CRS Discussion Board

Recently terrible stories have been emerging from workers performing clean-up and rebuilding in the Gulf Coast area. Workers are being recruited from many different states with promises of housing and pay and then find that they have been lured with false promises. They are left without decent (if any) housing or even pay. Their rights are being blatantly and systematically violated. This new fact sheet identifies some strategies for holding companies responsible for their actions in recruiting and exploiting workers.

New! Post-Katrina: Companies Are Responsible For Workers They Recruit To Perform Clean-Up And Rebuilding. States have an interest in ensuring that unscrupulous corporations that have received FEMA funding are not able to lure vulnerable workers from other states and then leave them without money or a place to live. Some contractors are not withholding taxes from workers’ pay, depriving the workers of benefits and the states of payroll tax revenues. Not only is this exploitation and abuse of the workers, it leaves the destination states and towns with the additional burden of assisting the workers who have no money and no home and dealing with local tensions that arise from their presence. This fact sheet identifies some strategies for holding companies responsible. (Oct. 2005)

Posted by Critical Race Studies at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

150 Immigrants' Cases Sent to Labor Dept.

The Washington Post
November 4, 2005
By Darryl Fears

Two months after the government began allotting billions of dollars for disaster relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, subcontractors in the Mississippi Gulf Coast say they are not being paid. As a result, they say, they cannot pay their workers, who are mostly immigrant laborers and who have painted homes, removed debris and completed other salvage chores.

Over the past two days, the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, or MIRA, has prepared complaints on behalf of more than 150 immigrant workers, both legal and illegal, and submitted them to the Labor Department. The complaints are asking the department to compel at least five subcontractors in Gulfport, Biloxi and other gulf areas to compensate the workers for as much as $100,000 in unpaid work.

The allegations came to light during a forum on Katrina-related immigrant abuse, held by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in Washington last week. Activists said immigrants were living in tents and crowding bus stations to leave the Gulf Coast because they had not been paid. Others are staying on, hoping that pay will come.

Continue reading "Firms in Gulf Coast Allege Nonpayment" »

Posted by Critical Race Studies at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Herald News
November 14, 2005
By Samantha Henry

Elias Ascencio turned up his collar against the first blast of winter as he stood with other day laborers in the parking lot of The Home Depot in Passaic, hoping to get picked up for a job. The approaching cold had him considering a pitch he'd heard that morning: to head for the Gulf Coast.

"If the right opportunity comes up, I think I'll go," Ascencio, 35, who is Mexican born, said in Spanish. "To flee this cold, any offer will do."

In the months since Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the southern coast of Mississippi and Louisiana, immigrant laborers from North Jersey and across the United States have been heading to the South in droves, drawn by the promise of cleanup and reconstruction jobs.

Continue reading "False Promises" »

Posted by Critical Race Studies at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)