http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs. ... 90309/1200

January 29, 2006

Immigrant workers have it tough

Many face poor treatment in jobs to aid Gulf Coast recovery

By Joe Atkins
Special to The Clarion-Ledger


OXFORD — Studs Terkel, Chicago's great chronicler of ordinary people, likes to pose this question: Who built the pyramids?

Was it the pharaohs?

"The pharaohs didn't lift a finger," Terkel says. "That's king and queen. Mrs. Pharaoh's fingernails were as immaculately manicured as Elizabeth Taylor's in Cleopatra. Who built the pyramids? Anonymous slaves down through the centuries."

The same could be said about the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It won't be Gov. Haley Barbour or his Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal. The rebuilders of the Gulf Coast will be thousands of unknown workers, many of them named Garcia, Gonzales and Martinez.

Before the storm hit, an estimated 30,000 Latino workers lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast — 145,000 if you include New Orleans. The reconstruction effort has brought thousands more, lured by contractors and subcontractors promising good wages.

Many are likely undocumented and thus unprotected against unscrupulous employers who cheat them out of hard-earned pay and put them to work in hazardous conditions with little fear of reprisal from local, state or federal law.

"The continuing saga of gross fraud, unsafe and unsanitary working conditions, exploitation and outright theft of immigrant workers' wages continues seemingly unabated on the Mississippi Gulf Coast," proclaimed the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance in a call-to-action this month.

Tales of abuse against immigrant workers are crossing national borders.

"Mississippi: Mexican slaves" was the headline of a recent story in the Mexican magazine Dia Siete. The story details the lives of Mexican workers on the post-Katrina Gulf Coast — crowded living quarters, seven-day workweeks, 12-14 hours a day at $7 to $8 an hour, often in dangerous conditions, including exposure to toxic chemicals..

"The Mexicans do a job that no one wants to do — neither Anglos nor African-Americans: the cleanup and reconstruction from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita," says writer Julian Cardona." But they carry out this task in slavery conditions."

The Jackson-based immi-grants rights alliance recently set up a Gulfport office, and its complaints to the U.S. Department of Labor succeeded in winning back pay totaling $141,000 for immigrants who worked for Halliburton/KBR, the firm once run by Vice President Dick Cheney and which has grown rich winning big, no-bid contracts from the Bush-Cheney government

Alliance President Bill Chandler says the group has filed hundreds of other complaints against several companies regarding treatment of immigrant workers.

Much of the political reaction has been to blame the workers, not the companies that hire them. More than a dozen bills are pending in the state Legislature, many punitive to immigrant workers. The U.S. Congress will soon debate a bill to build a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexican border. U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., is a co-sponsor.

The issue has been used to divide the natural alliances immigrants have with labor unions and African-Americans.

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1317 President Grover Nicholson has called for a federal investigation into "the influx and growing numbers" of Latinos — many alleged to be "illegal workers" — hired by the Howard Industries plant in Laurel.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's recent comment that God wanted his to be a "chocolate city" ignored the thousands of Latinos who live and work in New Orleans. Somewhere in Egypt a mummy smiled when Nagin made that comment.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Write Joe Atkins at the University of Mississippi, Department of Journalism, University MS 38677, or e-mail jbatkins@olemiss.edu.