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  1. #1
    Senior Member Brian503a's Avatar
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    Labor Department looking into disputes over wages, unsafe wo

    www.clarionledger.com

    November 6, 2005
    Problems growing along Coast

    Labor Department looking into disputes over wages, unsafe work conditions

    By Julie Goodman
    jgoodman@clarionledger.com

    Tensions along the Mississippi Gulf Coast are surfacing between contractors and immigrant workers who've arrived to repair roofs, clean up debris and tear down destroyed property.

    The mostly Hispanic workers, many of whom support families in their native countries, are reporting a pattern of being short-changed on payments, unfairly arrested and subjected to subtle threats of deportation. One Mexican worker who has lived in the United States for 14 years said a colleague of a contractor waved a gun in his face.

    The situation is part of an on-going problem with immigrants, the workers and their advocates say, but one that has been exacerbated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as competition over pricing and low wages has intensified, and a number of undocumented laborers have arrived on the scene.
    "We're brown people. We're just an apparatus," said Frank Mercado, a native of Puerto Rico who said he was arrested recently on a trespassing charge while cleaning his tools on a job site in Biloxi.

    The immigrants contend they've been exploited because of their skin color. The contractors the immigrants accuse bristle at the involvement of immigrant advocates in the disputes. It's not about discrimination, they say of the workers who, in some cases, have attracted free advocacy and legal counsel. In some cases, the contractors have pointed to specific problems with workers, such as dispute over the work agreed upon.


    But one advocate, Victoria Cintra, an emergency outreach coordinator for the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, said immigrants are at a clear disadvantage.

    "You realize they're just humans trying to survive in a world that's just trying to abuse them because they're a very vulnerable group of people," she said. "They're very humble and they're very hard working, and they don't know their rights and they don't know the language."

    Cintra is formalizing the workers' complaints to turn over to the U.S. Department of Labor. She said some immigrants have been living in substandard housing and have gone days without food. There have been reports of unfair evictions and failure to pay wages, what she termed "slavery" in some cases.

    "They're being coerced into coming, they're being promised things and when they want to leave, or when they inquire about these promises, then they get threatened with immigration or deportation or the police department," she said.

    Some are doing toxic waste cleanup for paltry wages with no tetanus or hepatitis shots, health insurance or protective gear, she said.

    Department of Labor spokesman David James said the department has received correspondence from Cintra and is looking into it.

    Jose Rivera, 41, a subcontractor who came over from Livingston, Texas, with a crew to find post-Katrina work, landed some jobs with Geneva, Ala.-based New Wave Construction. But problems arose when the contractor failed to pay him $9,055 for the work of about eight people, Rivera said. And when Rivera asked the contractor â€â€
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  2. #2
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    Love that the advoacy groups are there! Maybe these contractors/subs will see they'd be better off having legal people work for them.
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