Four Years After Katrina, Workers Still Exploited in the Big Easy
August 31
12:01 pm
New Orleans workers rally to protest wage theft in May. (Image courtesy the Institute for Southern Studies)
"I never earned anything for my work... When finally the bosses paid something, all of the money went to paying the money we were loaned."
—Misael Garcia, testifying in a wage-theft lawsuit brought by New Orleans immigrant workers.
After Katrina's fury emptied out the Big Easy, a wave of misplaced hopes flooded in from all over the world—an estimated 30,000 to 100,000 workers came in search of jobs, and employers swooped in to capitalize on the massive recovery effort.
Four years on, New Orleans is slowly building itself back up, but the people fueling the effort are sinking ever deeper into an economy founded on exploitation.
In the chaos that followed Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Bush administration seized the opportunity to suspend critical labor and safety regulations in impacted regions.Though many of the policy changes were rescinded later on, the stage was set for employers to prey on a vulnerable, racially stratified workforce.
Tensions initially surfaced between newly arrived Latino workers and local black communities who felt shut out of the rebuilding effort.
But ultimately, as documented in a report by the Advancement Project, it became clear that the city's displaced poor, along with the newly arrived migrants (who included both U.S.- and foreign-born laborers), were both subject to equal opportunity abuse, from wage theft to criminalization by law enforcement.
A recent survey conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed that eight in ten Latino workers in New Orleans reported being robbed by their employers.
Yet post-Katrina New Orleans encapsulates nationwide trends. At a 2007 House hearing, the National Employment Law Project called the city “'Exhibit A' of the lack of a meaningful wage floor in this country,” noting that Louisiana is one of several states that “does not have a state agency responsible for enforcing minimum wage and hour standards."
Workers are instead left at the mercy of a threadbare federal regulatory regime:
In the handful of instances where workers were able to contact DOL and it did respond, the results were disastrous. Among other things, the DOL office handling complaints from New Orleans did not, as it is authorized to do: (1) investigate retaliation claims brought by workers fired after complaining of no pay; (2) go after “joint employers” or independent contractor abuses, letting responsible employers off; or (3) seek liquidated damages or other penalties beyond the back wages actually owed to the worker, giving employers an incentive to continue to underpay for work performed.
New Orleans's entire history is steeped in race and class oppression, but in the aftermath of Katrina, the legacy of exploitation has become globalized.
Last year, the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice helped 500 foreign workers file a lawsuit against Signal International, which had imported them to supply labor for Gulf Coast oil rig yards. The guest workers, recruited from India and the United Arab Emirates, alleged the company held them in "guarded, overcrowded, and isolated labor camps” and terrorized them with threats of deportation as well as "a campaign of psychological abuse, coercion, and fraud."
Post-Katrina workers have brought other lawsuits against employers. But legal recourse is out of reach for many undocumented workers, since government authorities seem to be far more aggressive in rounding up immigrants than busting unscrupulous bosses.
On May Day, scores of protesters, led by the Congress of Day Laborers, marched to the Labor Department office in New Orleans to demand government action against wage theft, particularly two cases involving firms receiving government funds. But the demonstration started to feel more like a workplace raid when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) appeared on the scene.
After the confrontation, one member of the Congress of Day Laborers remarked, “They tell me there are labor laws in this county that protect me from abuse. But how can I report violations of labor law if ICE blocks the doors to the Department of Labor?”
To help shield workers from intimidation, the Advancement Project has called on the federal government to mandate "that there will be no immigration enforcement during any phase of disaster preparedness or recovery."
Meanwhile, activists are pressing New Orleans lawmakers to pass legislation to impose criminal penalties for wage theft.
Although local laws might help protect marginal workers, the broadest enforcement responsibility still lies with federal authorities. Yet the Labor Department, despite suggestions of reform from the White House, seems pathologically weak in the face of a foundering economy and rising complaints of wage theft across the country,
While advocates and officials grow increasingly anxious about the glacial pace of Gulf Coast recovery, anxiety has already given way to hopelessness for the countless workers who wait indefinitely for justice.
Posted by Michelle Chen · + share/save
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Comments
For what it’s worth, the Southern Poverty Law Center “survey” is nothing more than a fund raising tool. It does not follow standardized survey protocols.
1. What the “survey” actually says is “80 percent of Latinos INTERVIEWED in New Orleans reported that they had not been paid for some work they performed.”
That is not the same as “eight in ten Latino workers in New Orleans reported being robbed ” as this article states.
There is a huge difference between the two statements.
2. The 80% figure is useless as the “survey” never states how many people were surveyed in N.O. Eighty percent of what? What if they only interviewed 10 people?
The “Methodology” section of the “survey” says they interviewed “more than 500 people” in 5 locations, but when you add up all the locations listed there are more than 20 of them. Why not just say how many were interviewed in each one like a REAL survey would?
3. Methodology also reports “Because the targeted population is difficult to identify and contact, we used the snowball sampling method, in which study subjects refer researchers to additional subjects. Because study subjects were not chosen randomly, estimates from the survey may be biased.”
The “snowball” method involves asking participants to identify other likely participants who would also take the survey. As the SPLC admits, the results are biased.
Furthermore, many of the initial participants were people the SPLC is already representing in law suits. Who exactly would those people recommend for a survey on wage theft? (http://www.splcenter.org/legal/undersiege/methodology.jsp)
4. The actual survey questions are not listed and in some cases, “Based on their answers, some respondents were asked by a Spanish-speaking researcher to elaborate on their experiences. “
In a real survey, the participants are chosen at random and ALL are treated identically.
Sadly, wage theft and worker exploitation are very real crimes in America, but regurgitating, (even if misquoting), SPLC fund raising propaganda is a pretty poor way to document it.
Thanks for your comments on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s survey. The paraphrasing of the findings stated exactly what the SPLC did—that according to the survey, eight in ten respondents *reported* experiencing the theft of their wages. Your points are well taken, though. One could, and should, interrogate the methodology used. Neither the post nor the SPLC argues that they were unbiased (they are an advocacy group after all) or that they drew from a comprehensive randomized sample. The report, in fact, is largely qualitative and based on interviews and media accounts. An academically rigorous piece of social science research? I admit, probably not, and that’s why it’s not a focal point of the post. The report is, however, some of the most comprehensive documentation to date on the situation. The SPLC discloses the main premise of the study when explaining their methodology:
“This survey was designed to take the pulse of the Latino community in the South, to gain further insight into the impacts of the immigration debate and the punitive, anti-immigrant measures enacted by cities and states in the region.
“Numerous previous surveys have been conducted about the demographics and attitudes of Latinos in the United States, particularly by the Pew Hispanic Center. We are not aware, however, of any previous studies assessing the experiences and attitudes of Latinos in the South on matters involving bigotry, exploitation and discrimination.”
Ms. Chen,
Thank you for your kind reply.
With all due respect, the wording of the article implies that 8 in 10 of ALL Latinos in New Orleans have been robbed by their employers. This is not the case.
Since we have no idea whatsoever how many people were interviewed in New Orleans, (regardless of the fact that they were all hand picked in advance), the 80% figure is entirely spurious and worthless. Why quote it?
I’m also wondering how you can find that the SPLC “report” is “not unbiased” and “not academically rigorous,” but is still somehow comprehensive?
Would you find it just as comprehensive if it didn’t conform to your position? If you let me handpick the survey sample ahead of time I can guarantee any results you like.
Again, as I mentioned before, exploitation and wage theft are very real problems, especially for illegal aliens, which is why your efforts to document these crimes are so important.
There are so many legitimate sources for actual facts and statistics that there really is no need to quote the fund raising propaganda of a group that the Better Business Bureau stopped recognizing as an accredited charity many years ago.
Thank you again for the opportunity to express my opinions.
Thanks, Richard. Regardless of political leanings (or the views of the Better Business Bureau, for that matter), many who follow this issue do note an extreme lack of comprehensive data and statistics about this workforce, which makes this report, among others, worth looking at. And again, I could reiterate what the post’s paraphrasing of the report does and does not imply, but, I think readers at this point can turn to the sources and judge for themselves.