Gulfport, Miss. – Robert Thorpe and Tim Tucker had options: They could have as many days as they wanted of $8- to $10-an-hour labor, well above what they’d been making back home framing houses near Petersburg, Tenn.
But that pay would be dinged for the usual range of taxes. The two were hoping for cash without all those annoying deductions the government insists on.
“Looks like we’ve got some room to bargain around here,” Thorpe said Monday morning. “There’s an awful lot of work to be done.”
In the market of day labor – “work today, paid today,” the temporary help agencies boast – the tables have turned. Whereas day laborers outnumbered the temporary unskilled jobs before Hurricane Katrina, now it’s a workers’ market.
An account representative for Labor Ready, Tammy Owen, said that before Katrina tore southern Mississippi asunder, she could offer work to about 75 laborers on a typical day. Most days she had to turn them away.
Now she can easily offer 300 jobs a day and is lucky to scrounge two dozen takers. Before Katrina, the tight job market and Mississippi’s traditional low pay kept the offers hugging the minimum wage of $5.50 an hour, maybe $6.50 on a good day.
Today, with Katrina’s mess visible on every block, wages for an unskilled laborer begin at $8 and often run to $11 an hour.
“I’ve had contractors hanging around out front taking people away before we can get them in the door,” she said. “It’s hard to compete when they pay cash.”
She says the laborers who opt for the cash jobs put themselves at risk – no workers’ compensation, no disability coverage.
