In Katrina’s wake, recovery is slow but ongoing

Nearing the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and its devastating aftermath, periodic news updates have told the story of a region that’s still struggling to recover. People are returning to work as hotels and casinos along the coast in Mississippi reopen. The cleanup has begun in New Orleans as electricity and water service slowly resumed, one area at a time. A famous “old school” restaurant in the French Quarter reopened in the new year, despite the significant loss of workers and patrons in this city that’s still asking: “When will the people return?” Workers and patrons: both are in demand these days in the areas affected by the hurricane. For many people, the process of getting back to normal is underway but has a long way to go.

What about the mechanical contracting industry here? A few of the people JobScope visited with last September recently reported that things for them are getting a little brighter every day. With the cleanup behind them they’re now more focused on getting back to work. And everyone we talked to says there’s lots of work today, and more coming all the time.

Randall Carroll, an organizer for UA Local 568 in Gulfport, Miss., said there are about 150 travelers helping the 350-member union handle jobs underway in June. “It’s just blown up. We’ve already built one casino and have two more casinos coming up,” Carroll said. The union side here recently signed three new signatory contractors.

The popular coastal resort, stretching 30 miles from Gulfport to Biloxi, lost several floating casino boats, prompting the state’s legislators to rewrite the gambling law to allow land-based casinos. One of the lost casinos belonged to the brand new Hard Rock Hotel, which missed its grand opening by a few days when the surging Gulf water submerged the hotel’s bottom three floors and destroyed its adjacent casino barge. After months of waiting, Carroll believes the remodeling work will get underway soon.

The reopening of hotels and other businesses is bringing people back to Gulfport. They are not vacationers, Carroll explained, but people looking for jobs, people who want to stay. “Housing is not inhibiting our progress as much today,” he said. “Slowly but surely, we are getting back to normal.”

In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, operations at Gulfport-Biloxi’s Local 568 were far from normal. The training facility, adjacent to the union hall, became a makeshift relief center where union members, families or friends in need found food, clothing or shelter. Classrooms were temporarily cleared to make room for cots and emergency supplies. “We’re back to training,” Carroll said. “What’s more, we went from 25 apprentices last year to almost 60, because of the amount of work going on.” Nearly all the members who fled have returned, he added. Only a few relocated permanently.

Apprentices back

The relief center in Gulfport was linked to a larger one 120 miles west in Baton Rouge, La. There Local 198’s training director, Neal Miller, suddenly found himself directing relief activities instead of apprentice classes. In Jan. 2006, Local 198 named a new training coordinator, Charlie Habig. He said the sleeping areas, kitchen, laundry and other temporary facilities after Katrina are out. Back in use are the welding shop, piping lab and classrooms in their place. “We held half a year of class compressing a full year into five months,” Habig said. Miller added that apprentices had to double up on classes and amount of classroom time, showing up two extra days a week. “We made it clear in the orientation that this would be different and was nobody’s fault,” Miller said. No one complained, he noted.

Neal Miller is now a business agent for Local 198.

Unlike the Locals to the south, Baton Rouge experienced a different type of population shift after the disaster. Rather than losing people, Baton Rouge’s population rose some 50 percent almost overnight, absorbing thousands driven northward by the hurricane and flood in and around New Orleans. Many of these people are staying in Baton Rouge making it their new home. Some of them could turn out to be Local 198’s gain and New Orleans’ loss. Habig found this out while reading new apprentice applications. “I noticed a lot of guys who appear to be from New Orleans, who apparently finished high school here and are now looking to enter the trade,” he explained.

Back in office

Things are looking normal again in St. Bernard Parish, at least at the office, reported Cheri Baudier. She and her husband, Bob, run Baudier Mechanical Contracting Inc., in Chalmette, La. The insides of the office look a lot different than they did in the photos in the Fall issue of JobScope. The thick layer of mud covering the floors has been shoveled away. The waterlogged drywall and furniture has been carted off. In came new walls, new cabinets, new desks, and new computers. “It was quite an expense,” remarked Bob Baudier.

Bob was able to salvage one of the forklifts, one of the Bobcat excavators and a welding machine that were under six feet of floodwater for weeks. They are helping his company get back to work. A lot of other equipment, however, had to be thrown away.

The manpower situation around here could be worse, the Baudiers will say, though in truth it could be better. Most of their regular workers are back, Cheri said, all except for three. One is working for someone else; two others have not yet returned to Louisiana (but one indicated he will when a child’s school year is finished).

A bright spot right now is that there is a lot of work and more is coming all the time. The Baudiers have some 20 employees, mostly plumbers, at work restoring a nearby high school. There are other projects out there, “but you can only take on as much as you can do,” Bob said. Finding more help is hard. The union hall can’t send anyone, and there are too many obstacles in the way of luring workers from outside the area.

Cheri explained that many homes in nearby St. Bernard Parish are unlivable, while housing costs outside the flood zone have skyrocketed. Businesses in St. Bernard are also slow to come back, Cheri added. “Only a few restaurants have opened, more recently a nearby Walgreens,” she said. There is still no nearby grocery store.

While the Baudiers are back in their previous work address, they continue to live in a trailer they purchased after the hurricane destroyed both their homes: one they lived in and another they were building when Katrina struck.

In the “Big Un-easy”

On the western side of the Mississippi River, the picture is similar in New Orleans. There is plenty of work, but not enough workers, according to Lance Albin, business manager of UA Local 60. On June 21st, 100 travelers were supporting the Local. Albin said he could use 100 more travelers right now but isn’t holding his breath waiting. The union, which has added on another organizer, is aggressively working to recruit new members from the non-union ranks or anywhere else they can be found. They’ve put United Association grant money to work to purchase local radio and newspaper ads aimed at increasing the local labor force.

The response to some ads, which target non-union trades people in the area, has been good, said Dana Colombo, one of Local 60’s recruiters. But luring people from the non-union side, even with the promise of higher wages and better benefits, isn’t proving simple. While these are good incentives, there are other issues causing hesitation. One issue is the comfort zone people settle into when they get used to things a certain way. “A lot say they want to make more money, but when it comes down to it they are content with things where they are,” Colombo said.

Colombo has also encountered the misperception that union plumbers do only commercial and industrial work. He’s had to explain to callers that only a few contractors do the big industrial jobs and assure them that the majority of signatories are small shops specializing in residential work, the same as their non-union employer.

An influx of Mexicans seeking work followed the mass exodus of citizenry fleeing the hurricane zone, changing the area’s demographics overnight and creating a language barrier. Colombo, who isn’t fluent in Spanish, has needed help reaching this group. “It makes it difficult to organize them,” he explained. The state’s plumbing licensing laws virtually rule out the possibility of finding qualified plumbers from the groups of mostly day laborers he approaches; however, if there are subjourneymen to be found here the search must pass this way to assure that no stone is left unturned in the hot campaign now being waged for manpower.

“I don’t know what we’ll do when the real work actually starts,” Albin said. Most of the work so far has been repair. The rebuilding of the city hasn’t yet started. What’s holding it up? For one thing, everyone continues to wait for the money. Even in the case of government-owned facilities, Albin believes, the insurance checks aren’t enough to get the job done. More money is going to have to be found.

“And everybody’s waiting for the population to return,” Albin added. The French Quarter, downtown and uptown New Orleans look normal. However, everything east to the 17th St. Canal — places like Gentilly, Lakeview, New Orleans East, the 9th Ward and Lower 9th Ward — looks the same as it did after the flood. Most of the houses are unlivable and the people are gone. Telephone and Internet service is still unavailable in most of New Orleans. The recovery process, especially around New Orleans, is slow but it is ongoing.

Lessons learned

Has the Hurricane Katrina experience made people here think or do things differently if another major disaster were to occur? “Yes,” said everyone. They realize the need to establish a contingency plan that provides directions and at least telephone numbers members can call to stay connected to their local unions during an evacuation. Lance Albin added that after returning to Local 60’s hall in Metairie, all the union’s computer equipment was moved from the ground floor to the third floor of the building, even though it didn’t flood this time.

In Baton Rouge to the north, for Neal Miller, whose job title shifted from training coordinator to social worker while the union directed emergency relief efforts in their community, Hurricane Katrina left an indelible mark he doubts he’ll ever forget.

“This experience had a very profound effect on my life. In the past, the world seemed mostly a dog-eat-dog place. I saw a different side of people after this storm. Even the naysayers (or most cynical of the cynics) rolled up their sleeves; even they had a heart,” he said.