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A ‘Disposable Workforce’ in New Orleans After Katrina |
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Robert “Tiger” Hammond is not an emotional man. But when he talks about how little has been done to rebuild his hometown of New Orleans two years after Hurricane Katrina, he is moved to tears. Hammond, president of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO, says:
Parts of this town look like a nuclear bomb hit two days ago, not like it was two years ago.
Hammond kicked off a panel of five
The bottom line is that reactionary ideologues from the Bush administration, and some business and civic leaders in New Orleans, took the damage and dislocation caused by the hurricane as an opportunity to conduct a mass experiment in privatization and union busting, panelists said. Tracie Washington, CEO of the Louisiana Justice Institute, a civil rights law group, says that after Katrina, there was an
absolute assault on civil rights and social justice guarantees that we thought we had. There was a blatant assault on workers’ rights.
In quick succession, she says, the working people—mainly African Americans:—who were making a decent living were the first to go: All 4,900 teachers and thousands of bus drivers were laid off. That was followed by a decision not to rebuild much of the public housing destroyed by the storm and the slow reopening of the schools and the decimation of the public transportation system.
Joe Prieur, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1560, says more than 500 members of his union lost their jobs right after Katrina. And management has refused to upgrade or increase the number of workers or to buy any new buses to replace the ones destroyed by the flood.
Brenda Mitchell, president of the United Teachers of New Orleans, told the ILCA convention that even though many of the public schools were shut down, teachers have begun rebuilding their union. (Click here to read more about the schools.)
Washington says the systematic elimination of jobs and the support system of public housing, schools and transportation services is something that could happen anywhere. Despite the glitz of Bourbon Street and Harrah’s Casino in downtown, she says, the people of New Orleans are suffering.
We residents of New Orleans are the canaries in the coal mine. And the canaries are dropping off. Don’t think closing schools and cutting transportation is something that can’t happen somewhere else. The same people who built our jacked-up levees are the same ones who built your bridges and roads.
The assault on workers can best be seen in the way immigrant workers and local workers are being manipulated in a race to the bottom, says Saket Soni, lead organizer of the New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice. Hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers were brought to New Orleans to work at the same time that hundreds of thousands of African American workers were being displaced and fired. Soni says the immigrant workers are being exploited by employers. For example, he says contractors hire immigrant construction day workers and require that they work long hours. But on pay day, they call the immigration service to deport the workers.
Soni says:
They have created a completely disposable workforce. They have locked one group out and locked another group in. The reality of New Orleans is that the storm gave the opportunity to a lot of people to push through a social experiment they wouldn’t dare try anywhere else in such a short time. You find the cheapest, most exploitable workers, pay them little or nothing, and if they complain, fire them or deport them.
Workers using their political strength could be the key to solving New Orleans’ problems, Mitchell says:
Call and write your congressman. Tell them to investigate, hold a hearing on what’s really going on here.
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Yes I will join the clamour for investigation. I like the fact that people are at long last noticing that those “public” schools are nearly all charter schools, whcih means tthey can pick and chose students so they look better in no child left. behind. This all smells, my whole family is public sector k-12 students, special ed assistant, university support staffer, next year add college student. Creating “Las Orleans”, by replacing working people of color with contractors-then sith folks more like Disney staff then natives is well I’m not gonna get booted for bad words.
We must never forget that New Orleans is a part of the south where human lives were once enslaved and where Jim Crow reduced our brothers and sisters to third class citizens!
The experiment in New Orleans must not be ignored. This same experiment will soon become a way of doing things elsewhere! Organized labor, civil rights organizations, immigrant rights organizations must unite and fight this gross injustice!
One would think with the severity of what occurred in New Orleans that the Democrats would be raising hell… unfortunatley some of them are also part of the problem (Gov. Blanco & Mayor Nagel)
This is part of a broader plan to privatize many parts of our society, country and government. The leadership of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, agree with a “free market” approach and that the wholesale privatization of the public sector is necessary. The Democratic Party has abandoned its Keynesian economics of the past and opted for Milton Friedman style, anti-democratic, anti-worker, pro-corporate economic system. A book that helps expose this assault on our lives and should be read by all is “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” by Naomi Klein.
In the words of Mother Jones: “Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts.”
I am a current board member with Oregon Alliance for Retired Americans and resident of Portland, OR. After Oregons last primary election I have chosen to turn to “causes” instead of “politics”.
Since last December I have come to New Orleans to help in the rebuilding effort for a total of over 4 months time that incompassed 6 seperate trips. I am convinced or government has let this region down big time. All you have to do is talk to the locals and they will verify the abuse. It is absolutely a disgrace that after more than two years the region is still devastated. I’m not sure what the answer is except these folks need help and though I’m just one fella, with a few skills, I’m going to continue to help those in need.
I did just recently make a connection with a local volunteer group that has housing available as well as, food, facilities, etc for anyone that cares to help in the rebuilding effort:
Advance reservations are required to use the facility,
Camp Restore Camp Biloxi
9301 Chef Menteaur Hwy 1996 Pass Road
New Orleans, LA 70127 Biloxi, MS 39531
504-242-2636 228-594-0008
http://www.camprestore.org campbiloxi@cableone.org
We must never forget that New Orleans is a part of the south where human lives were once enslaved and where Jim Crow reduced our brothers and sisters to third class citizens!
YES. SOMEHOW, I THINK THAT IF THIS HAD HAPPENED IN A SUBURBAN AREA INHABITED BY WEALTHY WHITES, SOMETHING MORE WOULD HAVE BEEN DONE IN THE LAST COUPLE YEARS.
It was very clear of the dictator’s intentions, with Karl Rove’s 2 cents also. 1st. minimal cleanup in the neighborhoods, thus voting democrats won’t come back, 2. smear the mayor and the governor, and with a “moderate” republicrat in the Senate, with the intention of turning that state Republican, so far a Republican governor has been elected. 3. Keep good union teachers out of the school system by opening Charter schools. Isn’t that where the dictator would go to speak on the “progress” (there’s that word again) of the school system?
Remember the billions of $$ that poured next door in ole Red Miss.
ORGANIZE and take back Louisiana.
ChicanoWobbly makes a good point, but doesn’t go far enough. These organizations need to unite with the people hurt by all this. This may include people who have become subcontractors to these privatizers.
Boost this on Digg: http://digg.com/business_finance/The_Disposable_Workforce_in_New_Orleans_After_Katrina
I am a resident of Oregon and the President of my Local and on the Executive Board of the AFSCME Oregon Council 75.
I’ve been involved all my life with Unions starting when I was 16 driving my grandfather to his Pipe Fitters Local 211 meetings.
At that time, all the Union Officers carried 12 axe handles in the trunk of their cars so if a picket line was needed they had the means to carry their UA Local 211 On Strike signs….
We can see in Louisiana where decades of the socialist programs promoted by the Democratic Party have produced a large welfare population that can not get themselves out of the way of a storm. The local and state government leadership are the reason the welfare population were not evacuated by the school buses, they did not even follow their own emergency plans and let the waters cover the buses.
To a large extent, we only have ourselves to blame. International Unions and State Councils have long supported illegal alien immigration.
These workers, when employed in a shop with an existing Local, will join because they must. But left to their own devices, working in non-union shops, they will not join.
As Union members we should be strongly supporting jobs for US citizens. Then after we have full employment we support LEGAL immigrants with visa’s to work in this country.
By supporting illegal alien immigration and they get larger in numbers we are in affect supporting lowering wages and working conditions to that in other countries.
I’m for US Jobs for US Citizens and Made in America with a Union Label.
At this time, we are reaping what we have sown.
We need to get the people (Democrats) who passed Jim Crow laws out of power, Organize and Take Back the State so a man can earn a living and not depend on the dole and be subject to the whim of government.
Now let’s see how this slick country hick Bush will destroy working people in California with the Katrina Wildfires. If there is any way to mess things up for AMERICANS, Bush will figure out how to do it. Can Americans survive another year of Bush? I hope so.
Bush’s workers in Iraq are making millions, but then… they don’t live here.
Re: inspector 3500 above. It’s not a matter of where New Orleaneans are at or how they got there…it’s a matter of helping our fellow citizens no matter their status, race, age etc. And if I understand your writing you have a long way to go!!!!
The reports are generally correct. But they have some significant errors. The public housing was NOT destroyed at all. So it did not need to be rebuilt. Former tenants were physically prevented from returned to most former public housing and not even allowed to retrieve personal belongings.
And its not “some” business and civic leaders but rather MOSt of them including the supposed representatives of the black community.
Existing unions have done little to organise unorganized workers in the past and often propose no strike pledges when they do.
And they have supported the very politicians that have carried out the anti-union and anti-worker policies.
Les
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Ken H. the poorest people of NO got there by boat. They were sold down the river, a long time ago.
3500 - the people who kept the Jim Crow laws on the books are dead. The last remaining… switched parties to Republican in the 1980s.
The systematic eradication of the public school system, of public transportation, of an African-American population is frightening. This is a democratic America. This is not Germany in the late 1930’s where the Nazis began the total eradication of Bolshevism and of the Jews to replace them with a superior Aryan race civilization. I wonder how would the American people vote in 2008 in response to the threats to their democracy.