Media and Updates

and injustice for all: Workers' lives in the reconstruction of new orleans

the national immigration law center, the new orleans worker justice coalition and the advancement project released a comprehensive report on worker conditions

July 6, 2006

Today, the National Immigration Law Center, the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition, and the Advancement Project released And Injustice for All:  Workers’ Lives in the Reconstruction of New Orleans, the most comprehensive documentation of post-Katrina worker conditions to date. This report is a compilation of personal narratives based on more than 700 worker interviews that raises the voices of New Orleanians struggling to return and reconstruction workers, all of whom are attempting to survive in the face of inequitable and unjust policies and practices of public and private institutions.

And Injustice for All details how government and private institutions have locked some workers out of employment and thrust others into situations of abject exploitation and poverty. The report attributes the underlying cause of such circumstances to racism existing at the systemic level—structural racism.  In addition, the report documents the nature and extent of the exploitation migrant workers endure everyday—substandard working conditions, homelessness, toxicity, threat of police and immigration raids, nonpayment of wages—and how, in the aftermath of Katrina, government and private institutions created a perception of competition between workers of color, fueling racial tension between people who in reality share a common struggle. The report further notes that media and political discourse position labor issues as a wedge between communities of color and, in reality, low-wage workers are all losers in a “race to the bottom” in terms of wages, living standards, and human rights.

By documenting the scripts about race war and job theft that have shaped public opinion on the issue, And Injustice for All addresses common misperceptions about the purported clashes between African American and Latino workers and concludes that the two communities, African American and immigrant, both suffer from a profound lack of awareness of and exposure to each others’ plight. The report concludes that government policy and practice has, in effect, affected both communities similarly and thus the workers share a common struggle.

In the final analysis, this report advocates multi-racial, organized, collective action as a strategy for workers, most of whom are migrant or displaced, to hold public officials and private industry accountable. Presenting a comprehensive discussion of how structural racism is at work in the lives of New Orleans’ low-wage workers, the report recommends several interventions that are keys to addressing the inequities workers face at the institutional level.