A modest proposal

I realize that it's bad that the Convention Center has been hiring prison slave labor for many of the vanity projects for wealthy New Orleans insiders it spends its slush fund on.  And at first glance we would like to put a stop that.

And now, board member Robert “Tiger” Hammond told The Lens he’s going to try to create a living wage requirement for Convention Center contractors. Unlike the New Orleans city government, the Convention Center doesn’t have conditions for how much its contractors have to pay their workers. The Convention Center board made an attempt to create a living wage requirement in 2017, but it didn’t get off the ground.

“Stay tuned on that, because next month I’m bringing that up as a proposal again,” Hammond told The Lens. “We have a much friendlier board now and next month I will be bringing that issue back up to light on the living wage.”

Hammond is the President of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO, a union and labor advocacy organization.

“As a guy who represents labor, it doesn’t sit well when a person comes to me and says, ‘Wow, looks like you have to go to prison to get a job with the Convention Center these days,’ “ he said.

Hammond said he will propose that the Convention Center simply adopt and mirror the living wage ordinance used by the city, which requires contractors to pay employees a little over $11.19 per hour, adjusted each year for inflation.

On the other hand, I think a more elegant solution might be, if we actually put the corrupt operators who enable this system in the first place in prison themselves. That way we could pay Walt Leger 20 cents an hour to build fences and stuff. I mean if they're going to work for the tourism cabal anyway, they may as well do some actual work.