Reply #12: There are workers there from a 5-state area, but only 20,000. [View All]

[chill_wind]

I think the recent Mother Jones piece that interviewed workers said they were getting $10.00 and being put up locally in shared hotel housing, but we are talking 12 hour days in the hot baking sun, gag orders not to talk about their working conditions, and deplorable practices and deception about their health protections and exposure to illness.


http://www.sfexaminer.com/nation/booming-business-in-the-gulf-spill-cleanup-is-creating-jobs-in-some-sectors-x2014-but-at-a-price-94906709.html

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/may/14/oil-cleanup-work-pays-well-work-tough/?preventMobileRedirect=1

http://www.bettermsreport.com/2010/05/the-sun-herald-cleanup-jobs-elude-some/


Local workers make ten dollars an hour cleaning
up the same beach again and again.

http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/05/oil-spill-bp-grand-isle-beach

The shoreline is packed with men in hats and gumboots and bright blue or white shirts. Nearly all are African-American, all hired from around New Orleans. They tell me they've been standing in these exact same spots for three days. It's breathtakingly hot. They rake the oil and sand into big piles; other workers collect the piles into big plastic bags, and still other workers take them to a plant where the sand is separated out and sent to a hazardous-waste dump and the oil goes on for processing. Then the tide comes in with more oil and everybody starts all over again. Ten dollars an hour. Twelve hours a day.

BP Sucks.