Workers Hired for Gulf Oil Cleanup Find Jobs Taken by Locals

Prospective workers who traveled long distances to clean up oil in the Gulf of Mexico are finding themselves turned away as BP says it prefers to hire local residents, the New York Times reports. Workers from Texas, Mississippi, California and other states say they signed contracts to work in the Gulf and were under the impression they would be employed for weeks, only to find themselves relieved of duty soon after starting work.

A group of 202 workers from Mississippi took a bus to Pensacola, Fla., where they'd been hired to work on cleanup operations. Many had undergone 40 hours of hazardous materials training. But just a few days after their 200-plus mile trip, they were replaced with Floridians.

"Cleaning the oil properly has become secondary to employing people from the right state," said Glenn Welstad, the chief executive of Command Center, a staffing company that recruited and trained workers from as far away as California, told the Times. "If they wanted to charge full steam ahead with the cleanup, they would let the most experienced workers have the jobs."

BP has hired over 25,000 contract workers to perform jobs like skimming oil off the surface of the water, removing tar balls from beaches, and laying inflatable boom. About 100 subcontractors have assisted with the hiring. BP said that shortly after the spill it scrambled to find qualified workers, and has gradually shifted to local workers with the right skills as they are found. The company said it hoped to avoid inconveniencing out-of-state contractors.

Governors of the four affected states have pressured BP to hire local residents, many of whom have been left jobless by the spill. BP has doubled the number of residents working on the cleanup over the past month. Now, 86 percent of cleanup workers in Florida are residents. In Alabama, 82 percent are residents and in Mississippi, 83 percent.