Banking on Safety

The storm was over when thousands of Hispanic immigrants began arriving in the New Orleans area to work on the post-Katrina rebuilding effort, but they faced another kind of danger on the job site.

“Right after Katrina, we started getting a lot of phone calls from construction workers who were working in poor conditions and didn’t have safety equipment,” said Maria “Lolita” Carcache, director of Hispanic Apostolate Community Services for the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Another staff member, Eva St. Martin, explained: “Contractors would put these guys to work but wouldn’t provide the safety equipment, or if they did, they would discount it from their wages.”

With support from a Mexican bank foundation, the Hispanic Apostolate is helping to improve the lives and working conditions of these immigrants. A grant from the Fomento Social BANAMEX Fund, administered through the Greater New Orleans Foundation, provides money for a wide range of programs from job assistance to health access. A portion of the grant funds the Workers’ Rights Initiative, a community outreach service conducted in cooperation with the Loyola University Law Clinic and other nonprofits, and the Public Safety Initiative, which focuses on improving relationships between the immigrant community and local police departments. St. Martin is the coordinator of both initiatives.

The first task of the Workers’ Rights Initiative was to purchase gloves, goggles, hard hats, masks, eye cleaning solution and other protective gear for the workers. When the program began holding walk-in wage claim clinics on Thursday nights, the response “just exploded,” according to St. Martin.

“We used to do outreach on a daily basis, and the cases were just pouring in,” she said.

The Public Safety Initiative is training local law enforcement officers and Police Academy cadets as volunteer translators and speakers for community forums. The goal is to get 100 participants in the program, Carcache said.