compromised — for example, organ transplant patients; people who are undergoing chemotherapy; or people who suffer from emphysema, asthma, chronic bronchitis or ther ailments.

"It could be life-threatening to those people," said Dr. Peter DeBlieux, associate medical director of the Spirit of Charity, a MASH-style clinic that has been set up in downtown New Orleans. "Those people are already living on a precipice and could be pushed off. Those people are encouraged not to come back to the city."

With the promise of work and high pay, high numbers of undocumented immigrants have flocked to New Orleans and Mississippi. Unfortunately, on top of the dirty and dangerous work, the AP's Justin Pritchard reports that many complain of not being paid after weeks of work.

A pattern is emerging as the cleanup of Mississippi's Gulf Coast morphs into its multibillion-dollar reconstruction: Come payday, untold numbers of Hispanic immigrant laborers are being stiffed. Sometimes, the boss simply vanishes. Other workers wait on promises that soon, someone in a complex hierarchy of contractors will provide the funds to pay them.

Nonpayment of wages is a violation of federal labor law, but these workers — thousands of them, channeled into teams that corral debris, swaddle punctured roofs in blue tarps and gut rain-ravaged homes — are especially vulnerable because many are here illegally.

Many of the firms that aren't paying are subcontracting from KBR, a firm owned by Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton.

The worst problems seem to be in Mississippi, although it's hard to gauge accurately, as the state doesn't even have a labor department, it's not against the Mississippi law to not pay workers, and any complaints are forwarded to the federal Department of Labor. The only option workers have is to file a claim with the federal government or take their employer to court, options that few, if any, immigrant workers will take advantage of. In fact, despite widespread complaints of non-payment of wages, Mississippi prosecutors have not received a single complaint.

On top of all this, corporations involved in the cleanup are pushing a bill, S. 1761, through Congress that would "streamline" contractor-liability laws and push all related lawsuits into the federal court system.

In addition, the proposed Act would temporarily bar contract employees from suing government contractors handling the Gulf Coast clean-up, end monetary awards for emotional and other non-physical damages and prohibit courts and juries from levying punitive awards in such cases.

S. 1761 would apply not just to the Katrina disaster, but to any future national disasters in which federal aid costs more than $15 billion. A coalition of labor and environmental groups have sent a letter to Congress opposing the bill.

The letter urges that

"Congressional relief, recovery, and rebuilding assistance must make clean air and water for the people of the Gulf Coast a priority. Instead, the residents of the Gulf Coast who have already been victimized by the terrific force of these hurricanes will be victimized again by this bill, which would leave them without a remedy against government contractors that cause irreparable harm to their air and water."

Noting that contractors' actions can either help people or imperil their safety, the letter asserts that such contractors, "who are paid by the taxpayers for the work that they do, should be held fully accountable to the public if they behave carelessly and cause harm to people or the environment. No public policy reason justifies Congress granting federal contractors legal immunity for negligence or illegal activity."

The letter warns that S.B. 1761 also would immunize contractors from liability for personal injuries or property damage in most cases by expanding the Government Contractor Defense. Currently, that defense generally applies only if the government provides precise instructions that the contractor must follow – such as design requirements for military airplanes – and the injury occurred because the contractor adhered to those specific, mandatory instructions.

But S.B. 1761 would create a presumption that all elements of the Government Contractor Defense are met merely by the Army Corps' Chief of Engineers certifying the contract as necessary for disaster recovery. The presumption could only be overcome if the contractor acted fraudulently or with willful misconduct in submitting information to the Chief of Engineers at the time of the contract. The letter notes, "In other words, the defense will almost always apply to disaster contractors

Despite the serious problems, however, the major media has moved on from the hurricane stories. Workers and residents of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf coast aren't so lucky, however, and may still be feeling the health effects of this disaster decades from now.

The Politics Behind The Davis Bacon Wage Reversal

Harold Meyerson enlightens us a bit about why Republican moderates joined Congressman George Miller (D-CA) to pressure the President into lifting the suspension of Davis-Bacon wage supports for Gulf Workers earlier this week:

Earlier this week, the leaders of their hitherto-raison-d’etre-less alliance, the Republican Mainstream Partnership, told Andy Card that they could not support the president’s suspension of the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, which guarantees the payment of prevailing wages on federally-funded construction jobs, for post-Katrina reconstruction efforts. On Wednesday, the administration announced that it would end that suspension on November 8.

The moderates’ hand was forced by George Miller, the veteran San Francisco Democrat, who had uncovered an obscure parliamentary provision that enables congressmen to force a vote on rescinding statutes that a president suspends. With the unified support of the Democratic caucus, Miller had done just that, and Congress would have had to vote on the week of November 7 on his bill rescinding Bush’s action. The maneuver solidified Miller’s standing as a worthy successor to his long-ago mentor, the late San Francisco Congressman Phil Burton, by common consent the most effective liberal legislator of the past half-century.

Miller’s motion put Republican moderates in a bind. Disproportionately hailing from such states as New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio, they still represent sizable numbers of union members. Worse yet, those union members most likely to vote for them come disproportionately from the (still mainly white, male) building trades -- the very unions Bush’s order was intended to hurt. A number of these members are frequently endorsed by the building trades locals in their districts, and the prospect of the trades on the warpath against them in 2006 was one they were eager to avoid. “Why pick this fight?” New York Republican Peter King wondered aloud in The New York Times.

The Wall St. Journal, on the other hand, was not at all pleased with the spectre of Republican moderates standing up to their President:

We're told yesterday's decision to reinstate Davis-Bacon in the affected Gulf states on November 8 came after a meeting last week between Chief of Staff Andrew Card and about 20 Republican Congressmen from union-heavy districts. The move can only increase the cost and slow the pace of reconstruction. And as an act of unprincipled political calculation it ranks right up there with the decision to impose tariffs on imported steel during Mr. Bush's first term.

Bush Surrenders: Restores Davis Bacon Wage Protections For Gulf Workers

It's so rare that I get a chance to report good political news that my fingers almost don't know what to do.

The Bush administration has rescinded the suspension of the Davis Bacon act for Gulf Coast recovery workers, forcing employers who receive federal funding to once again pay the prevailing wage.

Let's hear from the instigator of this coup, California Congressman George Miller who put not only figured out a way to challenge the administration's wage cut for Gulf Coast recovery workers, but also managed to collect the support of 37 Republicans to join with a solid Democratic caucus to force Bush's hand.

This is from Miller's press release:

WASHINGTON, DC -- Bowing to pressure from a united Democratic front, a small group of members of his own party, the religious community, and the labor movement, President Bush announced today he would reverse the decision he made in September to remove wage protections for construction workers in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.

After Katrina, the President suspended the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, which requires federal contractors to pay at least the prevailing wage to construction workers in a local area. The president’s action, which was widely denounced, followed requests from right-wing activists and Republican members of Congress who exploited Katrina to achieve a long-sought ideological agenda item.

“President Bush finally realized that his Gulf Coast wage cut was a bad idea that hurt the workers and their families affected by Katrina,” said Miller. “But let me be clear – the President is backing down today only because he had no other choice.

“The President’s wage cut was just another example of his incompetence as a leader in a time of crisis and of his constant need reward the private agenda’s of his special special-interest friends rather than attend to the needs of all the people affected by this storm.”

As I wrote last week, Congressman George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, led the effort in the House to force Bush to rescind his Gulf Coast wage cut. Miller forced the surrender by using an little known parliamentary procedure to introduce a resolution to restore Bush’s Gulf Coast pay cut. Under the law, the House would have been required to vote on Miller’s resolution no later than Nov. 4—a vote many observers believed workers would have won, according to the AFL-CIO and other Congressional observers. In addition to Miller's action, the labor movement generated 350,000 e-mails and letters to Congress.

The move came after reports of union workers in Louisiana being replaced by low-wage workers, some undocumented immigrants from Texas, stories of horrendous working conditions and cheating immigrant workers out of their pay.

The administration denied surrendering to the inevitable and said they had planned to rescind the suspension all along:

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan disputed the notion that Bush was reversing himself.

"We always said it was a temporary waiver," he said. "This is similar to the precedent set by Hurricane Andrew, which is also a temporary waiver."

In a prepared statement, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao described the suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act as part of "an administration-wide effort to remove as many barriers as possible to aid the recovery efforts in the impacted areas." She gave no reason for lifting the suspension.

The construction industry and Conservatives saw the decision as another example of the Bush administration turning its back on conservative pro-business principles:

The decision was a rare victory for organized labor during George W. Bush's presidency. It was a defeat for traditional Bush allies, including the construction industry and conservatives in Congress. Yesterday, both groups said the president's reversal would inflate the cost of reconstruction.

"It's the kind of thing that shows they're turning their backs on the things that Ronald Reagan and those who built this party care deeply about," said Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.)

"Certain special interests and their allies in Congress are more concerned about reinstating this wasteful and outdated act than they are with fairly and expeditiously reconstructing the devastated areas," M. Kirk Pickerel, chief executive of Associated Builders and Contractors, said in a written statement.

Good point. If I were them I'd never vote for another Republican.

Gulf Worker Exploitation: The Plot Thickens

I've written a couple of times about the abysmal working conditions of immigrant laborers who have been hired to do Gulf Coast recovery work. Yesterday, I wrote a about a group of skilled construction workers who were terminated an replaced by lower paid, more exploitable immigrant workers.

Well, the plot thickens. Undocumented immigrant workers have been found working on hurricane recovery operations at a naval base near New Orleans where our old friends Kellogg Brown & Root -- a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. is leading hurricane reconstruction.

This isn't the only Halliburton subcontractor that's been up to no good. And for those of you who are just tuning in, the problem here is not just greedy corporations (greed is good), but the Bush administration's recent suspension of a federal law that was designed to suspend such shifty operations:

Work at the base has been a source of dispute in recent weeks because dozens of unionized electricians, many of them local residents who had their homes destroyed during Hurricane Katrina, claim they were let go by another Halliburton subcontractor, Alabama-based BE&K, in favor of lower wage workers. That came after the Bush administration suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, a law that guarantees the prevailing local wage for workers operating under federal contracts.

Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who has been following the case closely, said the discovery of illegal immigrants at the naval base confirms that Gulf Coast workers looking for livable wages are getting left out of the federally funded reconstruction.

"I don't think there's any question that there's a pretty significant sucking sound there," he said. "If you were paying prevailing wages, you would be hiring skilled electricians."

Meanwhile, the issue is threatening to grow into a political storm in Washington DC. As I wrote yesterday, Congressman George Miller (D-CA) has found a way to force a vote to overturn the suspension of David Bacon and apparently has enough Republican support to do it.

Those who normally want the undocumented immigrants tarred, feathered and transported out of the country are suddently rising to the defense of the free enterprise right to hire anyone we damn well please, pay 'em whatever they'll take, and work 'em half to death -- just like the good old days.

An identical editorial defending the suspension of Davis Bacon is not mysteriously appearing in newspapers across the country, according to Facing South:

One of the smartest things President Bush did to reduce recovery costs in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita was to suspend Davis-Bacon Act rules in the hardest hit states. But Congress is frantically trying to overrule the president, which would add billions of dollars to the already staggering recovery costs.

Amazing, Facing South observes, "that newspapers from California, Colorado, and North Carolina could be channeling, simultaneously and in complete harmony, the Bush administration line for cutting wages for workers rebuilding the Gulf Coast."

The interesting thing is that, Slingshot pointed out last month, suspending Davis Bacon doesn't even save the government money, which was the administration's professed aim in suspending the law.

The David-Bacon foes are quite open about their hopes that the temporary suspension can be made permanent. This is scary enough, but when coupled with a recent Mississippi editorial calling for the temporary suspension of OSHA enforcement, one whether there is any length they will not go to exploit the Gulf tragedy to further their ideological ends.

Gulf Recovery: Paying The Price For Lower Costs

In order to reduce reconstruction costs, President Bush suspended the Davis Bacon law for the Gulf region following Hurrican Katrina. Davis Bacon requires employers who receive federal funds to pay the prevailing wage.

Here's who's really paying the price for the Davis Bacon repeal:

An electrician and foreman with Knight Enterprises cried as he recounted how his team of workers were kicked out of government tents by an out-of-state firm and forced to sleep in their cars.

"Most of our workers, some of whom had lost their homes to the two hurricanes (Katrina and Rita), were sleeping in their personal vehicles and showering in a car wash located on base," Mike Moran said.

Moran's employer was given a 20-month contract to provide power to a camp for military personnel but the contract was cancelled after 17 days.

Knight Enterprises alleges the contract was terminated because the firm was paying the prevailing hourly wage and an outside contractor that was hired paid its workers a lower wage.

After Hurricane Katrina struck on August 29, President George W. Bush to waived regulations that require contractors to pay the prevailing or average wage in a region.

For contractors, the benefits of the repeal of Davis Bacon go beyond the opportunity to pay lower wages:

Housing for workers often lacks running water and contractors have failed to provide food, training and wage rates as promised, James Hale, vice president with the Laborers' International Union of North America, told a policy conference of opposition Democrats in the US Senate.

In one case, workers had not been paid for three weeks and at another site there were allegations that security guards were mistreating laborers, said Hale, who supported his allegations with photographs.

Compassionate Conservatism strikes again.

But if Congressman George Miller (D-CA) has his way, the Republican thrill may soon be gone. Miller says that the 1976 National Emergencies Act enables him to force a vote within 15 calendar days of introducing a "Joint Resolution" - which he did at noon today. And there are more than enough Republicans on record (along with Dems) to overturn the wage cut. (via Josh Marshall)

Immigrant Workers Exploited in Gulf Coast, As Expected

Well, this is certainly a surprise.

As expected, the Gulf coast is being flooded with immigrant workers, many of whom are undocumented, and, as expected, they are being exploited and abused, and as expected, Bush Administration policies are making the situation worse by suspending Davis Bacon law which would have required employers paid by federal funds to pay contruction workers the prevailing wage:

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."

***

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.

Not only are the living and working conditions abominable, but many of the workers aren't even getting paid:

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."

Despite the exploitation, there are fears in Florida that the lure of work on the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast will draw needed immigrant labor away from Florida's fruit harvest and construction boom:

For many years, Mexican immigrants have been streaming into Southern states along a land route from the Southwest border. Smugglers and labor recruiters carry them by truck, bus and van to farms and worksites all the way down to the bustling service industries of South Florida.

"This is the dream work force for employers," observed Greg Schell, managing attorney for the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project. "Go to any construction site and you'll find a high percentage of undocumented workers. What is driving the South Florida construction boom is very cheap labor."

Florida growers and many businesses have come to depend on this undocumented work force. Now, some employers are becoming concerned that much of this labor pool will get diverted to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

"If we have a shortage in our work force, particularly during the critical harvest season, that could be economically disastrous," said Walter Kates, director of labor relations for the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association. "All of our crops down here are highly perishable. It would definitely have a ripple effect."

The immigrant influx is also causing resentment among higher paid native construction workers:

In one recent instance, 75 union electricians held a news conference to show off their termination letters from a job site at the Louisiana National Guard's Naval Air Station in Belle Chasse, south of downtown New Orleans. They said a contractor had replaced them with 120 immigrant workers from Houston. A spokesman for the Louisiana National Guard, Neal Martin, said he hadn't heard of any such incident.

Gary Warren, the political director for the Louisiana Regional Carpenters Council, said his group is regularly getting complaints from union members laid off by contractors and replaced with immigrant workers.

"Nobody wants me to say this because it's not politically correct, but they are calling them 'Texans.' What they are really using is a lot of illegal labor," Warren said. "It's an issue of people who lost everything being laid off in favor of people from out of state."

No Stinkin' OSHA Needed In Mississippi. Getting Injured Just Goes With The Job

Reading this editorial from the Clarion Ledger in Mississippi brings me back to the good old days when newspapers could write about how African Americans had no place in school with our pure white daughters and how women really aren't made to do anything but raise children.

OK, now we could just call him an ignorant, small minded, anti-government S.O.B., but I would imagine that there are more than a few people out there who would say "Hmm, this guy makes sense." So maybe a more thoughtful response is in order.

Don't let OSHA delay work crews from hurricane clean-up

OSHA has rolled into town and will halt the clean-up process to the best of its ability.

Sure, OSHA serves its purpose, making sure disreputable employers provide safe working conditions for their employees. But there is no place for OSHA in such an unprecedented catastrophe as Katrina.

With luck, we may have a couple of more weeks of dry weather before the rains set inand the mud will make it impossible to work on the roadside and in yards, removing debris.

Our crew was working near Bogalusa, La., loading tree trucks and limbs from the roadside, when a self-important, short-spoken OSHA official stopped to issue ultimatums such as sawyers must wear chaps, protective glasses and hard hats; and truck drivers must wear hard hats and reflective vests. She said this was the only warning; next time she would write us up and we would pay fines.

To start with, we might find some sort of vests but there are no chaps and few hardhats to be found in south Louisiana or Mississippi.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has also issued regulations for flagmen regarding orange flags and orange vests, and I will admit it has more substance to its requirements, though this is no time for DOT to go around shutting down work crews.

Those who want their street and town cleared of debris should make a call to their local or state authorities and tell them they want their town's crews left alone.

Sure somebody will be injured, as it goes with the job and no arrogant OSHA official can stop it from happening. All they can do is stop many hard-working crews from trying to make two once-beautiful states beautiful again.

Mike Reese
Columbus
(emphasis added)

OK, let's do a bit of myth busting.

OSHA has rolled into town and will halt the clean-up process to the best of its ability.

OSHA (unfortunately) has virtually no power to shut down a workplace. The only exception is when there's an imminent danger (e.g. someone is about to get killed) and they get a court order (which sort of contradicts the imminent danger of the situation). And it gets worse. It's generally months after the inspection that OSHA cites an employer, and if the employer appeals, he doesn't have to fix the problem until the appeal is resolve -- often months or years later.

Sure, OSHA serves its purpose, making sure disreputable employers provide safe working conditions for their employees. But there is no place for OSHA in such an unprecedented catastrophe as Katrina.

Here we have two myths in one sentence. First, the myth that the only justification for OSHA enforcement is a few "disreputable" employers out there and second, that safe working conditions are a luxury only affordable when we have the time and money to afford them.

It's not just those few really really bad, evil unscrupulous employers who fail to fix unsafe working conditions allowing workers to be injured or killed anymore than it's raging sociopathic alcoholics who cause fatal automobile accidents. People have a tendency to cut corners and hope for good luck if they're in a hurry or have a chance to earn more money. That's why "good" people as well as very bad people sometimes run afoul of the law and need a gentle reminder that society works best when we all obey the law -- but sometimes we need a cop or an OSHA inspector to "remind us."

In addition, just because we're legitimately in a hurry or doing really important work doesn't mean we can suspend all laws and safe working conditions. Sure, in a mass catastrophe, people are going to do what they need to do to save as many lives as possible -- OSHA regs be damned. But, first we're long past that point on the Gulf Coast, and second, even emergency situations are no excuse for flinging safety aside. OSHA standard require that workers be trained in safe rescue; rushing in without proper training and equipment often just results in increasing the numbers of victims, which is why statistics show that as many rescuers as original victims are killed in confined space and trench rescues.

Sure somebody will be injured, as it goes with the job and no arrogant OSHA official can stop it from happening.

Getting injured does not just go with the job. Injuries are not inevitable, acts of nature or God's will. They are simply the result of unsafe working conditions, lack of training, lack of proper personal protective equipment, etc. He's right that OSHA officials can't stop every injury, any more than cops can stop every traffic accident, robbery or mugging. But OSHA inspectors and cops can enforce the law to the best of their ability and, hopefully, establish enough of a deterrent so that all but the truly criminal will think twice about breaking the law and endangering other people.

So sure, "Those who want their street and town cleared of debris should make a call to their local or state authorities and tell them they want their town's crews left alone." And those of you who want to be able to sleep a few more minutes in the morning should call their local and state authorities and tell the police to lay off the speeding fines. And those of you who want to get your houses built faster should call their local and state authorities and tell them to stop enforcing building and fire codes. And those of you who don't like your brothers-in-law.....

Who knew that the Clarion Ledger had anarchists working for them.
.

Republicans To The People Of New Orleans: Drop Dead

I used to think that only earthquakes had aftershocks. Turns out hurricanes have aftershocks, too. And like earthquakes, hurricane aftershocks can do more damage than the initial event.

Little did I suspect a few short weeks ago that when it comes to addressing the poverty and inequality that Katrina revealed, the aftershocks would indeed be worse than the initial event for progressives, the poor and the once-again forgotten in this country.

Let me take you back, back, back.....

As all of us saw on television, there's also some deep, persistent poverty in this region, as well. That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality....We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality.... Americans want the Gulf Coast not just to survive, but to thrive; not just to cope, but to overcome. We want evacuees to come home, for the best of reasons -- because they have a real chance at a better life in a place they love.

--George W. Bush, September 15, 2005

Omagod! Katrina has turned George Bush has into a Democrat, according to the blogosphere. Yeah, we got the big Mo. They're running scared. Our day has come.

But not so fast. A swift perusal of the press over the past few days about current events in Congress and conditions in New Orleans is enough to make you get the cyanide out of mothballs again.

First, Jason DeParle in the New York Times talks about the ebbing of liberal hopes after a short period of hope that the graphic news would wash over the Republican agenda with a reawakened concern for the poor.

Alas, it was not to be:

Conservatives have already used the storm for causes of their own, like suspending requirements that federal contractors have affirmative action plans and pay locally prevailing wages. And with federal costs for rebuilding the Gulf Coast estimated at up to $200 billion, Congressional Republican leaders are pushing for spending cuts, with programs like Medicaid and food stamps especially vulnerable.

And while they're at it, Republicans are also still calling "tax reductions for the prosperous a key to fighting poverty."

At least the Times takes the occasion to confront the tired, but rejuvenated ideology with a bit of fact:

Economic growth is crucial to reducing poverty, but the effect of tax rates is less clear. In 1993, President Bill Clinton raised taxes on upper-income families, the economy boomed and poverty fell for the next seven years. In 2001, President Bush cut taxes deeply, but even with economic growth, the poverty rate has risen every year since.

In 2004, about 12.7 percent of the country, or 37 million people, lived below the poverty line, which was about $19,200 for a family of four. The figure was 7.8 percent among whites, 24.7 percent among blacks and 21.9 percent among Hispanics.

But never mind that. Indeed, that's not the worst of it. New Orleans is becoming the nightmare-come-true for those who feared that the labor force would be saturated with untrained, poorly paid, mostly undocumented immigrant workers doing the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs.

An investigator with the Laborers Union, Rafael Duran, said that outside the New Orleans Arena, he had encountered Mexican teenagers perhaps 15 or 16 years old who had been removing excrement-fouled carpets.

While some cleanup workers in New Orleans are staying in hotels, Duran said the teenagers on the carpet-removal job told him they were sleeping in a field under a tent, and had gotten bitten by mosquitoes.

Duran said the laborers had been brought in by Rainbow International Restoration and Cleaning of Waco, Texas. A Rainbow franchise owner leading cleanup efforts in New Orleans, Vincent Beedle, said the workers had been brought in by a subcontractor that was supposed to obey all laws.

Outside a French Quarter restaurant, four Hispanic workers were taking a break from clearing 1,000 pounds of rotten shrimp from the freezer. The men, dripping with sweat, were wearing only jeans and T-shirts.

"You can just drive down the street and see people not dressed properly," Feher said. He said the workers cleaning the restaurants should have worn protective suits, rubber boots, rubber gloves and respirators.

The crew's New Jersey employer, Patrick Jones, said he provides protective gear for his workers as required by law, and "if I'm on the site they have to have it on." But he added: "I wasn't there."

Advocates said the lack of protective gear is leading to health problems. Juan Alvarez, director of the Latin American Organization for Immigrant Rights in Houston, said he recently took five or six workers to the hospital after they complained of respiratory problems and diarrhea upon their return from New Orleans.

And while these low paid workers are imported into Louisiana,

Meanwhile, as many as 80,000 New Orleanians sit idle in shelters around the country. They are out of work, homeless and destitute.

But it gets worse. This is from an article by Bill Quiqley, a professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans and director of the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center and the Law Clinic and teaches Law and Poverty.

You need to read the entire article, but this will give you a taste:

There are 28,000 people still living in shelters in Louisiana. There are 38,000 public housing apartments in New Orleans, many in good physical condition. None have been reopened. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimated that 112,000 low-income homes in New Orleans were damaged by the hurricane. Yet, local, state and federal authorities are not committed to re-opening public housing. Louisiana Congressman Richard Baker (R-LA) said, after the hurricane, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

New Orleans public schools enrolled about 60,000 children before the hurricane. The school board president now estimates that no schools on the city's east bank, where the overwhelming majority of people live, will reopen this academic school year. Every one of the 13 public schools on the mostly-dry west bank of New Orleans was changed into charter schools in an afternoon meeting a few days ago. A member of the Louisiana state board of education estimated that at most 10,000 students will attend public schools in New Orleans this academic year.

The City of New Orleans laid off 3,000 workers. The public school system laid off thousands of its workers. The Archdiocese of New Orleans laid off 800 workers from its central staff and countless hundreds of others from its parish schools. The Housing Authority has laid off its workers. The St. Bernard Sheriff's Office laid off half of its workers.

Renters in New Orleans are returning to find their furniture on the street and strangers living in their apartments at higher rents - despite an order by the Governor that no one can be evicted before October 25. Rent in the dry areas have doubled and tripled.

***

People are making serious money in this hurricane but not the working and poor people who built and maintained New Orleans. President Bush lifted the requirement that jobs re-building the Gulf Coast pay a living wage. The Small Business Administration has received 1.6 million disaster loan applications and has approved 9 in Louisiana. A US Senator reported that maintenance workers at the Superdome are being replaced by out of town workers who will work for less money and no benefits. He also reported that seventy-five Louisiana electricians at the Naval Air Station are being replaced by workers from Kellogg Brown and Root - a subsidiary of Halliburton.

But then it all starts making sense, according to the Los Angeles Times, it turns out that the panels advising Louisiana's U.S. senators who are crafting legislation to rebuild the storm-damaged Gulf Coast, are infested with industry lobbyists:

The Louisiana Katrina Reconstruction Act — introduced last month by Louisiana Sens. Mary L. Landrieu, a Democrat, and David Vitter, a Republican — included billions of dollars' worth of business for clients of those lobbyists and a total price tag estimated as high as $250 billion.

One advisory panel member who discovered that most of his fellow panelists were lobbyists called the resulting legislation "a huge injustice" to the state.

"I was basically shocked," said Ivor van Heerden, director of a hurricane public health research center at Louisiana State University. "What do lobbyists know about a plan for the reconstruction and restoration of Louisiana?"

And finally, for good measure, in the shadow of huge and growing profits for refiners, indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay manages to twist enough arms in the House of Representatives to narrowly pass a bill disemboweling streamlining government permits for refineries and condemning opening federal lands, including closed military bases, for future refinery construction.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Bipartisan Senate Concern About Gulf Recovery Workers

I'm not entirely sure where, if anywhere, this bill will go, but it's nice to see some semblance of bipartisan concern in the Senate about the risks facing Gulf Coast recovery workers.

Senators Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) and Mike Enzi (R-WY) have introduced the bipartisan S 1771 "Katrina Worker Safety and Filing Flexibility Act of 2005." Recognizing that recovery workers face "numerous and uncommon worksite and environmental hazards...with which they have little prior experience or training," the bill attempts to address many of the hazards facing recovery workers.

The bill addresses many of the real and potential problems with OSHA's response, including lack of resources, problems with immigrant workers, the lack of information about workers' rights.

The bill calls for OSHA to:

• implement all of the relevant provisions of the Worker Health and Safety Annex plan;
  
  
• Go beyond the rather wishy-washy "let's all be careful out there" public service announcements that OSHA is producing to develop "methods to provide workers and employers with the information they need to maintain a safe workplace, including their rights and obligations under health and safety laws" and to work with "contractors and labor organizations to reach all employers and workers involved in the emergency response, recovery, and reconstruction;"
  
  
• Address the problems of immigrant and non-English speaking workers, working to communicate with them "about safety rights, resources, and requirements"
  
  
• Deploy sufficient personnel to the region to successfully carry out their mission, including enforcement of and education about safety standards and rights;
  
  
• The only reference to the fact that public employees in all of the affected states do not have OSHA coverage was language calling on OSHA to "work with State, local, and tribal governments to ensure the availability and management of all available safety resources for emergency response, recovery, and reconstruction workers."
  
  
• And the bill calls on OSHA to work with all other federal agencies to identify hazards and solutions, and to make sure that employees engaged in clean-up of hazardous materials have personal protective equipment
  
  
• And finally that OSHA work specifically with EPA and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences "to provide technical assistance and training for workers covered by Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Standards."
  
  The bill would also provide money for OSHA to provide sufficient personnel, enforcement and to offer safety training and resources "to affected workers and employers", and provides for oversite by the Department of Labor's Inspector General and frequent reports to Congress.

The bill was introduced on September 26 shortly before hundreds of occupational safety and health experts sent a letter calling on Congress to immediately to protect the health and safety of workers and residents engaged in the cleanup of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Jim Nash of Occupational Hazards notes that

By encouraging, rather than requiring, enforcement of OSHA safety rules, the Enzi-Kennedy bill appears to stop short of some of the demands contained in a letter sent to Congress Oct. 6 from more than 100 labor, religious, environmental and public health leaders and organizations.

The letter states that "thousands of disaster responders ... affected by Hurricane Katrina remain inadequately protected against exposure to environmental health hazards." The letter argues that the decision made by OSHA to provided technical assistance and advice but not enforcement actions for cleanup efforts at Ground Zero following 9/11, was partially responsible for many workplace illnesses. The lessons learned following 9/11 must be applied to the cleanup of Katrina, according to the letter.

One month after the hurricane, the signers believe that EPA and OSHA "should immediately commence enforcement of life-saving workplace and environmental laws and regulations.

Experts Call On Congress To Protect Hurricane Recovery Workers

One hundred of the nation’s foremost labor, religious, environmental, community, public health and public interest organizations and more than 100 academic, medical, religious and public health leaders have called on Congress to act immediately to protect the health and safety of workers and residents engaged in the cleanup of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

The letter, sent by the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, comes in response to reports by worker advocates that health and safety protections are being ignored for cleanup workers:

"We're seeing who gets hurt when you ignore safety and health protections," said Juan Alvarez, Director, Latin American Organization for Immigrant Rights in Houston. "Contractors are hiring immigrant workers right here in Houston and taking them to New Orleans to do cleanup. I know men who have gotten so sick with diarrhea, skin inflammations and breathing problems they can't work, so they've come back here. The contractors just hire more. Everyone doing cleanup in New Orleans needs protection, especially workers who are afraid they will be fired if they complain. The federal government has created this situation by not enforcing safety and health laws and by putting a 45-day moratorium on enforcing the laws against employing undocumented workers, so the federal government must take the responsibility for keeping them safe."

The letter outlines concrete steps the federal government should take to protect workers from the millions of gallons of petroleum, toxic substances from Superfund sites, bacteria, lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, arsenic and pesticides that contaminated the floodwaters. These include:

• adoption of "appropriate precautionary measures to be implemented until the work environment is demonstrated to be safe;"
  
• initiation of a comprehensive environmental sampling plan;
  
• worker training about occupational and environmental health and safety hazards;
  medical surveillance of clean up workers; and
  
• appropriate decontamination.
  
• In addition, the letter calls for special protection for immigrant and temporary workers who are least likely to be provided with proper training and respiratory protection.

More On New Orleans' Toxic Threat To Workers, Citizens

A couple more articles on the possible contamination of the land and air of New Orleans and the effect it may have on citizens and recovery workers.

Wilma Subra, who has worked on several Superfund hazardous-waste sites and has served on advisory groups for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fears breathing problems caused by a combination of mold and oil from the flooded Murphy Oil Refinery

"Dust is blowing out of the restricted area, and the people being let back in … are breathing highly contaminated particulates," Subra said. "The environmental and health agencies should not have allowed the residents to go back in."

People are returning to homes covered in sediments contaminated by the oil spill, she said. Subra said she has seen "mold growing on walls, ceilings, fabrics, couches … everywhere."

"It is a double insult," she said. "The chemical insult from the sludge and biological insult from the mold."

Even some EPA staffers are not too confident about the health of workers or residents:

"We haven’t even done a damage assessment, let alone an environmental assessment," said Hugh Kaufman, senior policy analyst with the Environmental Protection Agency’s solid waste division.

Kaufman said that if federal, state and local governments had followed the Department of Homeland Security’s National Response Plan, agencies would have coordinated seamlessly to ensure public health and safety. "Obviously, that didn’t happen in terms of getting people out," he said, "and it’s not happening right now in terms of protecting the heroes."

According to EPA tests, the biological threats from the flood include elevated levels of E. coli bacteria and toxic mold. Contamination from industrial facilities pose a more troubling long-term concern, with more than 40 oil spills reported in Louisiana by the Coast Guard last week and thousands of chemical containers spotted bobbing in the region’s floodwaters. The oozing sediment that coats flood-impacted areas may yield an even greater danger in the coming months as the ground dries, releasing airborne contaminants like harmful organic gases and fuel vapors. The potential health effects range from allergic reactions to organ damage.

But, of course, the first response should be prevention:

The watchdog groups OMB Watch and National Environmental Trust have questioned the reliability of the EPA’s environmental sampling data – information that would factor heavily in worker safety determinations.

The released records show that the vast majority of water contaminants tested for have been detected at non-dangerous levels or not at all. However, environmental advocates suspect that the real damage is much deeper, noting that the 2003 EPA Toxic Release Inventory registers thousands of pounds of chemical waste churned out by local facilities. Meanwhile, a treated federal toxic site, the Agriculture Street Landfill, is currently stewed in floodwaters.

The environmental community is demanding that the government go beyond dispensing advice and mandate more public health research on Katrina’s environmental impacts and stronger protections for workers serving in the recovery effort.

Darryl Malek-Wiley, a New Orleans evacuee and Louisiana field organizer for the Sierra Club, said that the government should establish an organized system to track the long-term health effects on exposed New Orleans recovery workers. However, he said, considering that the government has haphazardly fanned refugees across the country, "If that’s the level of record keeping they have for workers, it’s going to be a disaster in the future."

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued a factsheet:Protect Yourself From Chemicals Released During a Natural Disaster