After Hurricane Ian, immigrants help with rebuilding. But will they get fair work conditions?

With every natural disaster comes recovery and reconstruction, the faster the better.

With disasters becoming more frequent cities and states are becoming more and more dependent on having workers available to do the hard, outdoor work to restore power and fix homes and buildings.

In response to that growing need, a non-profit called Resilience Force has started a national initiative to transform America’s response to disasters by organizing – and protecting – the often undocumented immigrant workers who do the disaster recovery work. It calls them ‘Resiliency Workers.’

Univison News spoke to its founder Saket Soni as he was driving into the disaster zone to meet workers arriving from all over the country.

“We've been getting calls from dozens of contractors, all on the hunt for workers,” he said. “They are desperate for a workforce and not just any workers but workers who are skilled, talented, who know how to do the work,” he added. Resilience Force offers to match those contractors with its pool of around 1,200 workers, as long as they agree to a set of standards. “We've already had some huge contractors sign on to our standards like fair pay, pay on time, zero tolerance for wage theft, good health and safety provisions. We're aiming for other contractors to sign on so that we can create an industry in which mistreating workers is not the way to get a gain a competitive advantage in the market,” said Soni.

[Univison News]: What is the mission of Resilience Force in Florida? Are you going to be structuring this labor force?

[Saket Soni]: We've been down here since just after the hurricane ed, since Friday. We're now at the point just now when the first responders are closing out search and rescue operations and ing the baton to resilience workers preparing to carry out the repairs. We will see convoys of resilience workers arrive over the next few weeks. And they'll dive into the work of firstly saving the homes that were left intact, getting up on roofs, hammering away, putting tarp on roofs, and then they'll move on to saving the bigger community infrastructure; schools, hospitals, eldercare facilities.

The economy of course, is all the resorts and hotels that got flooded in the storm surge. So, these workers, the resilience workers, will be also starting the work of restoring those properties. In other words, these workers are going to be the white blood cells of the post hurricane hit landscape. They're already beginning to arrive into the hubs of destruction: Fort Myers, Fort Charlotte. Naples, and other places. And our role will be to protect workers, make sure they're paid well and on time, have all the PPE and safety equipment that they need. We'll also be building bonds between workers and homeowners that they're helping, and local officials.

[Univison News]: Where will they stay and how many do you reckon will come?