For a couple of weeks, media images of New Orleans flooded television sets and computer screens as they documented the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Less visible amid these images were the Latinos who had lived and worked in the area prior to the hurricanes. Those who returned to the city were joined by other Latinos who took on work and participated in efforts to rebuild the city. Having largely ignored the experiences of Latino evacuees, the media instead cast all Latino workers as “imported labor.” Local and national radio stations, newspapers, and politicians questioned Latinos’ right to work and characterized Latinos in the city as “illegal aliens.”

The media participated in a relationship between construction businesses and government agencies that extracts profit at the expense of workers’ rights. This chapter argues the media produced a perspective on Latinos that highlighted a controversial position in the city as migrant workers and undermined a view of Latinos as residents.

Although Latinos’ limited visibility had negative consequences on their access to relief, it helped cleanup and recovery contractors secure profits. Contractors often exacerbated undocumented Latino workers’ vulnerability and maximized the profitability of post-Katrina contracts. For example, contractors denied the presence of undocumented workers among their work crews when media reporters questioned their labor practices. Contractors also hired undocumented Latinos but refused to pay their workers once they determined that these workers lacked appropriate documentation. By strategically cooperating with U.S. immigration laws and limiting Latino workers’ visibility, contractors minimized their cost of compliance with workplace regulations.

The relationship between contractors and policy decisions surrounding Hurricane Katrina are reflective of the shifting roles of local government and the development of the neoliberal state. The construction industry is generally considered “the most turbulent and unstable major sector of the economy” and requires government regulation of construction workers’ wages to ensure a skilled labor force.1 In response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, however, U.S. President Bush suspended worker documentation requirements and the Davis-Bacon Act, which guarantees a minimum wage for construction workers on federal contracts. In this way, the federal government promoted a “race to the bottom” in terms of basic worker protections. In addition, the federal government cooperated with contractors’ interest in maximizing profits through a vulnerable workforce. In this deregulated environment, U.S. government agencies ignored the nature of workplace discrimination and did not enforce health and safety regulations. Agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) reduced their operations in New Orleans to an advisory capacity.

Despite the significance of concrete actions in the form of employer discrimination and policy decision, the ways Latinos were represented by the media, employers, and government agencies undermined Latino workers’ already precarious work experiences. For instance, government agencies used Latino workers’ limited visibility to claim they did not know of any workplace abuses. In this way, OSHA not only eschewed responsibility for workplace health and safety regulation enforcement but also helped shift responsibility for worksite safety onto already vulnerable Latino workers.

In the past, where scholars of occupational health and safety have gone beyond Latino workers’ limited visibility, they emphasize the role that Latino workers’ deficiencies have on workplace illness, injuries, and fatalities. In other words, scholars argue that Latino workers are deficient. For instance, in the case of the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster, Barbara McCabe et al.2 found that Latino workers “did not understand hazards or how to protect themselves.” Scholars studying occupational risk share a direct-intervention approach with many other occupational health and safety specialists. Both scholars and industry specialists emphasize providing Latino workers with linguistically and culturally appropriate training and personal protective equipment (PPE) and reproduce an emphasis on the worker rather than the employer.

The following chapter provides preliminary evidence from Latino workers who argue that it is neither their lack of skill nor their linguistic or cultural deficiencies that account for a dramatic rise in workplace illness, injury, and fatalities among them. Instead, in my interviews with Latino workers in New Orleans, they inverted the deficiency argument. Many undocumented Latino workers believed contractors assumed they were “hard workers,” which accounts for workplace discrimination. Specifically, Latino workers believed they were given more dangerous and risky work assignments because employers knew Latino workers would do the work. Latino workers felt their location in the labor market was premised on their ability to assume risks on the job. In this way, workplace discrimination is bolstered by the ways Latino workers were represented by the media, employers, and public policy, which this chapter considers a reflection of Latinos’ “limited visibility.”

Methods

This study is based on open-ended interviews within New Orleans and its surrounding areas of Metairie and Kenner. Interviews were conducted in a church, in restaurants, food stores, behind vacant businesses, on the street, and in parking lots where Latino workers congregated. The interview format asked Latino workers about their jobs, experience, use of PPE, and major work-related concerns. The final sample of Latino workers interviewed in this format was forty, with interviews varying in length from ten minutes to two hours.

Beyond interviews with workers, the study included other methods for identifying Latino workers’ experiences of cleanup and recovery work. Ethnographic observations of work and worksites in New Orleans Parish and its surrounding areas (Jefferson Parish and St. Bernard Parish) were conducted during the period from October 5 through 15, 2005. Interviews were also conducted with community leaders, health and worker advocates, and state and federal agency representatives and staff. Content analysis was conducted on Spanish-language information available online from federal, state, and local agencies and local, state, and national media sources, which included OSHA, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Finally, several follow-up interviews with a subset of Latino workers were conducted via telephone.

Context

In the weeks following Hurricane Katrina and amid the extensive media coverage of the disaster, few media reports addressed Latinos in New Orleans. The few media reports in September 2005 that did address the Latino community suggested that Latinos hadn’t understood many English-language public announcements about the pending hurricane or had failed to evacuate their homes because they were afraid of immigration officials and had died as a result.3 These limited reports exposed the lack of a Spanish-language infrastructure in New Orleans and highlight one way policy decisions (using immigration officials for emergency response) promoted Latinos’ increased vulnerability amid a natural disaster.

One reason why the Latino community failed to gain significant media attention was because the 2000 U.S. Census documented only a small population of Latinos in New Orleans. As a result, scholars have largely neglected this population and both reporters and relief agencies were at a loss for accessing the community. For example, an NIOSH staff person explained that NIOSH was concerned about Latino workers but his team “hadn’t seen any Latinos in the area.” In our conversation, he explained that the city was largely cordoned off and many relief workers required identifying clothing, which most likely undermined their efforts among undocumented Latino workers. In the weeks and months following the disaster, relief workers engaged in public work, including operating emergency response stations. This work limited their exposure to many who arrived in the city and worked in private businesses, such as hotels. As a result, government relief workers continued to struggle in identifying the community for outreach purposes.

My exploratory research found that a large population of Latinos lived in New Orleans, which was only partly a result of post-Katrina migration from beyond the impacted areas. Latino residents claimed that they represented over 30 percent of Kenner’s resident population before the hurricanes and that Latinos commuted from Kenner to New Orleans for work. They pointed to housing complexes that had significant undocumented Latino populations and to social service, religious, and cultural organizations that had been serving the city’s Latino community over the past five years. They also claimed that both the Latino population and organizations serving Latinos had recently increased but that this growth included a large percentage of undocumented migrants. Recent and emerging scholarship on Latinos in the U.S. South also finds that recent demographic growth and legal status are central factors affecting the Latino community’s well-being.4 As a result, the dramatic growth of the undocumented Latino population within the U.S. South poses unique challenges to “small Latino places,” both rural and urban, that do not have a history of dealing with Latino immigrants, lack a Spanish-language infrastructure, and understand racial dynamics along a black–white binary.5

Recent scholarship on Latinos in the U.S. South demonstrates that the migration of young, male, foreign-born Latinos is “playing out in that region with a greater intensity and across a larger variety of communities—rural, small towns, suburbs, and big cities—than in any other part of the country.”6 Scholars recognize the important lessons the U.S. South offers the country for predicting future demographic trends, including the role that local economies have on stimulating new migration of not only Latinos but also whites and blacks. The rapid growth of the Latino population is also tied to current labor trends, and some scholars hold that Latinos will increase their representation in the workforce to 36 percent over the next ten years.7

Latinos’ occupational risk involves a variety of local and national institutions, including immigration and labor policy, medical care, and education. Studies of Latinos’ occupational risk in the U.S. South offer scholars opportunities to understand how these institutions interact and new challenges resulting from Latinos’ rapid demographic growth in the United States. For instance, as the Latino population has grown, occupational injuries among Latinos have also increased. According to Maria Brunette, Latinos currently have “higher fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries than any other ethnic group in the United States,” and their fatality rate “is about 20 percent higher than the rates for white and black workers.”8 This trend is particularly marked among foreign-born Latinos, who demonstrated a fatal work injury rate 44 percent higher than the national rate in 2004.9 This trend may also be magnified within the U.S. South. For instance, a case study of Latino health and mortality in Georgia demonstrates that the leading cause of death among Latinos is unintentional injury, which contrasts national trends in Latino mortality.10

Occupational data also demonstrate that demographic growth alone is an inadequate explanation for work-related injuries and fatalities. For instance, J.C. Robinson’s 1989 study found a statistically significant difference between Latinos and non-Hispanic whites in work-related injury and illness in California. More recent national data confirm a trend of shifting occupation risk, finding that national rates of occupational injury and illness dropped 35 percent between 1992 and 2001 but increased 67 percent for Latino workers. Occupational risk is influenced by higher-risk industries. In segmented labor markets, Latinos were more likely to work at construction jobs than at any other except for a similar seasonal industry—agriculture.11

In the U.S. South, the construction industry has employed Latinos at rates much higher than their migration into the region. The construction industry’s growing interest in recruiting Latino workers is evidenced in their increased attention toward the population. For instance, industry publications suggest the widespread use of English-Spanish dictionaries of construction terminology. In local business journals within the U.S. South, construction industry leaders estimate their Latino workers at anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of their workforce.12 These business leaders also popularize and reinforce racialized assessments of Latino workers. For instance, the headline “Construction Industry Owes Hispanic Employees for Boom” ran in the Memphis Business Journal, which quotes a construction company’s president: “They [Latinos] were one of the best things that ever happened to the construction industry. Days don’t mean anything to them. They’ll work 12 hours. And they can do many things.”13 The same paper ran an article three years later whose author insisted that Latinos had proved “themselves capable, dependable, hard working and loyal to employers.”14 Similarly, in Charlotte, the president and CEO of another construction company asserted “Latino workers are productive, rarely miss work and are willing to put in long hours.”15 These examples demonstrate how construction companies and contractors recast their own economic interests and sense of opportunity as a set of cultural values unique to a specific racial or ethnic group.

Contractors’ racialized assessments of the Latino workers fit within a broader context of racial discrimination in workplaces. Latinos’ “hard-working” abilities are frequently contrasted with similar racialized constructions of blacks’ laziness. Scholars have critiqued the “model minority,” arguing the social construction of a particular racial/ethnic group as hard workers presumes all individuals within the group are “silent, efficient, uncontentious labor.”16

The idealized constructions surrounding “Latinos’” capacity for work are an interpretation of productivity that contractors use to control workers’ productivity. The construction industry not only plays an important role in the U.S. South’s high economic growth rates but also leads all industries in fatal accidents. In this way, the construction industry demonstrates how greater profits are secured by shifting the burden of occupational risk onto Latinos. For example, the construction industry reduced nonfatal occupational injuries by 40 percent at the national level but is now the largest source of nonfatal occupational injuries for Latinos.17 Similarly, Scott Richardson et al. find that the construction industry reduced fatalities by 3 percent at a national level but increased fatalities among Latinos by 24 percent.18

The dominant explanation for foreign-born Latinos’ disproportional occupational risk reverts to worker-centered perspectives that emphasize improving upon workers’ lower educational attainment, fewer job skills, and lack of English proficiency.19 For instance, Maria Brunette argues that providing adequate health and safety training is “one of the most critical factors in reducing and preventing injuries.”20 In a disaster scenario, Barbara McCabe et al. found that Latinos working in cleanup after the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster were “given ordinary cleaning tools,” were not trained or told of hazards, were not given PPE, and “did not understand hazards or how to protect themselves.”21 Despite the recommendation’s apparent requirement for employer involvement, however, the studies emphasize workers to make claims about workers’ difference and the provision of culturally and linguistically appropriate information. For instance, Maria Brunette argues that Latino construction workers have a “unique ‘cultural’ mindset towards the perceptions of different levels of hazards.”22 Other scholars assumed this “unique cultural mindset” involves gendered constructions of risk.23 Similarly, McCabe et al. dedicated over a third of their paper to the role of language in written and oral communication for Latinos.

Scholarly emphasis on culturally and linguistically sensitive training cannot adequately address the problem of segmented labor markets or discrimination among foreign-born workers. For instance, Loh and Richardson’s work suggests that foreign-born workers have different experiences in the workplace—Mexicans represented 27 percent of foreign-born workers but 42 percent of foreign-born worker fatalities in 2000.24 Similarly, Justin Pritchard’s award-winning coverage of Mexican labor in 2004 found they were “nearly twice as likely as the rest of the immigrant population to die at work.”

Scholars’ approaches to Latinos’ disproportionate occupational risk eschews the problem of segmented labor markets and employers’ roles in shifting occupational risks onto vulnerable Latino workers. In contrast to scholars’ emphasis on workers, Latinos working on cleanup and recovery in a post-Katrina New Orleans explained their occupational risk in ways that promoted structural understandings of their vulnerability. First, Latinos felt that their relative lack of education, job skills, and English proficiency had a minor influence on their work. Instead, they felt their employer discriminated against Latinos in work assignments, which increased their likelihood of injury and death. Second, the Latino workers I interviewed in New Orleans included Mexican-, Honduran-, and Cuban-born workers. They distinguished themselves based on legal status, which increased Mexican workers’ vulnerability. More specifically, Mexicans distinguished themselves among other foreign-born Latino workers when they referred to their potential for legalizing their status, which included their ability to gain temporary-protected status (TPS). Finally, unlike scholars who assert Latino construction workers possess a “unique ‘cultural’ mindset,” Latino workers saw their culture as one that allowed them to strategically redefine their right to work and empower their sense of social value amid significant occupational risk.

Latino workers’ emphasis on employers resonated with many concerns about the nature of contracting work in post-Katrina New Orleans. A host of scholars, activists, and media commentators protested the contracting of industry giants, like Halliburton, Bechtel, and Flour, for a variety of reasons that included the loss of local control over recovery, the preferential nature of no-bid contracts, and the expansion of “disaster capitalism.”25 These giants subcontract a lot of their work, which threatens employers’ accountability and occupational health and safety. For instance, an occupational risk specialist in post-Katrina New Orleans explained that many health and safety standards could not be systematically enforced by the masses of cleanup and recovery subcontractors that had flooded the area. Similarly, on a larger scale, Joe Reina, the leader of OSHA’s Hispanic Taskforce, explained that “ninety-five to 99 percent of the time, there’s going to be noncompliance with a standard that could have prevented the fatality.”26

The problems Latinos experience were largely invisible to the occupational health and safety specialists who arrived in the area. As the nature of work in New Orleans moves toward recovery and new construction, the risk of occupational accidents like falls, which has consistently been the major source of occupational fatalities for Latinos, also increase. In the data that follow, I argue that the major factors influencing this pattern of disproportionate occupational risk are that federal agencies ignore Latino workers and facilitate employers shifting the burden for occupational risk onto Latino workers.

A Critique of Skills-Centered Approaches

My interviews with Latino workers distinguished two types of workers. Former residents included a large percentage of Central American migrants who had been living in New Orleans and its surrounding areas for anywhere from eight to twenty-five years. These residents frequently had legal U.S. citizenship, permanent residency, or TPS. More recent undocumented Honduran immigrants believed their legal status would soon be regularized by the federal government and that they would receive an amnesty because they were affected by the disaster. Hondurans were also more likely to arrive in New Orleans through personal contacts rather than through a recruiter.

At least some of these residents included recent Mexican migrants who migrated after the year 2000 and believed the Mexican population in New Orleans had grown only recently. These relative newcomers were more likely to reside outside of New Orleans and in the immediate surrounding areas of Chalmette and Kenner. Mexican residents were much more likely to see their interests aligned with the recent influx of Mexican workers migrating to New Orleans after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Mexican residents and post-Katrina migrants shared a sensitivity regarding their legal vulnerability. For instance, Juan, a post-Katrina migrant recruited from Houston, distinguished himself from “Central Americans” because they had TPS.27 Juan also reflected on the politicized nature of this vulnerability, which undermined many workers’ trust in government-led initiatives. Juan said Mexicans were “trapped because [President] Bush was angry with [Mexican President] Fox for not supporting the [U.S.] invasion of Iraq and was ‘taking it out on us’ (desquitándose con nosotros).” Although my interviews did not ask about U.S.–Mexico relations, other Mexicans volunteered similar criticisms of U.S. immigration policy and its relationship to the war in Iraq. As a result of these beliefs, Mexican residents and post-Katrina migrants knew of the ongoing negotiations over the guest worker program but did not believe their legal status would soon be regularized.

Latino residents’ response to the influx of new Latino workers differed dramatically from the public reaction demonstrated in local politics and the national media. On the one hand, Mexican residents did not distinguish themselves from those who are currently migrating into the area. One Mexican respondent who has lived in New Orleans for over four years explained that her family has gone to work in cleanup and recovery and “now they’re all sick.” On the other hand, non-Mexican Latino residents were neutral about the recent migration into the area. For instance, one group of Honduran workers that resided in the New Orleans area claimed they didn’t care about the race of workers or whether they had resided in the area before Hurricane Katrina. They argued that it didn’t matter if workers were white, black, or Latino as long as workers had some construction experience and could bring New Orleans back quickly.

Latino residents’ emphasis on work experience reflected their own sense of place within the New Orleans labor force. They had worked primarily in construction and cleaning occupations prior to Hurricane Katrina and saw no reason why this should change. The few Latina workers I was able to interview told me they held jobs in cleaning, which typically involved domestic work or a combination of domestic work and after-hours cleaning in business offices. The Latino men I asked told me they had pre-Katrina jobs in the construction or fishing industry.28 All Latino men I asked detailed at least some experience in painting, drywall installation, roofing, and shipbuilding. As a result, Latinos thought they had experience and did not see themselves as “low-skilled labor.”

Worksites as Toxic Basements

Driving through New Orleans in early October was like driving through a ghost town. In some areas, I would find individuals or couples wandering from their homes to their cars, stopping frequently on the curb to contemplate what could be salvaged from their former lives. After a few trips of carrying out handfuls of items, they would inevitably stand outside, stopping to stare blankly at their former homes, and then drive away.

Residents’ solemn routine contrasted that of bustling teams of workers. In other areas, these teams similarly moved back and forth from homes to the curbside, following one another endlessly and silently, each one carrying furniture, heavy carpeting, or sheetrock. Unlike residents’ shocked resignation, however, workers seemed locked in an arduous struggle with each home or building to restore an order it had once offered. The silence of their work was repeatedly pierced by the trucks that came to take away what was now garbage. Workers sweat under the sun without face masks that would obstruct their breathing. They might stop at the doorway, peering inside, perhaps wondering where to step in fear that the loose flooring or any other part of the house might become a new casualty of the disaster.

I walked up and down New Orleans’ streets repeatedly observing the same patterns. I straddled a world of difference between the zombie-like residents and the sweating workers as I observed the damage and the work and as I gingerly stepped over garbage, broken glass, and the endless power lines snaked across the ground. I entered several homes and found a chaotic world of multicolored mold, waterlines, and the signs of lives that the flood had reduced to wet garbage. In many homes I entered, rooms seemed small and the lack of windows made me feel suffocated. My headaches increased in intensity, and I could only briefly tour each building. After a couple of hours, I felt tired and weak.

As I drove around, I saw Latinos working outside. They were not only removing debris but also setting up makeshift structures and blue plastic tarps that would shield construction work from public view. At times, I saw Latinos who worked alone and carried heavy, wet carpeting out to the curbside. I stopped and spoke with a small team of Latinos who had stopped to rest. Inside the house they worked on, they had piled broken sheetrock on the floor of a home they worked in, leaving little room for mobility. I stepped through the rubble toward the center of the house and struggled to maintain my balance. They used ladders but did not use helmets. Although one wore gloves and a dust mask, they all wore simple shoes or sneakers. They repeat a common workday: ten to twelve hours. Four times Latino workers told me they worked fifteen hours per day. Most worked Saturdays, but only a few also called Sunday a workday.

I changed neighborhoods and headed for nearby Metairie, where businesses had been already opened and where I could see groups of people. The streets were busy with trucks transporting workers. As I watched one after another pickup truck wiz by, as if in a caravan, I couldn’t distinguish I-10 from any other Texan or Mexican highway. From the open-air back, Latinos watched cars pass. I exited and followed one of the trucks and found myself in an area that, despite the activity in Metairie, initially seemed abandoned. I kept driving and found Latinos tucked away from public view. They were resting in the shade, behind buildings, or gathered outside of vans with their work crews. Others continued working. I drove into a hotel parking lot and found three vans surrounded by approximately twenty Latinos. I parked and headed toward the vans, but was approached by a well-dressed Latino. From his clean clothing and perfect Texan English, I assumed he was a foreman. He asked if he could help me and I asked him what happened to the hotel. He told me there were no vacancies in the hotel and waited until I walked back to my car and left.

My observations, combined with interviews in parking lots and restaurants, eventually distinguished two main types of work.29 Workers I met in a restaurant explained that they not only worked on a large project in a hotel but also lived there. They had a specific job in a single locale. During the day, these workers were hidden within the building and to me by contractors who came and went throughout the day. They were less likely to lounge behind buildings or parking lots. As they described work putting up new sheetrock, I worried they would be systematically exposed to a more limited, but equally dangerous, set of occupational risks. Without adequate access to these worksites, however, I assumed this isolated population worked in what might have been a “toxic basement.”

The workers I could access on the street or in parking lots explained they lived in company trailers, hotels, or makeshift housing within buildings they worked on. They were informally contracted for undefined periods of time or “until the work ends.” In the morning, they received their work assignments, formed teams, and were transported to different locales and affected areas to work for the day. Their worksites changed frequently, which increased their exposure to a variety of occupational risks according to locale and neighborhood. The majority of workers I spoke with came from this group of workers.

After leaving the field, interviews with occupational health and safety workers and worker advocates found alarming evidence of occupational risk. For instance, an industrial hygienist at NIOSH observed Latino workers pushing glass out of an office building’s “eleventh- or twelfth-story window” with no demarcation on the street below. Although this industrial hygienist contacted OSHA, he never heard back from OSHA about whether they had followed up with the contractor. When the industrial hygienist returned to the site five hours later, he found a Latino worker sweeping the sidewalk and assumed that the contractor had not followed what he could only offer as a “recommendation” because NIOSH did not have the power to enforce workplace safety regulations.

Regardless of the nature of work arrangements, the study found a generalized lack of services specific to a Spanish-speaking population throughout New Orleans and its surrounding areas. Both male and female workers consistently expressed confusion about what they “had heard” regarding toxins and were uncertain of what risks these toxins posed. They were uncertain about whether the materials they handled might potentially be hazardous. Among the workers I interviewed, no one used a hardhat. None wore any type of uniform that could decrease the likelihood they would transport any contaminants from their worksite to their home. Latino workers were generally unaware of why respirators or Tyvek suits could be useful as PPE. They consistently reported that they were not using PPE, although approximately 8 percent of the sample used gloves, 20 percent of the sample reported using dust masks, and 75 percent of the sample demonstrated or reported consistent use of construction boots. Latino workers were also generally unclear of important distinctions between types of PPE. For instance, one group of four workers said they believed their coworkers pulling down sheetrock used respirators. Upon further questioning, their definition of a “respirator” consisted of simple dust masks.

When I explained the utility of PPE, some workers explained that they did not have access to this equipment. Often, they did not know whether their employer had any PPE for workers or whether it was available to them. The generalized lack of training on occupational risks meant that workers were more concerned about how using PPE would affect their work performance. For instance, in the one case where a recently arrived worker believed PPE was available to him at his worksite, he did not know its purpose or how to use it. He believed using PPE was cumbersome.

Latinos were also concerned about how employers would respond to their request for training or use of PPE. A few Latinos were concerned about their employer perceiving them as weak, unwilling to work, or as someone who hace problemas, i.e., makes problems, or is a “troublemaker.” Although respondents claimed they didn’t need PPE, most believed they had been hired because “Latinos have a reputation for hard work.” They were generally concerned that using PPE would negatively impact what they perceived to be already tenuous employment. More specifically, Latino workers were concerned that using PPE would reflect negatively on their ability to handle difficult tasks. As a result, they were unlikely to risk their jobs by asking their employer for training or PPE.

Brunette argues Latino workers have a “unique cultural mindset towards the perceptions of different levels of hazards,” but Mexican workers used structural interpretations to understand the risks they faced at work.30 For instance, one worker succinctly summarized his negative responses to my battery of questions regarding PPE by referring to his work “a la Mexicana,” i.e., in the Mexican way. When Mexicans use this term outside of its culinary reference to color in a dish, “a la mexicana” refers to the raw, unadulterated nature of an experience. This worker’s expression overlapped a general claim among Latino workers that redefined culture. Latino workers understood that their work involved hazards and risks not because of their own lack of education or information but because they were subjected to discrimination in their work assignments. As Jose, an undocumented Honduran worker who had migrated from Ohio, explained:

They [employers] give us [Latinos] work because they know that Latinos work more. We work harder and faster and take risks. I used to work in demolition in New York. I worked from 8 am to 2 am and made $200 a day. Other workers don’t care about finishing the job in a day. We are the ones who break our backs here (da el lomo aqui) and leave our suffering families behind (familias sufrienda allá).

Latino respondents believed that accepting the ambiguous risks they encountered in their work were necessarily a part of, or an aspect of, their ability to secure and perform work. They assumed their ability to withstand a tough working situation was part of why they were hired and what they were paid for. In follow-up discussions with respondents, it was evident that these risks had already become real concerns. By November, Jose was sick and suffering from what he believed was a cold. He explained that he did not have time to see a doctor and did not perceive his illness as serious. In minimizing his illness, however, he also explained that he was concerned about reporting his illness to his employer, seeking medical care, and losing his pay or his job. This case demonstrated that Latino workers minimized the effects of conditions over which they feel they have little control.

The finding that Latino workers minimize the effects of conditions over which they feel they have little control has two important implications. First, this finding implies that any efforts to improve workers’ safety and health must take seriously the need mediate discrimination against Latinos that promote their vulnerability. Second, this finding implies that Latino workers’ ability to control the terms of their work is hindered because they will neglect or ignore the negative consequences of a work arrangement they feel they cannot control. This finding also fits within a broader context of Latino workers’ vulnerability in government-contracted business. As one respondent explained, when a company might be a U.S.-government contractor or when a contractor is protected by federal agents, undocumented workers fear reprisal and are less likely to report workplace hazards and risks. As a result, Latino workers’ repeatedly reconciled themselves to controlling their individual responses to a threatening context. For instance, a widely shared response among Latino workers was that there was “one thing they knew” about what conditions they were working and living in, which was that simply that expecting an outcome would increase the likelihood it would happen.

Workplace Vulnerability

One experience gave me the impression that contacting workers at their worksite would have increased their vulnerability. On an evening that I was handing out some Spanish-language information from NIOSH in the French Quarter, I attempted to give a flyer to a Latino working inside a hotel. He was working with another Latino male who calmly stood nearby, clearly supervising his work in repairing the hotel’s floor. I spoke in Spanish in a friendly tone and slid the papers through a gap in the locked doors. Immediately, the man who appeared to be a supervisor rushed to the papers and barked “What is that?” in English. As I explained, he glanced at the paper briefly and quickly cast it aside. I was left with the suspicion that the man who supervised the worker sought not to protect him [the worker] from threats or even work disruptions but from the possibility that the worker would interact with others in ways he [the supervisor] could not control.

In New Orleans, the construction industry has experienced significant changes over the past twenty-five years that facilitate its control over workers. The “free enterprise system” means that fewer contractors employ union labor, unions have lost significant influence and membership, and aging workers have been difficult to replace.31 In light of the economic challenges facing the city before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the “exponential link between the overall business cycle and the construction business cycle” meant that New Orleans was positioned to depend heavily on “imported workers” without union representation.32 As a result, laborers migrating to New Orleans for cleanup and recovery confronted a variety of occupational risks amidst other local changes that undermined both construction contractors’ liability and workers’ ability to pursue workers’ compensation. Although OSHA is supposed to enforce job safety rules, it had already been criticized before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the city for lacking a “standing with the construction industry.”33 These local factors promoted Latino workers’ vulnerability in cleanup and recovery work. For example, Latino workers’ labor arrangements made them insecure about any activities they perceived as threatening their jobs, such as exposing dangerous conditions at their worksites. Latino workers’ insecurity appeared validated by other reports that suggest Latinos are considered disposable workers:

Contractors are hiring immigrant workers right here in Houston and taking them to New Orleans to do cleanup. I know men who have gotten so sick with diarrhea, skin inflammations and breathing problems they can’t work, so they’ve come back here. The contractors just hire more.”34

The source of problems involving Latino workers’ health and safety arose from workers’ relationships to individual subcontractors. Often, the only contractor Latino workers knew was the same person who had recruited them and who they only knew on a first-name basis. Labor recruiters’ methods for contracting workers included deception that negatively impact Latino workers’ health. For instance, a Mexican worker that had been recruited in Houston claimed that his misplaced trust in a labor recruiter resulted in a worksite where he was “sequestered.” He had only received one meal and one 0.5-liter bottle of water per day for outdoors work. Ironically, this worker was less concerned about the adverse consequences this could have on his health than he was about the fact that, although he worked over ten days at the site, he had not received any payment. His lack of money meant that he was extremely cautious about food expenses, which further threatened his health.

The threat to Latino workers’ health and safety is compounded by the nature of contracting cleanup and recovery work in New Orleans. Specifically, despite media portrayals of competition among contractors for labor, this study found that workers were often quite concerned about being paid and securing work. The majority of workers interviewed were on verbal and informal contracts. Some workers expected to be paid every two weeks, but this group included those who were not paid by contractors. A significant number of respondents either had direct experience or knowledge of not being paid by employers after working one or two weeks. Some accepted partial payments in favor of long-term employment “until the work ended.” Workers who were paid partial or who were paid sporadically were worried about how they could secure the remainder of their earnings. Workers who had already been paid fully were satisfied with biweekly and despite advertisements of jobs with greater pay, were not actively seeking better-paying jobs.

As a result of tenuous work relationships, all but one respondent lacked any form of insurance, including employer-based health insurance. Undocumented Latino workers are less likely to be listed on a subcontractor’s workers compensation policy and know of their rights for protection under this policy, which make them less expensive and more desirable to contractors. In often uncertain subcontractor arrangements, many Latino workers may also fall beyond the scope of worker compensation statutes because they either do not know who their employer is or may be defined as independent contractors by the Louisiana Department of Labor.35 When I asked government officials in the area about how contract clauses relating to occupational health and safety could be enforced among subcontractors, they lamented the high degree to which work was subcontracted (e.g., subcontractors for subcontractors) and the lack of occupational health and safety specialists in the area. One public health worker explained that there simply was no ability to enforce subcontract clauses on occupational safety that could protect workers. Finally, as a result of tenuous and abusive work relationships where Latinos are simultaneously exploited by contractors, foremen, and hawkish labor recruiters, Latino workers cannot avail themselves of initiatives that have been successful in other contexts, such as the “blue hardhat program” that identifies English-speaking personnel at a construction site.

The Case of St. Bernard Parish

The areas of Chalmette and Meraux in St. Bernard Parish are a unique case for understanding Latino workers’ limited visibility to occupational risk workers. These areas were severely affected by Hurricane Katrina and only gradually opened to resident access in mid-October. Meraux is also considered a major toxic hotspot, covered in what has been referred to as a “toxic gumbo” of sludge caused by the Murphy Oil Refinery crude oil spill, which the U.S. Coast Guard stated represents among the worst Katrina-related environmental problems.36 Although these toxins are unevenly distributed through the area, they cause both immediate- and long-term health problems. Early estimates are that cleanup alone will cost approximately $250 million, which will stimulate efforts to cut labor expenses.

In October, the streets of Meraux seemed empty of workers except for U.S. military soldiers, an occasional van filled with humanitarian relief workers, and handfuls of high-tech workers in white DuPont Tyvek suits. Latinos were not immediately visible among these groups, but the disaster medical assistance teams (DMATs) in the area confirmed the presence of Latinos in the area.37 Although I visited the two DMAT sites on separate occasions and spoke with several DMAT workers, they were not willing to comment on what proportion of their patients Latinos represented. They refused to discuss any issues specific or common to Latinos and repeatedly insisted that they do not discriminate or ask people about their racial or ethnic background. They use intake forms to report their activities to the CDC, but the forms did not capture information relating to race, ethnicity, or nationality DMAT personnel limited collecting identifying patient information to a first name. At least one DMAT worker was concerned that their forms also failed to capture data relating to chronic conditions, such as asthma. In this way, DMAT workers colluded with the CDC and ignored data that could allow researchers to detect any distinguishing patterns among workers based on race, ethnicity, or nationality.

The DMAT treats only immediate, minor emergencies, but workers there explained that the medical problems they encountered had escalated. By the time I visited the sites in early October, DMAT workers explained that more people, including workers, were injured as they entered homes and were bitten by snakes that had settled in bathtubs, stepped on nails, fell from ladders, or scraped themselves with overturned furniture inside homes. They explained that they could not handle significant injuries and emergencies and, if these should occur, people would be evacuated to hospitals “in the area.” The nearest hospital, the Chalmette Medical Center, remained closed in January.

I visited both DMAT sites twice, asking questions of several DMAT workers, and found they were either uncertain of any Spanish-speaking staff or uncertain as to where their one Spanish-speaking staff member could be found. Nonetheless, several DMAT workers confirmed that Latinos who could not speak English arrived for medical care, but the DMAT lacked Spanish-speaking personnel. I posed similar questions to different staff people in order to verify this information before locating this DMAT’s single Spanish-speaking staff member. Although he had not been consistently present at both sites, he confirmed that some Latino workers required immediate medical care. Where Latinos required medical care, he explained that they most commonly presented with upper-respiratory problems.

The frequency of medical complaints involving upper-respiratory problems was confirmed as far as Gonzalez, about an hour away from New Orleans, where a physician who attended many Latino evacuees had found that attended similarly experienced upper-respiratory problems. These findings are also consistent with other research that finds high occupational risk for work-related asthma and/or wheezing among cleaners and construction workers, which may be primarily caused by mold exposure.38

The Spanish-speaking DMAT worker elucidated a critical intervention beyond issues surrounding the availability of Spanish-language staff and the adequate provision of adequate medical care when he observed that the number of Latinos coming to the DMAT sites for diphtheria-tetanus (DT) vaccinations had recently increased. “Now,” he said, “contractors are bringing groups of workers in pick-up trucks and they all get vaccinated together.” By early October, as subcontractors were educated about DT vaccines, he had seen more subcontractors bringing Latino workers to the DMAT site on their employees’ first day. Although a then recent development, the case of St. Bernard Parish demonstrated that outreach to employers had been a successful intervention in Latino workers’ health.

Interagency Cooperation and Institutional Mismanagement of Occupational Risk

As in the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster, significant interagency cooperation was immediately evident in New Orleans. Although this comparison is limited by the relative size of impacted areas and the nature of the disasters, several “lessons” arising from interagency cooperation in New York City were not applied in New Orleans, which negatively impacted Latino workers’ ability to mediate the way they were affected by cleanup and recovery work. Specifically, in the case of 9/11, the Operating Engineers National Hazmat Program (OENHP) compensated for a lack of adequate cleaning tools, training, and PPE by building upon the social networks and trust that organizations like the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) had already established with the Latino community, which facilitated outreach to Latino workers and distribution of Spanish-language information on hazards and protection.39 In contrast, federal agencies in New Orleans faced a relatively weak Spanish-language infrastructure and no comparable committee for occupational safety and health. Although the Houston Initiative for Worker Safety has made some efforts to improve undocumented Latino workers’ access to medical care, these efforts are restricted to an advocate that pressures contractors into paying the basic fee required for care for returning workers who have been “dumped” in Houston.40

The lack of an adequate local infrastructure to support Latino populations’ growth demonstrates how other states without a recognized history or presence of Latinos in their populations could produce occupational risks for Latino workers. In the short term, the glaring lack of Spanish-speaking federal agents and relief workers in the area undermined efforts to limit the negative impacts of cleanup and recovery work on Latino workers. In the long term, a lack of local and federal ties to community leaders and organizations prevented effective coordination with community leaders and organizations that could have carried out this work.

The lack of federal agency outreach to Latinos increased these workers’ vulnerability. OSHA, NIOSH, and the CDC did not develop any outreach efforts and these agencies lacked Spanish-speaking personnel to speak directly with Latino workers. Amid the ubiquitous presence of U.S. government officials in the New Orleans area, Latino workers could not distinguish among different types of federal agents—i.e., those agents who could harm them (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials) and those who could help them (OSHA and NIOSH). NIOSH officials also compromised this distinction in early September as they wore clothing that identified them as federal officers and traveled the city accompanied by police officers. As a result, although collaboration among federal agencies seems efficient, conflicts of interest among federal officials ultimately mean that vulnerable, undocumented Latino workers are more likely to be “injured” by OSHA. In the worst case scenario, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials recently arrested undocumented Latino workers who had arrived for a “mandatory” OSHA training in North Carolina.

Agencies that were visible in New Orleans, notably the CDC, NIOSH, and OSHA, did not target Latinos in their efforts and rendered Latino workers invisible in their efforts. CDC data did not capture patients’ nationality or ethnicity, thereby forgoing the possibility that patterns or trends specific to Latinos could be identified. NIOSH efforts in the area did not target the Latino population until this investigator identified sources for distribution of CDC materials, which began one week before NIOSH ceased operations in the area on October 22, 2005. Finally, OSHA efforts to do outreach among Latino workers in the area were limited to already existing initiatives, including a Spanish-language option on its toll-free help line (1-800-321-OSHA).

Federal agencies’ attempts to access the Spanish-speaking population through their literature was limited by several factors. First, efforts to distribute this information were limited, brief, and curtailed by alternate agency priorities. Second, providing Spanish-language information was a secondary priority and it was only made available late in September, after similar information was provided in English. Third, a content analysis of OSHA, NIOSH, CDC, and EPA online documents conducted in the first week of November reveals that the extent of health and safety information translated to the Spanish language was limited. For instance, of the sixty-two documents listed on NIOSH’s webpage, only nine (15 percent) were translated into Spanish.41 Although not all NIOSH documentation was immediately relevant to the nature of Latinos’ work in the area, critical documents on chemical safety, musculoskeletal hazards, PPE and clothing, respirator cleaning and sanitation, work in confined spaces, tree removal (chain saws), and burning of hurricane debris was only available in English over two months after Hurricane Katrina and well beyond the immediate postimpact phase of the event. A document relating to the prevention of “Chain Saw Injuries During Tree Removal After a Hurricane” was available on the CDC’s webpage, “Index of Printable Hurricane and Flood Materials,” but the availability of this and other health-related documents from the CDC is limited by the extent to which Latinos are not aware of the agency’s work, are not informed about the availability of these documents, or are illiterate.

Subcontractors ignored measures that could contain occupational risk and the immediate efforts to promote to improve occupational health and safety among highly vulnerable Latinos seemed to rest squarely on their own (workers’) shoulders. As a result, I began assisting NIOSH efforts in the area by including information distribution at the end of interviews. More specifically, once in the field, I obtained recently published Spanish-language CDC information from an NIOSH-affiliated federal agency that I distributed to Latino workers. The limits of this approach were apparent when I compared CDC information42 to NIOSH information43 that I had obtained at the October 11 meeting of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Kenner. In other words, the two-page flyer available to Latino small-business owners was of greater relevance to workers than the six circulars the NIOSH-affiliated federal agent provided me for distribution to workers, which were Spanish-language publications of greater relevance to Latino residents.

Federal agencies attempt to minimize their efforts to contain occupational risk among Latino workers by leaving health and safety training up to already vulnerable workers. By relying on a simple and cost-effective method of providing Spanish-language information on their website, federal agencies obfuscated the role of government contractors in promoting occupational risk. Unfortunately, Latino workers lived in units that lacked access to the Internet through which this information is provided and could not educate themselves via Internet resources. In short, the nature of work in New Orleans prevented Latino workers from compensating for federal agents’ lack of outreach to them.

Conclusion

Undocumented Latino workers in a post-Katrina New Orleans demonstrated how social disasters can unfold over weeks and months after a “natural disaster.” Their occupational risk was produced in part by their limited visibility. Latino workers were clearly recognized by contractors and sought after by labor recruiters but largely invisible to agencies responsible for regulating safe and healthy working environments. In these ways, Latino workers’ experiences in New Orleans demonstrated how their invisibility was structurally created.

Media depictions developed Latinos’ limited visibility by racializing job competition in New Orleans. For instance, the Times-Picayune, New York Times, LA Times, and NPR reported that Latinos made anywhere from $15 an hour to hundreds of dollars a day.44 In this way, the media constructed cleanup and recovery work as desirable and financially rewarding. Although contractors’ profits were no doubt profitable, however, vulnerable Latinos’ wages averaged $10 an hour. Latino workers also faced significant occupational risk and the persistent threat of not being paid for their work.

In New Orleans, contractors were responsible for work arrangements that promoted occupational risk. These arrangements demonstrated that Latino workers’ disproportionate injuries were not solely, or perhaps even in large part, a result of their lack of educational attainment, job skills, or English proficiency. Neither was it a result of a “unique cultural mindset” in their perception of hazards. Although many Latino workers may have been unaware of the specific risk their jobs involved, they recognized that their “right to work” was premised on being unable to control the risks their work involved. Latino workers became an inexpensive and disposable workforce for construction contractors because they were legally vulnerable.

Political and economic factors reproduced Latinos’ racialization. New Orleans’s Mayor Nagin capitalized on Latino workers’ limited political visibility when he expressed concern that the city would be “overrun by Mexican and Latino contractors.” Similarly, contractors racialized Latinos as hard workers, which promoted the illusion of job competition with black residents. In the case of Latinos, however, the dual location of being a “model minority” and an “illegal alien” meant that both blacks’ place and Latinos’ right to work within New Orleans were jeopardized. For instance, the increasingly politicized rhetoric surrounding Latino migration in the city did not serve to increase regulatory agency initiative but rather to jeopardize Latino workers’ security as police and Border Enforcement officers round up increasing numbers of Latinos.

New Orleans demonstrated that Latino workers’ occupational risk resulted not only from contractors’ discriminatory work assignments but also from federal agency neglect whose outreach efforts focused on workers rather than on employers. Educational outreach to the Latino population, in terms of elucidating occupational risks, was only partially successful because it shifted the burden for minimizing occupational risk onto vulnerable workers. In contrast, the case of DT vaccination demonstrated that employer outreach had a broader impact in terms of promoting Latino workers’ health. Unfortunately, regulatory agencies, and their tenuous relationship with construction contractors, meant they ignored both health and safety standards and the ways in which employers promoted occupational risks for Latino workers.

Scholars’ projections that the southern region’s relative lack of experience with immigration, its traditional understandings of race along a black-white binary, and its general lack of a Spanish-language infrastructure could negatively impact Latinos’ wellbeing were borne out after Hurricane Katrina.45 Although recent immigration may not be immediately invisible in New Orleans, it is similarly reflected in the economic, demographic, and physical expansion of many Southern cities and rural areas. Cities and towns could reach out to prospects for growth that are sustainable for the greatest number of residents, which include Latinos.