Recovering From Katrina: Back To Work & Back To School
Thursday, September 08, 2005SUSIE GHARIB: While the cleanup continues along the Gulf coast tonight, new efforts are under way to rebuild the lives of Katrina`s refugees. For the thousands of people who now call Houston, Texas home, that means finding food, shelter, and jobs. As we continue our ongoing series "Recovering from Katrina," Washington bureau chief Darren Gersh is in Houston tonight, looking at how its newest residents are starting new lives.
DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Recruiter Dennis Lyons came to the shelter in the Houston convention center with a mandate from his boss: find electricians to help repair the destruction left by Katrina.
UNKNOWN: Are you willing to go to the Gulf coast? Sure.
GERSH: Lyons is one of the many employers bringing much-needed work to survivors of hurricane Katrina.
DENNIS LYONS, TRADE SOURCE RECRUITER: Our job order is to get 30 to 40 people on our job site starting next week.
GERSH: The first to interview is Ray Sellers from New Orleans. If his tests and paperwork check out, Ray will be on the job Monday.
RAY SELLERS, HURRICANE EVACUEE: As soon as I get my electrical license from the state of Texas, so hopefully some time next week.
GERSH: In Houston the mission at the hurricane shelters has shifted from survival to social services. This morning, buses rolled from downtown, taking newly registered students to school. For the adults, the job now is to look for work. State Representative Rick Noriega is in charge of the aid effort at the Houston convention center. He says there`s no shortage of demand for skilled labor.
STATE REP. RICK NORIEGA, (D) HOUSTON: We always have a teacher shortage. We always have a nursing shortage. We always have some para- professional kind of needs. Those things are clear.
GERSH: This is the line to register for FEMA benefits and the front of the line stretches another 100 yards or so in that direction and stretches back perhaps two city blocks. Now the officials here in Houston believe the number of people who actually register for FEMA here in Houston will be the best indication of the potential work force coming into this city. There`s just one problem: the FEMA servers are crashing so frequently, it is delaying the registration process and making it difficult to get an accurate count. This isn`t the first time Texas has absorbed an exodus of workers from the Gulf coast. Pauline Gallien is managing the convention center job site for the Texas Workforce Commission. Gallien herself came to Houston as part of what the Louisiana newspapers called the brain drain of the 1980s and `90s, when educated workers left the Gulf coast for jobs in the booming Texas economy. Gallien says it`s happening again because of Katrina.
PAULINE GALLIEN, TEXAS WORKFORCE COMMISSION: We got a big drain. We got a massive drain. In the `80s and `90s, a lot of us left the state of Louisiana to come to the land of better opportunity in Texas, and I`ll tell you. I would say 40 to 50 percent of the people I`ve personally spoken to don`t plan to go back home. They want to work here.
GERSH: Job growth has been slow in Houston. Over the last year, the city has added roughly 30,000 jobs. But that is still better than the job market Sadie Hepburn left behind in St. Bernard, Louisiana.
SADIE HEPBURN, HURRICANE EVACUEE: St. Bernard, it was very, very scarce. You were lucky if you got a job within two days after you applied. It was maybe three months after you applied, they would call you back for a job.
GERSH: There are no good estimates, but it`s possible the Houston area may see another 100,000 workers join its post-Katrina ranks. That means more CPAs, lawyers and computer techs like Terran Guillory.
TERRAN GUILLORY, HURRICANE EVACUEE: It`s a nice place. I think I want to just relocate here and eventually open up a small business of my own.
GERSH: But Guillory is willing to take other jobs too. "Work is work," he says. Darren Gersh, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Houston.
