Jobs in Iraq Info Page 2
Americans
take jobs in Iraq when prospects dim at home
He planned to work until he could draw his Social Security," said his wife of 40 years, Karen. A roadside bomb put an end to that plan. Cayton is one of about 30 contract workers who have been killed in Iraq. Among them is an Italian security guard executed on videotape Wednesday. More than 20 workers have been taken captive by militants in recent weeks, and 200 or so have been wounded in the year since the war supposedly ended, and the rebuilding began. For many of the contract workers and their families, the job has not been the easy money they had hoped for. Despite all this, plenty of people are willing to risk a year in Iraq doing mundane jobs for three and four times what they could get at home. "I know a lot of people like that," said Jay Cox, an East Texas electrical engineer who at 50 is considering a tour in Iraq. "They're being forced into a Third World hostility situation just to feed their family -- and they're grateful for the opportunity to go." An estimated 15,000 contract workers are helping to rebuild the war-torn country. In recent weeks, they have increasingly become the targets of insurgents trying to end the U.S. occupation. Tommy Hamill, 43, of Macon, Miss., was reduced to driving a milk truck after hard times forced him to sell the dairy farm that had been in his family for 30 years. With two children at home and a wife in need of open-heart surgery, Hamill thought he could not pass up an offer from a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, of $80,000 base pay to drive a fuel truck in Iraq for a year. Hamill was eight months into the job when Iraqi militants attacked his convoy last Friday. Hamill's kidnappers vowed to kill him on Easter if U.S. troops did not leave the city of Fallujah, but that deadline passed with no word about his fate. A former Oregonian, Roy Buckmaster, 47, died Nov. 2 in Fallujah when a roadside bomb exploded underneath the sport utility vehicle in which he was riding. An Air Force veteran and graduate of Rex Putnam High School, Buckmaster was a civilian contractor working for EOD Technology, a Tennessee-based company that disposes of unexploded ordnance and munitions. Safety record as trucker As for Cayton, he had logged more than 3.6 million accident-free miles in 34 years as a trucker with Consolidated Freightways. The safety record earned the West Virginia native a truck with his name on it and an even greater honor -- the job of hauling mangled steel from the World Trade Center to California to be turned into a Sept. 11 memorial. But none of that earned Cayton an easy retirement. When Consolidated went bankrupt in 2002, Cayton's pension was not enough to cover his health insurance. He signed on with Kellogg Brown & Root in June, quickly rising from driver to convoy commander and safety director with 50 truckers beneath him. On Feb. 23, the Army veteran was traveling in a truck south of Baghdad when a bomb exploded and killed him. The standard KBR life insurance policy: $25,000 and an additional $25,000 for "accidental death." The escalating violence has left contractors and their families back home torn. About a year ago, the little trucking company Bill Hetrick started in Hilliard, Ohio, went under as the economy went south. Hetrick hoped a yearlong hitch hauling ice from Kuwait to Baghdad and beyond for KBR "might help catch us up," said his wife of 18 years, Georganne. But on Monday night, Georganne Hetrick received a frantic call. Change of mind "I'm done," said a rattled Bill Hetrick, who had just emerged from a bomb shelter. "There's too much going on over here." The next day, however, the 49-year-old Hetrick called his wife back to say some colleagues had talked him into toughing it out. Georganne Hetrick did not know what to say. "I don't like to tell him that he has to come home," said Georganne Hetrick, who is working at her family's restaurant while caring for the couple's 10-year-old son, Jack, and 9-year-old twins, Jessica and John. "But I don't want him to think I don't care what happens to him. "But I think it's time something's done. They need to make it safer or tell them to come home." Stacy Clark decided not to wait for things to get safer. The 36-year-old from Cleveland, Texas, returned home Monday, barely four months into his contract with KBR. His convoy was ambushed last week, and a friend narrowly escaped after his truck was blown out from under him. "I seen my life flash in front of my eyes in an instant," Clark said. Clark was laid off about a year ago and was back working for less money than he thought he needed to give his wife and four boys the life he wanted for them. Iraq gave him a better appreciation for what he has, no matter how humble. "I'm a rich man," he said. Hetrick told his wife that as many as 100 fellow contractors had decided to leave Iraq. Companies doing business there have refused to say whether they are having trouble retaining workers or recruiting new ones. Jobs to go around But a job fair Thursday in Houston -- with a call for experienced electricians, heating and air conditioning mechanics, plumbers, laundry workers, carpenters and food-service workers -- was an indication there are plenty of jobs to go around. "If they called me tomorrow, I'd pack my bag and say, 'I'm on my way,' " said Ed Martinez, 51, a school bus driver in Morrison, Colo., who put in an application with KBR months ago. The Army veteran makes $28,000 a year now but thinks he could retire sooner and more comfortably after a stint in Iraq. "Some of the people here at work say, 'Are you crazy,' " he said. "I said, 'We're born. We're born to die.' " Clark's wife, Donna, said it is easy to be seduced by the money. Her advice to other would-be contract workers would be to sacrifice some comforts, not your life. "Get two jobs, three jobs," she said. "Whatever it takes." From: http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/business/1082116675197140.xml
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