By Jamilah King

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. When it comes to cleaning up oil from the nation’s biggest environmental disaster, subcontractors at BP just can’t seem to get it right. The Michigan Messenger’s reporting that a Texas company that’s been contracted by BP has been hiring undocumented workers and forcing them to work ridiculous amounts of overtime in hazardous conditions:

The Texas company, Halmark, has brought hundreds of workers to Battle Creek, putting them up in hotels and putting them to work cleaning oil-soaked islands and shorelines along the Kalamazoo river. The workers are expected to work 12 to 14 hour shifts, seven days a week, for which they receive $800 a week — in cash — a hotel room, and food while on the job sites.

After receiving an initial tip from a Halmark worker who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, the Michigan Messenger visited the rally site on Saturday where the workers are picked up every morning. While speaking to about two dozen men there, half of them admitted to being undocumented workers. All of them asked not to be identified.

Workers are allegedly forced to use the bathroom in the wooded areas they’re cleaning up because supervisors refuse to install portable toilets on site or ferry workers to nearby restrooms.

Back in June, the oil spill clean up effort became the center of controversy after a Louisiana sherrif called in federal immigration officials to round up workers. St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jack Stephens eventually admitted to requesting the visits by federal agents for “trainings.“

The Environmental Protection Agency is looking into these latest allegations of safety violations.

Article source: http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/08/bp_still_putting_undocumented_clean-up_workers_at_risk.html

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