Yes, Virginia, There Is A Minimum Wage Again In Lousiana: Two months after it suspended the Davis-Bacon Act in Katrina-affected areas, the legal requirement for employers to pay the prevailing wage in the region, the Bush Administration has reversed its decision.
According to the Washington Post, the administration decided “to waive a provision of the Davis-Bacon Act that guarantees construction workers the prevailing local wage when they are paid with federal money. The administration said the waiver on hurricane-related work would save the government money and speed recovery efforts.”
The minimum wage will be reinstated this coming Tuesday, November 8, and back pay will not be issued.
Pressure from liberal and conservative groups alike prompted the change of the White House’s mind; Republican congresspeople argued on behalf of blue-collar constituencies and voiced a fear of a region overrun by illegal immigrants who are paid oppressive wages.
“Gulf Coast workers and businesses have complained that they are being left out of the recovery. While the federal government spends more than $60 billion on recovery, they say that out-of-state companies receive most of the contracts and that many of those firms pay workers less than the prevailing wage — which is often the union wage … 75 unionized electricians said they lost their $22-an-hour jobs rebuilding the Belle Chasse Naval Air Station near New Orleans because a Halliburton Co. subcontractor found workers to do the job for less.”
While I understand the need for the reinstatement of Davis-Bacon from the perspectives of regional economic stabilty and the wage abuse of migrant workers, I feel that the presence of such workers in New Orleans is not a bad thing. Very few locals would do the work and in such horrible circumstances; in fact, plenty of New Orleanians would not accept such jobs even before the hurricane hit and the repealment of the prevailing wage. That’s my $0.02 in support of the employment of (evidently Mexican) migrant workers in my city. Someone’s got to do the work, and they do it well.
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Houston Offers Evacuees A Year Of Free Rent: The Houston Chronicle reports that “the city is offering evacuees a voucher good for 12 months of rent in clean, safe apartments, with free electricity and gas heating.”
Though Houston expects to be reimbursed by FEMA for this humongous expenditure, this is a great move on the part of city officials wishing to get evacuees, who are still in shelters 70 days after the hurricane hit their home, into stable housing.
The city already has issued about 35,000 vouchers, ranging from one-bedroom apartments for two people to four-bedroom apartments for larger families … the vouchers will pay a market rate for low- to mid-quality apartments, up to about $1,150 for a four-bedroom apartment … that’s roughly equivalent to low class-B, or class-C apartments … above class-D apartments, which are often poorly managed or rundown.
More than 12,000 vouchers have been cashed in, each signifying an evacuee family has signed a lease. The city then pays the landlord directly … [Mayor Bill White’s office] expects at least 60,000 evacuees to find housing here because of the program.
… although the vouchers are valid for apartments in an eight-county area, many complexes outside Harris County have refused to participate … the program is voluntary for apartment managers, and some newer apartment buildings may be too expensive to qualify.
By contrast, Atlanta has made virtually no provisions for long-term housing, and Dallas has sought to house fewer than 1,000 families.
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Writing In Exile: New Orleans teacher, Abram Himelstein, has relocated to Houston and writes for Houston Chronicle-hosted In Exile: Blogging For New Orleans. Himelstein is famous for working with six John McDonogh Senior High School students in the Neighborhood Story Project, which was featured as a May cover story in The Gambit, New Orleans’ best weekly.
By bridging the gap between the written page and life in their various neighborhoods, the students forged ties between John McDonogh Senior High and the neighborhoods served by the school. They also helped topple the stereotype that John Mac is nothing more than a bad school — a perception that the young people are acutely sensitive to in light of a shooting at the school two years ago.
In This is where we walked, hunted, danced and sang, Himelstein talks of driving around the Ninth Ward during his return to New Orleans and going by the home and haunts of Waukesha Jackson, one of the Neighborhood Story writers. And Walter’s, the now-flattened neighborhood bar where Waukesha’s grandparents loved to dance up until the storm hit.
As an archivist and family genealogist, I wonder how many stories were lost after Katrina badly damaged some of the oldest parts of New Orleans. There is hope in our youth, when in them is incited a curiosity to learn about their past and an eagerness to record it. Maybe now they understand the importance of living in the moment and making as much of it as possible. So that they may live well and pass on great stories to their grandchildren as Waukesha’s grandmother did.
Five books by these students have been completed and released, and are available for purchase. Please support our kids and their current need to write more than ever. At times when all is dark around us, our inner strength shines a light on the path forward. For these young ones, their new-found ability to express themselves through writing, a powerful and profound gift, is a timely torch to a possibly boundless future from a bleak past. Onwards and upwards, I say, let’s give such beauty a hand.
