Bush Takes Advantage

Aid had barely reached the abandoned poor and black residents of New Orleans before the Bush Administration set its reconstruction plans in motion. Not surprisingly, those plans also served to further Bush’s longstanding agenda to weaken unions and cut wages.

First Bush launched a two-pronged attack on federal contracting standards. In the name of fiscal responsibility, he suspended the Davis-Bacon Act for most of the Gulf Coast region. This law, in effect since 1931, normally would have required workers involved in federally funded relief efforts to be paid the regional prevailing wage for their industry.

California Congressman George Miller noted angrily, “In New Orleans…the prevailing wage is about $9 per hour… In effect, President Bush is saying that people should be paid less than $9 an hour to rebuild their communities.” The Department of Labor’s official prevailing wage for “common laborers” in New Orleans is $9.55.

Then, without explanation, the White House relaxed federal provisions that promote contracting to women and minority-owned businesses, for work in the flood-stricken areas. Officials are now discussing suspension of the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act, which mirrors Davis-Bacon’s prevailing-wage requirements for service workers on federal contracts (including health care and other relief workers).

At the same time, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began issuing what promises to be a large number of lucrative, no-bid contracts for rebuilding. Many of these contractors are companies with strong ties to the Republican Party, such as Fluor and Bechtel, both hired to outfit temporary housing for Katrina’s victims.

NO-BID CONTRACTS

Similar procurement methods have been used in Iraq, where government auditors have blamed no-bid contracting for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fraud, double-billing, and other abuses.

But in the face of this pro-corporate approach to rebuilding the battered Gulf Coast, a more promising movement is afoot. One hopeful development is the work of New Orleans-based Community Labor United (CLU), a grassroots coalition of unions, community-based organizations, and religious groups formed in the late 1990s. Just days after Katrina hit, CLU was championing a different approach to relief and recovery.

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CLU spokesman Malcolm Suber explained, “We start from the point of view that the vision and ideas of the people of New Orleans must be central to any reconstruction efforts. We know that the business community is going to use this as an excuse to engineer a big land grab. They want to try and change the complexion of the city, to keep poor black folks from coming back.

“That is why we are calling for a people’s committee to oversee the reconstruction and redevelopment. We are laying claim to the aid money that is being generated, and we are calling for a right of return for all the residents of New Orleans displaced by the hurricane.”

ORGANIZING SURVIVORS

CLU established a People’s Hurricane Fund and pulled together a meeting of New Orleans community leaders who had evacuated to Baton Rouge. There they initiated a community oversight committee of evacuees, which they aim to insert into the relief and rebuilding efforts.

CLU’s plans hark back to the work of the North Carolina-based workers center Black Workers for Justice (BWFJ) in the aftermath of 1999’s Hurricane Floyd. At that time, BWFJ called for hurricane and flood survivors to be involved in decisions about how relief funds would be distributed. As BWFJ activist Saladin Muhammad described in a recent article, in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, “survivors’ committees were organized in 15 sites throughout eastern North Carolina and a survivors summit was organized.”

BWFJ worked with Floyd survivors to set up a distribution center so that survivors and local activists could participate directly in aid distribution. Muhammad noted that FEMA and other government agencies resisted the involvement of these groups in relief efforts.

NEW OBSTACLES

But before anyone can develop a community-driven vision for the reconstruction of New Orleans and the other devastated Gulf communities, residents have to be located and reconnected. Said Muhammad, “With Floyd, the evacuation of thousands of survivors to far-away cities did not occur. People were moved and went on their own to neighboring towns and communitiesmaking it easier to build a survivors’ organization and movement.”

CLU is now pressing FEMA and the Red Cross to identify where displaced residents have been sent, after which it will begin the work of knitting their fractured communities back together.