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News > Latin America

Houston Exploiting Undocumented Day Laborers Post Harvey

  • Interstate highway 45 is submerged from the effects of Hurricane Harvey seen during widespread flooding in Houston, Texas, U.S. August 27, 2017

    Interstate highway 45 is submerged from the effects of Hurricane Harvey seen during widespread flooding in Houston, Texas, U.S. August 27, 2017 | Photo: Reuters

Published 28 November 2017
Opinion

Between 83 and 87 percent of the workers have not been taught how to work around damaged buildings, mold and contaminate water, fallen trees or electrical lines

A just-released investigation has found that Houston city contractors and authorities are taking advantage of undocumented day laborers to clean up the effects of the Harvey, which hit the area in September.

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“In Houston, construction contractors, private households, and local businesses” recruit [informal sector] day laborers “from … sites located throughout the city,” the study’s authors said.

Titled, "After the Storm: Houston’s Day Labor Markets in the Aftermath of Hurricane Harvey," the report was conducted by the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and concluded that day laborers, 70 percent of whom are undocumented, are in demand and doing the bulk of the work to recover many parts of Houston devastated by the storm.

Day laborers are a “key workforce” component in “disaster recovery” because they work in debris cleanup, building and home demolition, and reconstruction, all of which are fundamental to help the city of Houston move on from the storm.

Yet, for their crucial role, day laborers, the vast majority of whom are from Mexico, Cuba and Central America, are not being fairly compensated. Of the 361 day laborers interviewed for the study, on average they are paid US$100 for 8 hours of often dangerous, manual labor.

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Day laborers working in post-Harvey Houston are working around downed power lines and stagnant water in high temperatures, but, 32 percent are not provided with work gloves, while “40 percent do not have protective eyewear, 61 percent do not have a respirator, and 64 percent do not have a hard hat.” Meanwhile, 27 percent say they have experienced difficulty breathing from working conditions, 28 percent have had skin rashes, and 35 percent have had recurring headaches.

The study also found that nearly all workers have not been informed about possible on-the-job risks associated with the Harvey cleanup. Between 83 and 87 percent of have not been taught how to work around damaged buildings, mold and contaminate water, fallen trees or electrical lines.

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Added to these precarious working conditions, nearly 45 percent laborers have had their wages withheld from employers. Wage theft is highly common in the world of the informal, unprotected, day labor sector with 57 percent of those interviewed have experienced wage theft in the past year.

In light of a lack of local and state authority assistance to day laborers in the reconstruction sector, the study’s main author, Nik Theodore, said that the state of Texas needs to provide risk prevention training. He called on day labor centers and labor unions to assist in these efforts.

As deportation of migrants from Latin America has increased exponentially since June 2017, Theodore recommends this trend be reversed and that immigration enforcement “suspend” deportation of day laborers working to clean up Houston post-Harvey.

He said that the undocumented status of so many day laborers creates a looming deportation threat, which prevents them from reporting wage theft, unfit working conditions or seeking medical attention from on the job hazards. In addition, he said that the U.S. government should create long-term, temporary legal status for construction workers to meet construction labor demand and to “ensure workers are protected from abusive labor practices.”

Martin Mares, a Mexican native who has lived in Houston since 1995, said he’s not as concerned of possible deportation working at post-Harvey sites within the city because he and other day laborers are in such high demand, but that the risk of deportation increases in the suburbs.

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