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Worker Shortages Post-Katrina Send Businesses out of Mississippi
Facing a housing shortage along the Gulf Coast, many companies are finding it difficult to find employees and as a result, are being forced to relocate. The NewsHour reports on how Mississippi businesses are grappling with the economic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
IMPORTING FOREIGN WORKERS
JEFFREY KAYE: Some Mississippi companies are using workers from much farther away than neighboring states. They're importing hundreds of employees from abroad.
Late last year, Signal International, an oil rig construction and repair company, brought in some 300 workers from India. Working as welders and pipe fitters, they've been issued temporary visas by the federal government under a program that allows companies that can't find U.S. employees to import foreign nationals.
The Indian workers live in housing inside the shipyard. They have to pay room and board. The company wouldn't let us shoot there, nor would they provide a representative for an on-camera interview. But off-camera, a Signal vice president told us the company also uses hundreds of workers, provided by labor contractors, including many guest workers from Mexico.
The Mexican workers -- about 300 of them -- live in a fenced-in compound at a site that's near the shipyard. When we started to interview the workers, the labor contractor that brought them in, Knight's Marine and Industrial Services, told us to leave. They refused to answer any questions.
The workers live in wooden sheds without windows, plumbing or insulation. They sleep in bunk beds -- six to a cabin -- where they store food. These pictures were taken and provided to us by workers who asked to remain anonymous, saying they feared retribution.
Putting foreign workers up in sheds may represent an extreme response to the labor shortage. But Mississippi businesses worry that the problem will not be resolved easily or soon. Bruce Nourse is vice president of MGM's Beau Rivage Casino in Biloxi.
BRUCE NOURSE, Beau Rivage Casino: We lost about 70,000 homes on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. We have never built more than 2,500 homes in one year on the Gulf Coast. So just by virtue of that fact, it'll take us years to recoup what we had prior to the storm.
JEFFREY KAYE: The rebuilding brings with it a catch-22: As government and insurance money flows in, the demand for workers will be even more urgent.
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