by James Parks, Jun 7, 2006

Nearly 25 percent of the workers rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina are undocumented immigrants and a yet-to-be released study says employers are exploiting their status to pay them significantly less than documented workers. They also are less likely to get protective gear or help with medical problems.

The study, Rebuilding After Katrina: A Population-Based Study of Labor and Human Rights in New Orleans, is being prepared for a scholarly journal, but the authors released the findings yesterday. The study is based on interviews with undocumented workers by researchers at Tulane University and the University of California, Berkeley. The study finds nearly half of the hurricane-repair workers in the New Orleans area are Latinos and 54 percent of them—nearly one-fourth of the workers helping to rebuild the area—are undocumented.

The study backs up reports of dangerous working conditions that caused construction workers and others who are rebuilding the Crescent City to march through downtown New Orleans May 2 to the federal building to demand that they be treated with respect.

A coalition of unions, community organizations and clergy are joining together to form a local workers’ rights commission to investigate worker exploitation and develop solutions to reverse the unjust treatment of workers.

The undocumented workers are paid $10 an hour, on average, compared with $16.50 for documented workers, according to the study. There also was a disparity in the availability of protective equipment for the workers who spend a great deal of time in hazardous conditions, repairing buildings filled with mold, asbestos and other dangerous substances.

“What is fundamentally unfair is these are workers who have responded to a national priority to rebuild this city and yet whose rights are being violated,” Laurel Fletcher, director of U.C. Berkeley’s International Human Rights Law Clinic and one of the study’s co-authors, said in a statement.

Only one in 10 of the undocumented workers has health insurance, compared with 55 percent of the documented workers, researchers found, and only 38 percent of the undocumented laborers received medications when they needed them, compared with 83 percent of documented workers.

Even though under federal labor law, undocumented immigrants are entitled to the same health and safety protections as documented workers, many employers exploit the workers by threatening to turn them over to immigration officials if they complain about conditions.

Undocumented workers also can sue most employers under the Fair Labor Standards Act for violations of the minimum wage law and overtime regulations.

But immigrant workers say they are afraid of complaining. “It’s too dangerous for my body,” Saul Linan, a 29-year-old undocumented worker from Mexico, told the Associated Press. “But I don’t say anything. If I do, the boss says, ‘Hey, if you don’t work hard, I’ll take you to immigration.’”

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article | Comments (0)