BP hired illegal workers hired to clean beaches

July 14-15, 2010

WMR has obtained photographic evidence of BP's use of illegal workers from Mexico and Jamaica being hired through out-of-state contractors.

Obama spoke at tent in Orange Beach, Alabama, surrounded by security and illegal beach clean up workers from Mexico and Jamaica. [Photo courtesy of John Caylor]

When President Obama visited Orange Beach, Alabama, last month, he spoke in a tent facility, with selective guests only present, that was near the staging area for the illegal workers being used by BP as clean up crews.

Photo-journalists attempting to take pictures of the illegal workers have been run off by BP security contractors.



Most of these BP contractor clean up workers are undocumented Mexicans and Jamaicans, according to local sources in Perdido Bay area. [Photos courtesy of John Caylor]

In May, the By County, Florida Sheriff's Department raided an illegal BP workers' staging area at the Panama City Marina and made a number of arrests. 

BP blamed subcontractors for the hiring of the illegals.

The illegals, many from New York and North Carolina, were hired by BP's Panama City clean up contractor SWS First Response.

It is sad that BP is not hiring locals in the Gulf coast. The Gulf coast is expected to lose more than a million jobs in the next 5 years because of the Deepwater oil spill.

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A Union On Deep Water Horizon could Have Averted Gulf Tragedy

07/09/10 Submitted by Doug Cunningham on July 8, 2010 - 5:03p

Hindsight is always better than foresight but Rightardia agrees that If union workers had been the Deepwater platform , the oil leak would have been averted.


Unions insist on safety and training for their workers. If a manager tells a worker do something that is illegal or unsafe, the worker can grieve the manager and submit a formal complaint. Try this is an on-union shop to see what happens.


Admittedly there are lots of bad workers but there are also plenty of bad managers.  The Deepwater disaster happened because management wanted to save three days of work at the expense of installing a cutoff valve.

If the Deepwater Horizon workers had been in a union with a strong safety standard written into their contract the Gulf oil spill disaster may never have happened. Dean Corgey, Vice-President of the Gulf Coast’s Seafarers International Union, told Chicago’s Labor Express radio that union safety provisions would have given the workers the power to refuse to work in unsafe conditions.

Corgey: “If the workers on the Deep Water Horizon had the ability to have that type of job protection and to be able if they were terminated for voicing there concerns that they would be able to rely on a grievance and arbitration procedure to protect them, I think those folks might be alive today and we might not have all that oil floatin' around out in the Gulf of Mexico."

Corgey says when Gulf workers are approached individually they often express desires to be in a union, but there’s strong employer hostility to unions throughout the region.

Corgey: “There's a culture of anti-unionism among the employees - and when I'm talking employers it's not just the oil companies, it's primarily the oil services which most of the workers work for. And there's a culture of anti-unionism out there that to be frank is disturbing, and we feel un-American."

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