Five Years After Katrina: Frustration and Determination
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Unemployment in New Orleans is below the national average, but the poverty level is twice the national rate. The reasons behind that stark contrast tell the real story of what is going on five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Crescent City.
There’s lots of work that needs to be done in New Orleans. The problem is that nobody’s making a living off the work but the “chiefs and the thieves,” says Robert “Tiger” Hammond, president of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO.
Even though the federal government just announced a $1.8 billion school construction grant to the city, Hammond says workers will be hard pressed to get good-paying jobs out of the grant. The money is coming to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and doesn’t include Davis-Bacon requirements that workers be paid the prevailing local wage. What’s happening, says Hammond, is that construction workers are being deliberately misclassified as independent contractors so employers can pay them less than if they had a union contract. He adds:
It was hard enough to get a union job before Katrina. Now it’s even harder.
IBEW Members in Gulf Coast Rebuilding Lives, Communities
The residents of Louisiana’s Gulf Coast are determined to rebuild their lives and their communities after suffering the triple whammy of Hurricane Katrina, the recession and the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.
Union members who live and work in the area, including members of the Electrical Workers (IBEW), are trying to make it through these tough times themselves while also helping rebuild the region (see video at left).
But it’s a job they do willingly, not just for the pay, but because they want to keep the unique lifestyle of the Louisiana Gulf Coast alive. One-third of the area residents who evacuated after Katrina have not returned, leaving it to those who remain to rejuvenate the region.
As one member of IBEW Local 130 put it:
This is my backyard. This is what I‘ve grown up doing. This is our life. If we don’t try to save this, then we won’t have a tomorrow for our kids.
Katrina Four Years Later: Iraq Being Rebuilt Faster
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Four years after Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,800 people and left thousands homeless along the Gulf Coast, many residents, especially those displaced in New Orleans, still cannot come home, because there are no homes to come back to.
From the beginning, the union movement has sought to aid in rebuilding the communities, with the AFL-CIO’s Gulf Coast Revitalization Program early on committing to spending $1 billion to produce new housing, fund economic development projects and create thousands of new jobs. Already more than 400 workers have been trained to fill those jobs.
But outreach efforts continue to be stymied. Robert “Tiger” Hammond, president of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO, tells Press Associates that local and state officials keep putting up “roadblock after roadblock after roadblock” to building housing for displaced residents.
