Larry and Cynthia Warner and their sons are living in undamaged portions of their Algiers home. The Army Corps of Engineers has rebuilt the 17th Street Levee... ... but neighbors are fighting efforts to create an easement in their backyards.

On Aug. 31, 2005, Hurricane Katrina smashed into New Orleans like a bowling ball sending all 10 pins flying. A vast swath of the Crescent City was wiped away, from poorer neighborhoods like the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish to posher communities like Eastover and Lake Forest Estates.

 

Human misconduct has magnified a natural disaster into a catastrophe. In the two years since Katrina, followed a few weeks later by Hurricane Rita, ravaged Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama:

 

• The Bush Administration has used reconstruction as a pretext to attack union rights and labor laws;

   

• The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has demonstrated unprecedented incompetence;

   

• Local business leaders and public agencies have failed to address human need; and

   

• Scoundrels have swindled survivors of their meager insurance payments.

   

Of course, post-Katrina New Orleans is also filled with stories of heroism, generosity and survival, the strength of family and community bonds, and the power of working people facing adversity together.

 

“There’s no place like home,” said Cynthia Warner, who fled her Algiers neighborhood for shelter in Houston. Warner said she was devastated when she returned six weeks later. “It wasn’t just because of my house. The city was unbelievable. My cousin’s home just down the street lost its whole roof.”

Warner grew up in the house when it belonged to her parents. She and her husband, Larry (who was Chief Steward in New Orleans for ATU Local 1700) bought it about 10 years ago. Today, the couple and their two sons, 26-year-old Rashad and 24-year-old Larry Jr., are living in undamaged sections of the two-story home.

Before Katrina, Larry Warner had thought about driving for a few more years, even though he had already worked 27 years for Greyhound. But he retired in June 2006, largely to rebuild his and his neighbors’ homes. Thousands of FEMA trailers parked in front yards around New Orleans testify to how agonizingly slow the process has been.

On this morning, after months of waiting, city inspectors finally pulled Warner’s gas meter so he can start rebuilding the front rooms of his home. He needs to sink 60 pilings – at $175 apiece – to create a foundation that won’t shift in New Orleans’ swampy soil.

The next hurdle will be paying. The Warners previously received checks from their homeowners and flood insurance policies, but the insurer is balking at paying for ongoing work. And they – like tens of thousands of survivors – are also waiting for money from “The Road Home,” the Bush Administration’s fund for reconstruction.

“Meanwhile, everyone is price-gouging,” he said. “The contractors, the electricians – everyone.”

For example, the Warners’ flood insurance has more than quadrupled, from $234 to $1,014 yearly, and they are appealing a new tax assessment on their home.

Incredibly, Greyhound denied Larry Warner’s application for emergency money, claiming he hadn’t suffered enough hardship. It isn’t the only hard feeling he holds about the company he worked for since 1978. His $1,061 monthly pension does not adjust for inflation, and will end when he dies instead of continuing to support his spouse.

Soon after Warner retired, doctors discovered he had prostate cancer. “It’s a lot to deal with,” he said. Fortunately, Cynthia Warner works at Tulane University, where her medical coverage pays for her husband’s medicine and treatment.

ATU Local 1700 vice president for Region 4, Karen Miller, said Katrina devastated everyone when it hit New Orleans. Days after the storm, Miller and Local 1700 President Bruce Hamilton suggested the company move the work to Baton Rouge (90 miles away) so drivers could still earn a living and have the ability to rebuild.

 

“The company refused and drivers were forced to relocate around the country, sometimes without their families," Hamilton said. "Many felt Greyhound had abandoned them as much as the government. They felt no one tried to help and are still very bitter, but the union did try.”

Most employees have moved to Houston, Memphis, Mobile and other stations. About 20 drivers are based in New Orleans, compared to more than 75 before Katrina. The number of hourly employees has dropped to 10 from 36 before the storm, and 20 schedules compared to 52 in 2005.

Miller lamented the loss of Warner to Local 1700. “Larry always went over and beyond to assist the union," Miller said. "When he told me he was planning to retire, I hoped he would wait around a few more years. He is truly missed.”

Greyhound certainly misses drivers like Warner. The company is back in the New Orleans bus business – barely.

Mike Walters, manager of the company’s New Orleans operations, took possession of the bus station six weeks after the Army and Corrections Dept. turned it into “Camp Greyhound,” a holding facility for criminals.

“The building had been looted, all my computers were trashed, all the windows were broken, and my safe had been broken into. It took me two weeks to get everything new installed and to reopen,” he said.

Walters even had driver rooms used for military dormitories disinfected. When the station reopened Oct. 31, frantic people trying to leave the stricken city were lined up from the counter out the door.

Business during the first year after Katrina was about double the level before the storm, fueled by relief workers and uprooted residents checking on their property. “We still have some of that business, with people in Houston and other cities coming back to take care of their houses,” Walters said, adding that rebuilding a team has been hard. “The quality of people walking in through the door looking for work is not what Greyhound is looking for.”

Only seven of 100 applicants this year passed their interviews, he said, and only five of them were hired. “And they haven’t all stayed,” Walters said.

 

The municipal transit system has also been hit hard. ATU Local 1560 President Joe Prieur, Jr. said the storm destroyed about 1,200 buses. The agency, Prieur added, slashed the workforce from nearly 1,000 drivers to about 200.

“We work for a good company, but we have poor, poor leaders,” he said.

 

Instead of fixing their offices, Prieur said management laid off in-house electricians, sheetrock workers and other construction workers. Two years later, the company is still working out of trailers.

And public schools are under fire. Brenda Mitchell, the president of United Teachers New Orleans, said anti-union forces are trying to use charter schools and young college graduates in Teach for America to break UTNO.

“School districts in other Louisiana cities didn’t want you if you were a New Orleans teacher because we were painted with a broad brush of incompetence,” Mitchell said.

Finding work in post-Katrina New Orleans is an ethnic battleground. Saket Soni of the Worker Center for Racial Justice accused local business leaders – encouraged by national conservative causes – of systematic exclusion and exploitation in the reconstruction.

“One group – poor Black workers – is locked out while another group – poorer Hispanic immigrant workers – is locked in,” Soni said. Labor traffickers are recruiting Native Americans from New Mexico reservations to Peruvians from South America, and bringing foreign workers into the U.S. on temporary visas given when no Americans are available to fill a job. Immigrants who complain about their conditions are deported instead of paid. Legal immigrants and U.S.-born workers are jailed.

Nevertheless, UTNO President Mitchell added, “The labor movement is alive and well in this city, although they don’t want you to know that.”