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By Doug Cunningham

In New Orleans and in other parts of the gulf hit hard by hurricanes unions are constantly working to help rebuild the devastated communities while getting their members back to work. Bert Santos is a General President's representative with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades working in the gulf. He says a huge influx of workers from outside the U.S. and from other states within the U.S. are working for cash with no benefits.

[Bert Santos 1] : "There's a great influx of foreign workers and out of state workers that are comin' in here doin' the work. What we're finding is they're usually working for less than what our scale was or what the prevailing wage Davis-bacon scale was."

Santos says 70-80 percent of the members of the painter's union are back, but just 6 - 9 percent of the rebuilding work is going to local people.

[Santos 2] : "There's people getting taken advantage of. I ran across one contractor - TDC out of South Carolina, the Dalrymple Company - he had about a hundred and fifty Latino workers working for him. And we just heard a foreman yelling at these guys so we walked over there and started speaking with them. And we find out that they're down here for a month and they haven't received one paycheck yet."