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Katrina One Year Later: A Rapid Response from Unions |
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In the last in our series of profiles highlighting Hurricane Katrina survivors, we talk with oil worker David Canale, who shares how he and his fellow union members have gotten back on their feet through the generosity and assistance of their union family.
When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast a year ago, David Canale lost everything—his house submerged under more than 20 feet of water and his possessions were completely destroyed. On top of that, his job at the Murphy Oil refinery was underwater and he couldn’t get to work.
A year later, the refinery is back in operation and he is slowly getting back on his feet, mainly, he says, because of the support of his friends and his union, the USW International Union.
Just this week, he says, he saw the city bulldozers knock down his old home in Chalmette, a few miles east of New Orleans. Now he commutes to his job from his new home in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he moved to be near family after the storm. When he’s Louisiana, he lives in a federal-issue trailer in the front yard of friends whose home is being rebuilt.
Even as he is dealing with his own problems, Canale says he spends a lot of his time helping others. He was elected president of USW Local 8363 in April and is trying to make sure his more than 200 members get the help they need. He cannot praise his fellow union members enough for their help:
These people who in a time of devastation, came to help us gave us a sense of humanity. They recognized the needs and acted on it. When you’re in something like that you are disoriented, you don’t know what to do. Then out of the confusion come these groups of people who say “I’ll help.” It’s very uplifting.
As soon as the hurricane struck, the USW leadership directed its Rapid Response network, which usually mobilizes members around political and legislative issues, to provide help to affected union members. In the days immediately after the hurricanes, Tim Waters, the union’s Rapid Response director, sent out an e-mail to some 22,000 contacts across the country explaining the damage Katrina had caused and asking for members to donate money and volunteer to help union members in need.
Each contact person, in turn, called or e-mailed a team of volunteers in his or her local, who then went out and personally contacted other members at home or on the job. Within a few days, money and names of volunteers began pouring into USW headquarters in Pittsburgh. The union eventually raised $1.5 million to aid Katrina survivors.
The union response was even more important because it provided the assistance state and federal governments didn’t provide, Canale says:
The best thing that could happen now would be for the state and federal government officials to step beyond their daily duties and act in the interests of people who are feeling abandoned. There are people here who don’t have trailers they applied for right after the storm There are elderly people who don’t know what their options are. They need to get up assistance for everyone and act quickly. So far, the response has been a failure.
Waters says he was stunned by the destruction caused by Katrina—but encouraged by the solidarity he witnessed:
I met a group of 50 people in Mississippi who cleaned fish. The boats would come in and dock and unload the fish. The day I was there the storm had dropped a boat on top of the building where they worked. Not only had they lost their homes, they lost the place where they worked.
I saw people sitting on the slab where their houses once stood in tears. It was terrible.
But I also saw members from newly organized locals who didn’t have first contracts who saw union members showing up helping out. These were people they’d never met, but they were union members and so they were part of our family.
Not only did USW members respond, but members from dozens of unions gave time, sweat, money, supplies and support to their brothers and sisters in need. The AFL-CIO Community Fund and affiliated unions raised more than $20 million to help Katrina survivors get back on their feet.
Several unions established their own relief funds and mobilized members to transport everything from clothes to toiletries to clean water to the survivors. Among the many unions that provided badly-needed help were Amalgamated Transit Union, AFGE, AFSCME, AFT, Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers, Communications Workers of America, Electrical Workers, Fire Fighters, International Union of Police Associations, Machinists, Painters and Allied Trades, Seafarers, Transport Workers, UAW and various state federations and central labor bodies.
Like thousands of other Louisiana and Mississippi residents, Canale says his members are fighting with his insurance company because the company, like most insurers in the Gulf Coast, is refusing to pay anything for damage caused by the flood.
Those who want to rebuild are being stymied not only by greedy insurance companies but by the failure of the Bush administration and state governments to provide money to the people who need it, says Sam Thomas, president of USW Local 5702 in New Orleans:
The administration gave all these no-bid contracts to clean up after Katrina. And those folks got all the money first.
Congressional Democrats agree with Thomas. In a report, Waste, Fraud, And Abuse In Hurricane Katrina Contracts, released Aug. 24, the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform found the Bush administration awarded 70 percent of its contracts for Hurricane Katrina work without full competition, wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.
The report, a comprehensive overview of government audits on Katrina contracting, found that of $10.6 billion in contracts awarded after the storm last year, more than $7.4 billion was handed out with limited or no competitive bidding.
In addition, 19 contracts worth $8.75 billion were rife with waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the report. It cited numerous instances of double-billing by contractors and cases of trailers meant as emergency housing sitting empty in Arkansas.
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