Mayor announces flood of layoffs
Profiteering corporations feast as city starves
By
Monica Moorehead
Published Oct 6, 2005 2:15 AM
Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans announced at
an Oct. 4 press conference that 3,000 city workers will permanently lose their
jobs as part of the continuing economic fallout from the Hurricane Katrina
disaster. This amounts to about half the city’s workforce. These workers
will receive their last paychecks between Oct. 14 and Oct. 21.
Nagin
stated that “no revenue stream” was the main cause for the massive
firings, which will not include firefighters, police, sew age and water workers
or emergency medical personnel. The usual $13 million in monthly sales tax
revenues for the city has been non-existent since the hurricane hit New Orleans
on Aug. 31.
Nagin also said that these layoffs could be just the beginning
of others to come, and that no one should be surprised if he announces another
round of layoffs within the next few months. The layoffs will most assuredly
lead to the loss of even more homes on top of the ones destroyed by the
hurricane, along with other forms of deepening suffering.
Nagin stated
that he could not get any assistance from the state or federal governments in
the form of loans to help pay these workers, and that $50 million the city has
sought in credit from private lenders remains “sketchy.”
Where are the billions of dollars that Bush and Congress
promised—just last month—would go to help rebuild New Orleans and
assist the Katrina survivors? Why are huge sums going to Halliburton and other
companies but not to New Orleans?
Why isn’t the federal government
using every resource at its disposal to bring relief to this beleaguered city
and its residents—the way it did in the past when it bailed out the
executives and stockholders of the Chrysler Corporation?
Why is the cost
of the economic devastation caused by this hurricane being put on the backs of
the workers and the poor, who are overwhelmingly African-American?
It has
become more and more apparent that the capitalist class, both locally and
nationally, along with the Louisiana governor and the White House, are
exploiting this situation to attempt to change the economic and social landscape
of New Orleans to meet the demands of wealthy whites. This means that
African-American, Latin@, and other people of color and poor whites will not be
welcomed back to New Orleans. In fact, it has also been reported that landlords
in New Orleans are doing everything they can to evict tenants who were forced to
evacuate to other areas to escape the hurricane.
A march on New Orleans
has been called for Dec. 10, Inter na tional Human Rights Day, to once again
demand real justice, including the right to return, for the Katrina survivors.
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