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   Vol. 69/No. 37           September 26, 2005  
 
 
Workers displaced by Katrina seek union jobs
 
BY LAURA GARZA  
MOBILE, Alabama—Workers in this region are sorting through obstacles to getting back to work and having an income again. Some of those most affected by the social dislocation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and government inaction are looking to cleanup and reconstruction work as a source of decent jobs and wages.

Organizers for the Laborers’ International Union are seeking to defend hard-fought gains and sign up new members in the face of efforts by construction companies and their government hirelings to use the need for rapid reconstruction as a pretext to undermine union conditions. Washington has bypassed the normal bidding procedures for construction contracts and suspended the rule that contractors must pay prevailing wages.

The Laborers’ International Union has set up a table on the road leading to several hotels to let workers brought in by construction companies know they should be entitled to union-scale wages. Bobby McKnight, a member of Laborers Local 366 in Sheffield, Alabama, said, “We want good paying jobs. This is a social issue, they should pay a decent wage, with health insurance.” The unionists said they want to let workers know they can join the union and push for better conditions.

Speaking with union members later at the Local 70 union hall, local business manager Chris Boykin said unionists had gone around to local shelters, laundromats, and other gathering places to post up and pass out bilingual flyers with information on filling out applications at the Laborers’ hall.

Laborers union members are paid $17.82 an hour, and receive health and pension benefits. On the day Militant reporters visited the union hall, some 137 workers had applied for jobs.

Boykin said his local includes construction and shipyard workers in the region, and that they still had 600-800 retirees unaccounted for. Union members are making calls to track people down. Frank Curiel, a staffer from Miami and a member of Local 515 based in Atlanta, said the union also represents some 2,500 poultry workers in central Mississippi “who have been without pay since the storm and still have no electricity or running water.” The union has organized collections to help workers in these situations.

Meanwhile some employers in major industries are pushing to get back up and running. Northrop Grumman, which employs about 12,000 workers in three Gulf Coast shipyards, has had about a fourth of its workforce cleaning up and projects resuming some production in the Pascagoula shipyard next week. But tens of thousands of workers continue to face hours of waiting in line to apply for food stamps, fill out aid applications, and obtain immediate relief. Some 400,000 applications had been filed for disaster aid as of September 9, but many people remain in areas where limited access to phones, gas, or internet connections hampers their ability to even find out about, much less apply for, needed aid.
 
 
Related articles:
Democrats, Republicans cover up responsibility for Gulf Coast disaster
Working people take own initiatives to confront social catastrophe

New Orleans: workers explain their resistance to evacuation by cops, troops
U.S. gov’t snubs Cuba’s offer to send doctors to Gulf Coast
How workers in battle transform themselves
Working-class response to Gulf Coast disaster
Hurricane evacuees in Houston reject being shipped out to sea
How cops obstructed evacuation
Shelters: shoddy conditions for evacuees  
 
 
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