The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans

12. Hazardous Constructions: Mexican Immigrant Masculinity and the Rebuilding of New Orleans

· 327 ·· CHAPTER 12 · Hazardous Constructions Mexican Immigrant Masculinity and the Rebuilding of New Orleans Nicole Trujillo-Pagán 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. 328 NICOLE TRUJILLO-PAGÁN The relationship between contractors and policy decisions surrounding HurricaneKatrinaarereflectiveoftheshiftingrolesoflocalgovernmentand 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. HAZARDOUS CONSTRUCTIONS 329 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...