The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Essential Workers of the Climate Crisis

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

After storms and other climate disasters, legions of workers appear overnight to cover blown-out buildings with construction tarps, rip out ruined walls and floors, and start putting cities back together. They are largely migrants, predominantly undocumented, and lack basic protections for construction work. Their efforts are critical in an era of increasing climate-related disasters, but the workers are subject to hazards including accidents, wage theft, and deportation. “Right now, there is a base camp for the National Guard; FEMA officials in Louisiana are staying in hotels,” Saket Soni, the founder of the nonprofit group Resilience Force, tells Sarah Stillman. “But the workers who are doing the rebuilding with their hands are sleeping under their cars to protect themselves from rain.” Stillman travelled to Louisiana, to the parking lot of a Home Depot, to report on Soni’s effort to organize and win recognition for these laborers as a distinct workforce performing essential work. “These years ahead,” she notes, “are going to bring more brutal hurricanes, more awful floods, more terrifying wildfires, and heatwaves—more than any of us is really prepared to handle. … And what’s at stake is not just these workers’ fates but also our collective shared survival.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Hurricane season on the Atlantic coast has been one of the most ruinous and expensive on record. And it's not even over, not officially, until the end of the month. For some time, staff writer Sarah Stillman has been looking at the rebuilding that comes after these storms and disasters, specifically, The people who do the work. The legions of workers who show up overnight to cover blown-out buildings with construction tarp, who rip out ruined walls and floors, and who start putting cities back together. Sarah has been spending a lot of time in Louisiana with an organization known as Resilience Force.

We're in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Laplace, Louisiana, which is a suburb about 40 minutes outside of New Orleans. It's been about two weeks since her. Hurricane Ida tour through the area, and there's maybe about 100 or so workers in the parking lot, and they're all here hoping to find work rebuilding after the storm. There's also a man here named Sokatsoni. Okay, I'm going to speak in short sentences. I'll stop and then you, yeah. His colleague, Danielle Castellanos, is interpreting. Okay, how is everybody?

How is everybody? Okay. Okay, so just very quickly, very quickly say your names. Just very quickly. Let me ask you this. Jose Ombiido. Antonio. Norby and Jose.

Norby. Lerby. Hello. Okay. Welcome. Okay. Let me ask you this. How many of you have worked more than one hurricane?

How many of you have worked more than a hurricane? Everybody. How many of you have worked more than two? How about five? Over the past year, I've been following workers who rebuild after climate crises, after hurricanes and fires and floods. And I've learned so much. It is this vast, largely undocumented workforce

who travel much the way that migrant workers do in agricultural work. So, you know, one season they may be doing berries and then stone fruit and then they may be following apples. And in this case, they are following from one climate crisis to the next. What about before that after Hurricane Michael in Florida? When Hurricane Ida hit this past August, this town that we're in Laplace was directly in its path. And about two weeks later, you can see row after row of houses covered in blue tarp. There's telephone lines and power lines that have fallen all over the place,

uprooted trees, roofs that are completely ripped off the houses and the homes destroyed. So it is a huge amount of work to get a town up and running again. And most of the time, these are the workers who are doing it. They are cleaning up flooded buildings. They're putting blue tarp under the rooftops. They are repairing complex electrical wiring. So, you know, when you hear about what a recovery effort really takes after a hurricane, these are the workers who are making it happen.

When you go away after a hurricane, what are the kinds of things you're rebuilding? Schools, churches are hard, right? The roofs are very steep. The work you're doing after hurricanes is essential work. We came with no money, we came to help, but you know, sometimes the people don't appreciate that, he said. We have to change that. You know, where are you all sleeping? Right here in the parking lot in cars, right?

Under the cars, in the cars. And in the morning you wake up, this is where you brush your teeth. This is where you get ready for work, right? These workers are constantly on the move, and often they're sleeping in parking lots. And even though their work is tremendously urgent and really, really valuable, often these workers are not treated as if they are valued. The work is very dangerous and they have very few protections. There's almost no regulation when it comes, especially to safety on the job. There is rampant wage theft.

And because so many of these workers are undocumented or have some kind of precarious legal status, they often feel like they're just not in a position to fight back when something's that happens. Around the country, a lot of people are waking up to the idea that we have to be prepared for climate change. Well, part of the argument we're making is one of the ways we can be prepared is to protect and support the workforce. So we need infrastructure for the workers. And we need a path to citizenship for these workers. So that's the argument we've been making for a few years. So Sokett, Sony, the guy you hear speaking to these workers, is truly one of the most interesting people that I've ever met in my life. He grew up in India.

His dad was a civil servant, so he was moving around from Pakistan to Jamaica. He wound up going to the University of Chicago. And then he wound up after he graduated undocumented for a period of time. He'd messed up his immigration paperwork. And I think that really changed his sense of deepened his own. understanding of what it means to be kind of living in the shadows, as he put it. So when Hurricane Katrina hit, he moved to New Orleans to do labor organizing and he ended up doing a lot of work with people who were rebuilding after the storm, many of whom were migrant workers. And then as time went

on, he noticed that it was those very same people who started to work other disasters. They went on to Baton Rouge after the flooding there. And then they went to Texas after Hurricane Harvey. I remember pulling up to this pickup truck where a husband and wife couple were sleeping. A hurricane had just battered the Florida Keys. They woke up, they rolled down their windows, they greeted us, and they talked about their work very much as hurricane recovery work. They didn't call themselves construction workers. They didn't call themselves day laborers.

They'd come from San Antonio in their truck. They had a version of Guadalupe, you know, hanging from their windscreen. And, you know, they had created a whole life for themselves out of this truck as they were chasing this hurricane. And they really talked about themselves as the white blood cells of the recovery. This is a phrase I've heard from more than one worker, gathering in a place after an injury has happened and healing the wound. So Socket and his colleagues decided to start this organization called Resilience Force. And it's basically a group that fights on behalf of these workers both really locally and also on Capitol Hill. And Resilience Force operates a lot like a labor union.

But since these workers don't have a shared collective job site, Socket and his team wind up spending a lot of time at what people call the corner, which is not a literal corner, but it's how workers. and organizers refer to the parking lots at places like Home Depot all around the country where workers gather after a storm. Okay, so after Socket finishes talking to the workers, they start passing out these ID cards, which are little laminated Resilience Force membership cards that the workers can use to present to police or whoever they need to, and that can really help them feel more safe. These IDs are really interesting. They're not given by a government entity.

They're the membership cards of our organization. But what we're trying to do is win recognition for this rising workforce. And in the past, we've used it, you know, to win recognition from mayors, to win recognition from the police. You just heard a story of a gentleman who was pulled over by a police officer, and he presented his ID, presented himself as a resilience worker. who helped rebuild Lake Charles, and the police let him go. We'll come back tomorrow and day after to start training people

on how to negotiate fair wages with employers and use these IDs in that negotiation. As the morning goes on, that's when the work starts. The contractors and the homeowners, they're rolling into the Home Depot parking lot. I'm looking for somebody that does sheetrock. Jean Freeu owns a few homes in the area that guy. really badly damaged in the storm. And so he drives up to the corner and he's looking for help,

looking for workers. So I need that fixed. So Sackett helps Jean get up with a worker named Leo. And Leo has brought his whole crew from Houston. So So Sackett helps Jean get set up with a worker named Leo. And Leo has brought his whole crew from Houston. So they all arranged to go together with Gene to his house for an assessment of the damage. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. This is not your house. It is our house. But I mean, you're renting it out right now. His wife, Linda, is just kind of showing the crews around. Hey, this other wall is compromised as well. Oh, yeah. That's a lot of mold on there already.

Water damage mold. So all the sheetrock has to come out. When in a house there's mojo, all the recommendation, when you have mold, you have to take out. So let's help you explain that to them. I can't explain to that, no. But he said that he said, let's try. Let's try. Can you ask him?

Yeah, yeah, let's ask. Sorry, usually with this mold, we have to take out all that, that's it. What is it? With the mold, yes, or something. You've got enough mold. in the walls and in the ceiling. In the ceiling.

And so the gentleman is saying that you'll have to take it all out. That's a recommendation because it's a, you know, you're going to create more mold, you know, even though when you paint, after that they're going to be mold through. Because you've got mold spreading in the house now.

Why can't use the mole killer? One time in my house and I used that mold killer with work. After a little bit of negotiating, they all head to Jean's other house, which also needs. repairs. Excuse them that the lady's been sleeping here because she got nowhere to go.

This lady's got four little ones. She's always got a baby on a hip. You can't watch four little ones and clean up at the same time. So I was hoping she'd be here today. I was going to say, you watch your kids. Just tell me what you want to throw away and I was going to clean. You know, in terms of all the crews you could have run up into at the Home Depot. Leo and his crew are incredibly skilled.

They're very talented. And it'll be important for both of you to build a direct relationship. So Leo, yeah. Think English. Yeah, we won't be around. We're not going to be here. Leo's going to be leading the work.

So you've worked with him before? Well, we're an organization called Resilience Force. We represent this workforce. And part of what we try to do is connect people like you who need the work with people like Leo but once we leave it's now between the two of you you both will be doing this together

first would pay your six hundred to start the other six hundred when you finish that will pay the 2200 up front and then the 23 okay you guys should shake on it So there's almost. So there's almost a kind of diplomacy in what Sokett's doing here.

A big part of what Resilience Force tries to do is to build bonds between the workers who are doing the rebuilding and the often low-income folks who are most affected by the disasters. And often that's happening in areas that aren't particularly important. immigrant-friendly. So that's another key part of the context. They have to find a way to forge connections between those two groups, the workers doing the rebuilding and the people whose homes are being rebuilt. Leo and his crew stayed behind and they get to work. And Socket and his staff wind up riding back to the Home Depot and they start talking about the rate Leo got and basically

wondering if it should have been higher. We aren't, our role is not to set these kinds of rates, right? We are Leo's organization. We represent him. We advocate for him. We want to make sure the workplace is safe. Right. You know, with the kind of agreement we had today, they shook hands.

You know, the numbers are on paper. It's a contract. But it's really up to him to negotiate a better price. And in this case, he probably could have. But they will treat him with respect, you know. And now they'll be here three days, you know, and Gene will know somebody who needs help. And Gene will introduce Leo to that person. I mean, for all we know, two weeks from now, he might have worked 20 homes in a one-block area.

So some of the people who hire workers are people like Jean. They're local homeowners who just need an extra set of hands. But then there's also a much bigger and more problematic story here about the corporate side of disaster recovery. So basically, as the effects of climate change have intensified, disaster relief is becoming this huge business. And I would argue a really unaccountable one. So you've got these big disaster restoration companies that are making hundreds of millions of dollars from rebuilding contracts. And increasingly those are owned by private equity firms who see a ton of profits to be made here. But then these companies work through these really elaborate chains of subcontractors and sub-subcontractors and labor brokers.

and then the workers who actually end up doing the physical work wind up with very little leverage, making very little money in what are ultimately very dangerous conditions. I spent a lot of the last year digging into the consequences of that, and there's very little data out there, but what I found is that many workers are actually dying from electrocution, from falls, from bacterial infections, and they're also experiencing asbestos and siligodust exposure and a lot of potentially fatal respiratory diseases. So frankly, we're not even yet fully aware of all of the risks that these workers face. I had a worker yesterday who told me that he had a strong intuition that he'd

get sick after working a school job after Hurricane Michael. He went in and stayed in his hazmat suit too long in a school that was too hot because he was being pressured to work. Now, when he he goes into really hot buildings where there's heat and moisture trapped, his hands start burning. That's three years later and he's starting to feel the symptoms. It is possible to create a safer environment than the workers have, but there's just no infrastructure for them, no regulation, nowhere to complain. And because it's a completely private and subcontracted industry, it's also very hard to hold companies up the food chain accountable. Yeah, I mean, what are some of the policy protections that you think could help now? I mean, if you could talk directly to President

Biden and say, here's what needs to happen on a policy level for this labor force to be protected and to succeed and to thrive, what would you say? Well, firstly, it's unconscionable that these workers are earning as little as $10, $11, $12 an hour. Secondly, it's unconscionable that workers are living under their cars. It would be very easy. for the federal government, because so much federal money is funding this work for them to attach a minimum wage and health and safety standards. Oh, that seems so basic. Yeah, yeah. It seems completely basic, and it's crazy that we don't do it.

Look, right now, there is a base camp for the National Guard. FEMA officials in Louisiana are staying in hotels, but the workers who are doing the rebuilding with their hands, are sleeping under their cars to protect themselves from rain. So I spoke to more than 100 workers and experts who deal in this terrain, and there were just so many stories that stuck with me because it's so diverse the struggles these workers face. One of the stories came from Mariano Alvarado, who now works with Resilience Force. Yes, my number is Mariano, Alexander Alvarado Moreno.

I'm of Honduras. So Mariano came here from Honduras, and he himself was directly affected by the climate crisis because he was a shrimp farmer, and he found that due to the changing environment there, he really couldn't make ends meet. And so he came to the U.S. He helped rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. He started working more and more storms after that. And so Socket encountered him in a really devastating situation in 2018. He got an accident in Panama City. He got an accident in Panama City. With the company that he drove from here, a me, a company of here in New Orleans, to work at Panama City.

It's a company that works here in New Orleans, and they take everybody to Panama City. These guys that were putting in the blue tarp, a big storm shows up, and he falls from the top of the roof to the concrete. And he got a headbreak. really bad. They took him inside an ambulance to the hospital and that's where they left them. I just want to pause on that for a second to make sure that it's totally clear. Mariano's employer

basically pushed him in the middle of a rainstorm to keep working on a roof without the proper protections like a harness. And then after Mariano fell, his employer brought him to the hospital but essentially just left him in a coma and no one there really even knew. who he was. Yes, the doctors, when I just

recorded a little. When I started to remember a little bit, doctors started to ask

for my family or my relatives and they didn't see anybody there because I

was alone and nobody was with me. When we first saw you we didn't know if you would

live. The really that it costs, no? Because that all what has lived

one and, well. It's okay, man. It's okay, man. It's okay, man. For that I

have uned to the organization for that not going to this. That's why I joined the organization because I don't want

this to happen to another person. I want to stop this. That's a resilience force worker named Mariano Elvarado. Our story continues in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We're listening to Sarah Stillman's reporting on rebuilding workers the people who respond to hurricanes, fires, floods, and other climate-related disasters. It's mainly a migrant workforce, largely undocumented, lacking many of the protections that are normally in place for construction workers. As dangerous as things are on the job for resilience workers, they also face a lot of hazards outside of work.

And some of these actually come from law enforcement, from the police and from immigration enforcement. And I saw this firsthand in a different city in Louisiana, like Charles. And like Charles suffered not just one but two major hurricanes last year. And for a while, the town really welcomed the workers. But then, you know, a few months into the rebuilding effort, the police started to crack down. I actually spoke to a woman named

I actually spoke to a woman named Senya and she was selling food in the Lake Charles Home Depot last December and also doing rebuilding work herself when one day the police showed up with a drone. She was out there with another lady selling food and she never realized that

you know, police used drones And at that moment, she just heard someone screaming police. I leave the camper of my car, boom, so tranquil. I tell you, don't come again. Because you come again, I'll tell you, I'll give a ticket and that never will forget. She got inside the car really quickly and then saw the police screaming at her.

And he told her, if you come here again, I'm going to give you a ticket that you're never going to forget. And then, so what happened after that? arrest them to a She said that they put them to a site and started giving them tickets, $1,500, $2,000

ticket. You know, she felt terrible that she was the only one who didn't ended up getting the ticket and all of these people never came back after that. You know, they're being treated as dirty rags that are disposable just because they already had covered

their sealings and everything has been already rebuilt. I called Socket a few months ago when he was in Lake Charles, and he was trying to find a way to get the police to stop criminalizing the workers. And it's interesting, you know, since the fight on immigration reform nationally has just moved so slowly, Socket and his team, they're often left trying to improve these workers' relationships on a very local level, mayor by mayor. So when I called him, he and his team were just headed out to the corner to recruit workers for a meeting with the mayor of Lake Charles. Hang on one second. And naturally he was not going to show up empty-handed. Ooh, look at that wonderful yellow glow.

He's making like, he's making like 20 tortillas, tortilla espionola. Awesome. So you're about to go deliver all of these eggs to the workers? And then what happens after that? What's the agenda? Yeah, we'll be going to the Home Depot with 16 tortillas Española in hand. a loaf of bread and coffee. And later today, the mayor will be sitting down and meeting with us.

I don't think he's expecting us to come in with immigrant workers. Yeah. And can we talk about the mayor? Like, how has there been any contact with him so far? What's that relationship like at this point as you go into this conversation today? Well, the mayor is an avowed conservative, but we're hoping that he's, practical in the face of what he has to carry out. Hurricanes, floods, and fires either make people much more ideological or much more pragmatic and

practical than they've ever been about how we're going to conduct this recovery, who's going to carry it out. We've heard that before from very conservative mayors who've turned around and decided to throw their lot in with the workers. and we're hoping that Nick Hunter, this mayor, will follow suit because he needs these workers. Hey, how are you doing? Good afternoon, mayor. I'm Nick. Good to meet you, mayor.

Nice to meet you. What's your name? And unfortunately, the mayor's office wouldn't let our producer in to record. I don't think we were 100% clear on what the meeting was about and given that this is an introductory meeting. But the mayor opens the door and greets them warmly, and then they all, funneled into his office. All right. How are you? I'm Nick. So, but I think the mayor, he was good.

Half an hour was not too much time to explain what happened, but I think he wanted to work with us. What I truly saw was that he is a person that seems like he's very open and willing to try to help this city and to listen to us. That's what I got from it. I think the moment in the meeting that was the most important was when he said, the city is recovering thanks to you. And that was a significant moment, a small one, but really significant. Saul, you really jumped in and you asked for the meeting with the chief

police. It'll take more pushing to get that meeting, you know, but that's our next test is when we can get that meeting. So it may seem like a meeting with the mayor is a really, small step. And it is. I mean, it's one piece in this much, much larger puzzle that resilience force and other worker rights groups are trying to solve. But the real endgame for Socket is getting better legal infrastructure, getting stronger labor standards to protect workers. And in part, that really comes down to legislation. So, you know, for instance, resilience force has been working directly with members of Congress like Primala Jayapal and Joaquin Castro. Jaya Paul's bill would create a two-year

path to citizenship for undocumented essential workers. But frankly, most legislators have no idea about the real challenges that resilience workers are facing every day. I think about Mariano Alvarado, the man who suffered the terrible head injury in Florida, and I think about what he said that he wants lawmakers to know about his own life and the lives of his colleagues. He wants to know that what we're doing, a lot of them do not do we do for the monetary,

for the money that they're going to pay, but for help to reconstructing the city. He wants Congress to know that these workers, what they're doing is not just about making money. They're also doing it because they really want to help rebuild these cities. He sees what the disaster that has passed, one of the desolation in the city. He sees what these disasters do to a city.

He says, you know, the desolation that they cause, you know, how the workers are really the first ones there cleaning up and moving away the trash and helping people to return to their homes. And for Mariano, that feels like satisfaction doing that work. And that's really what he wants lawmakers to know that these workers are performing a job that the climate crisis has rendered completely necessary for our whole collective functioning.

I think we all know that these years ahead, they are going to bring more brutal hurricanes, more awful floods like the ones we recently had here in New York, more terrifying wildfires and heat waves, more than any of us is really prepared to handle. And so interdependence isn't just some far-off hypothetical thing. It's really what these workers are putting into practice every day. And what's at stake is not just these workers' fates, but also our collective shared survival. Sarah Stillman, she's reported on labor and human rights from Mexico to Bangladesh, to Afghanistan, and more.

And you can read all of her work at New Yorker.com. And if you missed anything in our program today, you can find the podcast of the New Yorker Radio Hour anywhere you listen to podcasts. I'm David Ramnik, and thanks for joining me. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-pruddered. production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado.

This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Avey Corrieu, Riannon, Calli, David Krasnau, Gauphin and Putubuelle, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. We had additional help this week from Joe Plourd, Harrison Keithline, Tegan Wendland, Betsy Shepard, Priscilla, Alabelle. and our old friend Riannon Corby. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.