NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 21 - At lunchtime, the music is loud and lively at the Five O'Clock Grille on Bourbon Street. Waiters polish tables. Bartenders pour drinks from rows of gleaming bottles. And the restaurant's doors are thrown open, as if to make it easier for a passer-by to become a patron.þþBut behind the welcoming facade, the restaurant is grappling with a staffing crisis, not unlike the city's as a whole. Only about 20 of the 108 employees who worked for the owners before Hurricane Katrina are back on the job. Among the waiters are five single men just arrived from Kentucky and living in trailers. There is a ÿhelp wantedÿ sign in the windows, and one longtime employee is hundreds of miles away, waiting for unemployment benefits. The hours are shorter, and the menu is limited.þþÿThe majority are not coming back,ÿ the general manager, Irvin Dussom, said shortly before making a phone call to try to find a local apartment for a former worker. ÿThey are having trouble finding housing here, or they are satisfied with the housing where they are.ÿþþLarge numbers of workers who lived in New Orleans are now scattered throughout Louisiana or neighboring states, unable to return to flood-damaged houses and leaving hundreds of businesses unable to reopen or operating below capacity. Many are out of contact, or have settled elsewhere to enroll their children in schools.þþSome positions are being filled by people from other states looking for new job opportunities in construction or, as in the case of the Five O'Clock Grille, service jobs.þþEven as many jobs go begging, unemployment has spiked, driven not only by the dislocation of workers but also by the shuttering of flood-devastated businesses in no condition to reopen. Since the hurricane, the Louisiana Labor Department has received 296,000 unemployment insurance claims. In all of 2004, there were a bit more than 193,000.þþThere are also longer-term implications. With jobs lost, shuffled and solicited, the work-force crisis is changing the very demography of New Orleans.þþWith schools still closed, for example, families have migrated to other states to look for work and stability. Many of the newer workers here are younger and single, able to double up in apartments. Better-off and more mobile workers, some commuting from nearby areas, have begun to replace workers who could not afford cars.þþOne of the new waiters at the Five O' Clock Grille is Shelby Molohon, 21, who drove 15 hours from Kentucky to repair roofs. When that job fell through, he drifted into the French Quarter. ÿI like the area,ÿ he said. ÿI want to stay.ÿþþSome families have become single-parent households, with a mother or father absent out of necessity. ÿA lot of people are doing what I am doing: they are commuting, and their family is staying somewhere else,ÿ said JoAnn Madison, a 40-year old waitress who reclaimed her job at the Sheraton here, where she lives in a hotel room while her husband, who is not working, and son live in Baton Rouge.þþThe French Quarter emerged relatively unscathed from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the flooding they brought. But beyond its balconies and courtyards, swaths of residential areas are still without housing, electricity, schools, water, gas and public transportation. Without housing for workers, many businesses cannot open. And without services from businesses and government, many workers will not return.þþÿYou've got this real chicken-and-egg problem,ÿ said Peter Ricchiuti, an assistant dean at Tulane University's business school.þþGov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said at a recent news conference that restoring the hospitality sector, a cornerstone of the New Orleans economy, was a high priority for the state. Mayor C. Ray Nagin said the city was trying to get trailers or other temporary housing for workers, possibly tent cities. The Louisiana Labor Department's plans include job fairs, transportation services and Internet résumé-matching.þþBut it is not clear how long it will take to repair the symbiosis between housing and jobs.þþÿOn a long-term basis, we have got to make sure to rebuild and repopulate these cities with the folks who lived there before,ÿ said Andrew Kopplin, the governor's chief of staff. ÿIt is a mismatch of where jobs are available and where workers are.ÿ þþMr. Kopplin added that in some cases, oil platform workers and pipe fitters had found that they could earn more money driving debris trucks for the cleanup, making it harder for businesses to restart.þþIn New Orleans alone, 81,000 businesses were disrupted in some way by the hurricanes, Mr. Kopplin said. Hotels have tried to adapt by cleaning rooms less often, restaurants by limiting hours and offering smaller menus.þþAt the landmark Napoleon House restaurant in the French Quarter, the owner's son, Nicholas Impastato, 35, pitches in to cook the lunch fare of jambalaya, gumbo and red beans and rice.þþÿTwo of the guys who worked here for years and years, they are set for a year in Ohio,ÿ Mr. Impastato said, pausing in the restaurant's courtyard, where ceiling fans rotated lazily overhead. ÿThey have no home to come back to.ÿþþSome who might like to return are still stuck in nearby cities working at jobs beneath their qualifications just to make ends meet. Robert Myer, an owner of Express Personnel Services in Baton Rouge, said he had placed teachers in administrative jobs and athletic coaches as assistants with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.þþÿThere are people who are changing fields completely,ÿ Mr. Myer said. ÿThey say, 'I just have to work,' and don't know if their companies are going back. Then there are people who say they want to go back but they have to educate their kids. Or they can't let their kids live in a house where there is mold growing.ÿþþDebra Young, a 52-year old teacher from New Orleans, went to a job fair in Baton Rouge and picked up an application for a rental car company, but for days could not bring herself to fill it out.þþÿIt is not easy to find a job here,ÿ Ms. Young said. ÿThey want some of us to go to Burger King, but that's not why I went to school. I am trying to find something close to what I studied.ÿþþKarin Peri-Ramos, a 39-year-old divorced mother of three, earned about $33,000 a year as floor manager of the Five O'Clock Grille before leaving her flooded house in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans. She settled into a borrowed house in Marietta, Ga., enrolled her children in school and is living on $4,300 from FEMA as she waits for unemployment benefits. For now she is trying to keep her foot in the door at the restaurant, driving seven to eight hours each way every other weekend to work, hoping the management will stick with her.þþÿI want to go back home,ÿ she said. ÿBut not now. I don't have a school for my children and don't have electricity. The gas is off.ÿþþMs. Peri-Ramos says she worked through the aftermath of previous hurricanes, but like thousands of other people is now unable to return to her damaged house. Instead of a salary, she is counting on a new currency: loyalty from the Five O'Clock Grille.þþÿThey could hire someone to take my place,ÿ she said, ÿbut I never left them before.ÿþþ
Source: NY Times
