Gulf Coast slaves

Halliburton and its subcontractors hired hundreds of undocumented Latino workers to clean up after Katrina -- only to mistreat them and throw them out without pay.

By Roberto Lovato

Nov. 15, 2005 | Arnulfo Martinez recalls seeing lots of hombres del

ejercito standing at attention. Though he was living on the Belle Chasse

Naval Base near New Orleans when President Bush spoke there on Oct. 11, he

didn't understand anything the ruddy man in the rolled-up sleeves was

saying to the troops.

Martinez, 16, speaks no English; his mother tongue is Zapotec. He had left

the cornfields of Oaxaca, Mexico, four weeks earlier for the promise that

he would make $8 an hour, plus room and board, while working for a

subcontractor of KBR, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton that was

awarded a major contract by the Bush administration for disaster relief

work. The job was helping to clean up a Gulf Coast naval base in the region

devastated by Hurricane Katrina. "I was cleaning up the base, picking up

branches and doing other work," Martinez said, speaking to me in broken

Spanish.

Even if the Oaxacan teenager had understood Bush when he urged Americans

that day to "help somebody find shelter or help somebody find food," he

couldn't have known that he'd soon need similar help himself. But three

weeks after arriving at the naval base from Texas, Martinez's boss, Karen

Tovar, a job broker from North Carolina who hired workers for a KBR

subcontractor called United Disaster Relief, booted him from the base and

left him homeless, hungry and without money.

"They gave us two meals a day and sometimes only one," Martinez said.

He says that Tovar "kicked us off the base," forcing him and other cleanup

workers -- many of them Mexican and undocumented -- to sleep on the streets

of New Orleans. According to Martinez, they were not paid for three weeks

of work. An immigrant rights group recently filed complaints with the

Department of Labor on behalf of Martinez and 73 other workers allegedly

owed more than $56,000 by Tovar. Tovar claims that she let the workers go

because she was not paid by her own bosses at United Disaster Relief. In

turn, UDR manager Zachary Johnson, who declined to be interviewed for this

story, told the Washington Post on Nov. 4 that his company had not been

paid by KBR for two months.

Wherever the buck may stop along the chain of subcontractors, Martinez is

stuck at the short end of it -- and his situation is typical among many

workers hired by subcontractors of KBR (formerly known as Kellogg Brown &

Root) to clean and rebuild Belle Chasse and other Gulf Coast military

bases. Immigrants rights groups and activists like Bill Chandler, president

of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, estimate that hundreds of

undocumented workers are on the Gulf Coast military bases, a claim that the

military and Halliburton/KBR deny -- even after the Immigration and Customs

Enforcement agency turned up undocumented workers in a raid of the Belle

Chasse facility last month. Visits to the naval bases and dozens of

interviews by Salon confirm that undocumented workers are in the

facilities. Still, tracing the line from unpaid undocumented workers to

their multibillion-dollar employers is a daunting task. A shadowy labyrinth

of contractors, subcontractors and job brokers, overseen by no single

agency, have created a no man's land where nobody seems to be accountable

for the hiring -- and abuse -- of these workers.

Right after Katrina barreled through the Gulf Coast, the Bush

administration relaxed labor standards, creating conditions for rampant

abuse, according to union leaders and civil rights advocates. Bush

suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires employers to pay "prevailing

wages" for labor used to fulfill government contracts. The administration

also waived the requirement for contractors rebuilding the Gulf Coast to

provide valid I-9 employment eligibility forms completed by their workers.

These moves allowed Halliburton/KBR and its subcontractors to hire

undocumented workers and pay them meager wages (regardless of what wages

the workers may have otherwise been promised). The two policies have

recently been reversed in the face of sharp political pressure: Bush

reinstated the Davis-Bacon Act on Nov. 3, while the Department of Homeland

Security reinstated the I-9 requirements in late October, noting that it

would once again "exercise prosecutorial discretion" of employers in

violation "on a case-by-case basis." But critics say Bush's policies have

already allowed extensive profiteering beneath layers of legal and

political cover.

Halliburton/KBR, which enjoys an array of federal contracts in the United

States, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has long drawn criticism for its

proximity to Vice President Dick Cheney, formerly Halliburton's CEO.

Halliburton/KBR spokesperson Melissa Norcross declined to respond directly

to allegations about undocumented workers in the Gulf. "In performing work

for the U.S. government, KBR uses its government-approved procurement

system to source and retain qualified subcontractors," she said in an

e-mail. "KBR's subcontractors are required to comply with all applicable

labor laws and provisions when performing this work."

Victoria Cintra is the Gulf Coast outreach organizer for Mississippi

Immigrant Rights Alliance, which recently partnered with relief agency

Oxfam America to help immigrant workers displaced by Katrina. She says KBR

is exposing undocumented workers like Martinez to unethical and illegal

treatment, even though they are supposed to be paid with federal

Katrina-recovery dollars to clean and rebuild high-security facilities like

the one President Bush recently visited. Cintra is one of several people

fighting to recover the wages owed the workers: She drives her beat-up,

chocolate-colored car across the swamps, damaged roads and broken bridges

of the Gulf Coast to track down contractors and subcontractors. With yellow

legal pad in hand, she and other advocates document abuses taking place at

Belle Chasse, the Naval Construction Battalion Center at the Seabee naval

base in Gulfport, Miss., and other military installations.

I was with Cintra when she received phone calls from several Latino workers

who complained they were denied, under threat of deportation, the right to

leave the base at Belle Chasse. Cintra also took me along on visits to

squalid trailer parks -- like the one at Arlington Heights in Gulfport --

where up to 19 unpaid, unfed and undocumented KBR site workers inhabited a

single trailer for $70 per person, per week. Workers there and on the bases

complained of suffering from diarrhea, sprained ankles, cuts and bruises,

and other injuries sustained on the KBR sites -- where they received no

medical assistance, despite being close to medical facilities on the same

bases they were cleaning and helping rebuild.

Cintra and other critics say there's been no accountability from the

corporate leaders who signed on the dotted line when they were awarded

multimillion-dollar Department of Defense contracts. "The workers may be

hired by the subcontractors," Cintra says, "but KBR is ultimately responsible."

"Latino workers are being invited to New Orleans and the South without the

proper conditions to protect them," adds Cintra, who recently provided

tents to Martinez and several other unpaid Mexican workers who fled Belle

Chasse for Gulfport after being dismissed by Tovar. Cintra, a Cuban exile

and born-again Christian, has since seen a small tent city of homeless

immigrants spring up in the yard of her church, Pass Road Baptist, in

Gulfport. "This is evil on top of evil on top of evil," she says. "The Bush

administration and Halliburton have opened up a Pandora's box that's not

going to close now."

Halliburton/KBR is the general contractor with overarching responsibility

for the federal cleanup contracts covering Katrina-damaged naval bases.

Even so, there is an utter lack of transparency with the process -- and

that invites malfeasance, says James Hale, a vice president of the

Laborers' International Union of North America. "To my knowledge, not one

member of Congress has been able to get their hands on a copy of a contract

that was handed out to Halliburton or others," Hale says. "There is no

central registry of Katrina contracts available. No data on the jobs or

scope of the work." Hale says that his union's legislative staff has

pressed members of Congress for more information; apparently the

legislators were told that they could not get copies of the contracts

because of "national security" concerns.

"If the contracts handed out to these primary contractors are opaque, then

the contracts being let to the subcontractors are just plain invisible,"

Hale says. "There is simply no ability to ascertain or monitor the

contractor-subcontractor relationships. This is an open invitation for

exploitation, fraud and abuse."

Congress has heard a number of complaints recently about Halliburton/KBR's

hiring practices, including the alleged exploitation of Filipino, Sri

Lankan, Nepalese and other immigrant workers paid low wages on military

installations in Iraq. And KBR subcontractor BE&K was a focus of Senate

hearings in October, for the firing of 75 local Belle Chasse workers who

said that they were replaced by "unskilled, out-of-state, out-of-country"

workers earning $8 to $14 for work that typically paid $22 an hour.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who has been an outspoken critic of the use of

undocumented workers at Belle Chasse and on other Katrina cleanup jobs,

said in a recent statement, "It is a downright shame that any contractor

would use this tragedy as an opportunity to line its pockets by breaking

the law and hiring a low-skilled, low-wage and undocumented work force."

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., is also against the practice, citing its "serious

social ramifications." As he told Salon, it devastates "local workers who

have been hit twice, because they lost their homes."

Seventeen-year-old Simitrio Martinez (no relation to Arnulfo) is another

one of the dozens of workers originally hired by Tovar, the North Carolina

job broker working under KBR. "They were going to pay seven dollars an

hour, and the food was going to be free, and rent, but they gave us

nothing," says the thin Zapotec teenager. Simitrio spent nearly a month at

the Seabee base. "They weren't feeding us. We ate cookies for five days.

Cookies, nothing else," he says.

Simitrio, his co-workers, and the dozens of KBR subcontractors that employ

them operate under public-private agreements like federal Task Order 0017,

which defines the scope of work to be fulfilled under the contracts. Under

the multimillion-dollar Department of Defense contract, KBR is supposed to

provide services for "Hurricane Katrina stabilization and recovery at Naval

Air Station Pascagoula, Naval Air Station Gulfport, Stennis Space Center

and other Navy installations in the Southeast Region," according to a

Defense Department press release.

But the details of the agreements remain murky. "Not only is it very

difficult to see the actual signed DoD contracts, but it is nearly

impossible to see the actual task orders, which assign the goods or

services the government is buying," says Scott Amey, general counsel for

the Project on Government Oversight in Washington. The military can ask for

goods and services on an as-needed basis, he says, which means that the

contracts, which add up to tens of millions of dollars, can remain open

ended. According to DoD press statements, the contracts call for

considerable manual labor, including "re-roofing of most buildings,

barracks, debris removal from the entire base, water mitigation, mold

mitigation, interior and exterior repairs to most buildings, waste

treatment plants, and all incidental related work."

Simitrio and any other workers on the high-security military bases must get

permission before entering the guarded gates, where they get patted down by

M-16-wielding military police. Responsibility for getting private-sector

construction and cleanup workers on the bases rests with the general

contractor -- in KBR's case, security chief Kevin Flynn. One of Flynn's

responsibilities is to negotiate passes and entry for KBR subcontractors --

and their hires -- to do the work stipulated by the task order.

Yet, following several complaints by Landrieu, and just a few days after

President Bush visited the Belle Chasse base, agents from the Immigration

and Customs Enforcement agency raided the facility and detained 10 workers

who ICE spokeswoman Jamie Zuieback said had "questionable" documentation.

Representatives of Halliburton/KBR do not acknowledge the existence of

undocumented workers providing labor for their operations on the Gulf Coast

bases. Flynn suggested speaking to the U.S. military, who he said "has real

strict control" and would know whether there were undocumented workers. "We

have workers from all ethnic groups on the base," Flynn said. "To the best

of my knowledge, there are no undocumented workers."

Steve Romano, head of housing on the Belle Chasse base, said, "We have no

relationship with [KBR] at all. I have no idea what that's about." A

similar response was given by an official at the base's health facility

when asked about undocumented workers who complained about health issues

and injuries sustained on the KBR sites. The only military person to

acknowledge seeing Latino workers was a watch commander who greeted me at

an entry to the base. The commander estimated there were 100 such workers

there. Meanwhile, representatives with the Mississippi Immigrant Rights

Alliance say they received calls from undocumented workers at Belle Chasse

who estimated there were more than 500, or "about eight busloads" of

immigrant workers on-site.

Texas-based DRS Cosmotech is another subcontractor that provided cleanup

crews to Halliburton/KBR in the Gulf. Roy Lee Donaldson, CEO of the

company, refused to respond to accusations of non-payment and exploitation

leveled at his company by several workers, including 55-year-old Felipe

Reyes of Linares, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. (Donaldson hung up the phone when I

identified myself as a reporter.)

"Mr. Donaldson promised us we'd live in a hotel or a house. We lived in

tents and only had hot water that smelled like petroleum," Reyes said. The

city of Belle Chasse has been identified in recent years as one of the most

toxically polluted areas in the entire region, with several major energy

companies operating there. A wide range of advocacy groups have warned

about serious health risks facing Katrina cleanup workers.

"They didn't want to pay us for two weeks of work. So we stopped working.

We started a huelga [strike] on the base" added Reyes, who along with other

workers, says he was later paid $1,100 -- only part of what he says he was

owed.

Another KBR subcontractor, Alabama-based BE&K, says it is not responsible

for keeping track of the workers. BE&K spokesperson Susan Wasley said, "I

can't say that we require our subcontractors' employees to produce

documentation for us, because that's what our subcontractor as employer has

to do. That's his responsibility."

At the bottom of the KBR subcontracting pyramid are job brokers like Tovar

and Gregorio Gonzalez, who helped hire laborers for Florida-based On Site

Services, another subcontractor that reportedly failed to pay wages owed to

workers in the Gulf Coast. The job brokers find workers by placing ads in

Spanish-language newspapers like La Subasta and El Dia in Houston; the ads

typically promise room, board and pay in the range of $1,200 a week. Job

brokers also run television ads on Spanish-language stations like

Univision. And they attend job fairs in places like Fresno, Calif.

Not all subcontractors refuse to discuss their links to KBR. Luis Sevilla

is pretty open about it if you can get to the crowded hangar on the

restricted premises of the Seabee naval base where he and his crew sleep

and work. Sevilla put together crews for KBR subcontractors to remove

asbestos and do other construction work; his workers told me they are paid

and treated well. Asked about the people who own the R.V. with a "KBR" logo

outside the hangar where his workers crowd into small tents, Sevilla says,

"They contract with many, many companies." Interviews with members of

Sevilla's crew revealed a number of undocumented workers.

Despite the evidence of undocumented workers cleaning up after Katrina,

Halliburton/KBR maintains that it runs its operations within the bounds of

the law. "KBR operates under a rigorous Code of Business Conduct that

outlines legal and ethical behaviors that all employees and subcontractors

are expected to follow in every aspect of their work," spokesperson

Norcross said by e-mail. (She did not respond to several requests for a

phone interview.) "We do not tolerate any exceptions to this Code at any

level of our company."

Standing in spitting distance of the KBR-branded R.V., which is parked as

if it were guarding the hangar, Jose Ruiz of Nicaragua knows that his role

in the Katrina cleanup is anonymous at best. "I don't have any papers, kind

of like in that song by Sting -- 'I'm an illegal alien,'" says Ruiz, who

lived in the United States for many years before arriving to work for

Sevilla at the Seabee base. "That's the way it is."

-- By Roberto Lovato