( – promoted by buhdydharma )
(cross-posted at firefly-dreaming)
(Click on photo to enlarge)
This is a “Flotel.” It is a huge barge upon which pods, made of corrugated steel, are stacked two high and three wide. Each pod holds 12 bunks. There are 4 bunks to a “room”
(Click on photo to enlarge)
There is a common area for eating, showering and leisure activities.
The men working for BP, in helping with the clean-up, are expected to put in 12 hour days, for 18 days straight, and then, they are to receive 3 days off. This means workers living in these “flotels” spend 24 hours a day there for 18 days straight. And it means being away from their families for a long time at a stretch.
Although workers had been promised motels, BP brought in these flotels, because of, or so they say,
One of the logistical difficulties in combating the Gulf oil disaster has been finding housing for the thousands of workers brought in by BP and its contractors to work on cleanup and containment operations . . . .
However,
BP told a New Orleans Fox affiliate that the flotels were useful for keeping workers close to cleanup sites, thereby eliminating travel time.
Hundreds of fishermen learned July 20th that they were to go and live on these “flotels” and were very upset about the accommodations, the safety and even, possible disease. They went on strike.
“We’re on strike, so we’re not going to work,” Jules Dag told WDSU, an NBC affiliate in New Orleans. “I’m not living on no quarterboat,” Dag said. “When I signed up, the agreement was we lived at a motel or somewhere they supplied us to live.”
Dag said that some workers have no choice but to accept lodging at a flotel because they’ve yet to be paid and have depleted whatever savings they had as a result.
“We ain’t been paid yet,” Dag said. “We’ve used almost everything we got to live out here already. Forty days, we ain’t seen nothing yet. What we supposed to do for money?“ (emphasis mine)
The quarters are very cramped, more like a prison cell and there is no privacy to speak of. A lot of the workers had no choice but to go and live on a flotel because they had little or no money.
One worker compared the living conditions to jail, saying, “If I wanted to be in prison, I would break the law and go to jail.” Privacy is scant, typically limited to little more than a retractable curtain, with common areas for showers, eating and leisure activities. The flotels are powered by generators, with each pod holding 12 bunks. The close quarters made another worker concerned about disease.
Can you imagine living like that to help clean up BP’s criminal negligence disaster? Can you imagine going without a paycheck for 40 days, working 12 hours each day?
A great many of these people helping in the clean-up are the very people, whose businesses/livelihoods and jobs BP has destroyed!!
And BP can just do whatever it wants — nothing to stop them. MF’s!!
20 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
Nothing but insult to injury — over and over!
Everything that is going on down there looks more and more like an experiment in corporate feudalism. The people there are being treated like peasants. They haven’t been PAID? WTF? BP is literally buying off police departments to act as their enforcement arm to illegally keep people from documenting the disaster and these cleanup workers haven’t been even paid? WTF?
What the fuck is this .. the British East Indies company? Where is the 20 billion Obama made BP “promise”? Why are they still in the position of being able to say who gets what? Why are they in the position of making people supply reams of documentation about damages? STILL?
Pay your fucking workers FIRST BP … why are the people who are victimized being treated like they’re the ones responsible. Why isn’t anybody from BP going to jail?
Here’s an idea .. let’s take BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward and the rest of them fuckers and stick THEM in a flotilla. This is beyond ridiculous. We talk about profits before people, but these people have turned it into a fucking circus.
what entity, once BP declares bankruptcy, is going to pay for all these cancer treatments.
Author
for the “lift.”
Because IMO, BP is just outright sequestering the cleanup crews from media access. The damage these cleanup workers will see will not be fresh and readily available to reporters. And when they finally are released to go home, any specifics they see, will not be fresh. It will all be a continuous blur. Details will become hazy and challengeable. Long hours and fatigue will enhance this effect. Prolonged separation from loved ones will make them reluctant to meet with the media as they will be viewed as another invasion to their privacy.
Another advantage to housing cleanup workers in a “military style” quarters situation for a prolonged period is the ability to inject a certain amount of brain washing at a subconscious level into an individual. This type of ubiquitous and subliminal programming can affect a persons principle and ethical belief system. Anyone who has been to basic training can tell you of their patriotism. They, including myself, have been indoctrinated into that belief system.
There is other programming that takes place too. Often times the individual is unaware of it. One example is an automatic and completely involuntary response to “command voice”. If you ever get the chance and have the courage to do so, when entering the presence of a group of soldiers, utter the command “Attention”: “ATTENnn”- “TION”.
Then watch in fricking amazement at what happens. All talking will immediately cease. Then everyone will stop what they are doing, stand up, place there arms down by their sides, look directly ahead (most often, but not always), and wait for the next command. This will take place in a matter of milliseconds. If you don’t take charge and begin to speak, or if you don’t know what to do, then the hierarchy structure will take over and the command “At Ease” will be issued and normality will return.
Minister of England have made sure the pensioners over there will rest soundly knowing their BP investments are safe. It’s the Obama doctrine of bipartisanship going biAtlantic making an art out of political incest to keep their corporate voyeurs tossing coins. (I was going to use a much nastier metaphor at the end, but I thought better).
however, according to a recent article in The Nation magazine, BP has been enjoying the services of free prison labor, courtesy of the state of Louisiana, which boasts this country’s highest incarceration rates. A full 70% of its 39,000 inmates are African-American.
And, many in the “America, love it or leave it” crowd seem to conveniently forget that BP is not an American-based corporation and that oil obtained from the Gulf of Mexico does not necessarily end up in our gas tanks.