With no homes, no jobs and no cash, evacuees from Hurricane Katrina began lining up at state unemployment offices across the South over the long weekend, seeking work and income to help restart their lives.
Companies are responding with thousands of job offers communicated through relief agencies, state job networks, the Internet, and scraps of paper taped to windows at refugee centers.
"I'm hoping to get a job tomorrow. I wanted a job today. I needed a job yesterday," said Robert Jones, 38 years old, who has been holed up in a Houston hotel room with 13 family members since fleeing New Orleans Aug. 27, when evacuation of the area was urged.
Mr. Jones, who was bell captain at the elegant Hotel St. Marie in New Orleans' French Quarter, said he has to find work in Houston to support his family, though he still hopes to return to his former employer if the hotel reopens. His wife Serena, an X-ray technician, also is looking for a job.
While companies are stepping up to hire the displaced, the mass hunt for jobs is complicated by the evacuees' circumstances. Many have none of the documentation required by employers to prove their identities, no address or telephone where they can be reached, and no cars to get to jobs in the sprawling southern cities where most have landed. Even if they get jobs, some lack even a driver's license or other ID to cash paychecks.
"Many didn't have time to grab anything," said Ron Rodriguez, director of operations at WorkSource, the contractor that runs 35 state employment offices in the 13-county area surrounding Houston.
Houston is a focal point of refugee-relief efforts. The state jobs agency organized a special employment tent with computers and phone lines on the grounds of the city's Astrodome, where evacuees could register for unemployment-insurance benefits and apply for jobs.
On Friday, about 500 refugees lined up at the state employment office next to the Astrodome, where 15,000 displaced people were housed over the weekend. Hundreds more appeared at other offices in the area, emerging from hotels and private homes as they realized their stay was going to be a long one. Several local employers arrived to hire evacuees on the spot at an impromptu job fair held by the state employment agency Saturday at the Astrodome.
Anissa Cantin, owner of a small security firm, Templar Star Protective Services, was interviewing candidates for 15 to 20 positions paying $7 to $10 an hour. But she noted that she couldn't even contact supervisors for job references "because their employers have just disappeared."
Firms that supply temporary labor emerged as a conduit for jobs for many evacuees. Staffing giant Adecco SA, a Swiss firm with U.S. offices, said it already has placed 15 evacuees in jobs ranging from delivery clerks to warehouse stockers in Shreveport, La., and is blasting out emails and letters asking employers for more positions. Milwaukee-based Manpower Inc., the nation's largest temporary-worker agency, has had at least a dozen corporations, large and small, specifically request workers who have lost their jobs because of the storm. Manpower says it also has been working to recruit some of the evacuees on its own, and has found jobs so far for at least 300.
Houston temp firm Staffing Etc. was at the Astrodome job fair Saturday hiring evacuees to provide cleanup services at the refugee shelters. Recruiter Janie Muniz was hiring for about 300 jobs, though "We need all the help we can get. The numbers keep going up," she said.
On craigslist.com, a Web site with classified Help Wanted ads, employers have been reaching out in scores for Katrina victims willing to permanently relocate. Mama's Manna Bakery in Little Rock, Ark., advertised for an experienced wedding-cake designer, noting, "Preference shown to persons displaced by Katrina." Others looking for Katrina evacuees included Deluxe Restaurant Group in the Washington, D.C., area, and the small town of Chewelah, Wash., which said it needs a pharmacist at $40 an hour.
