The Oil’s Ripple Effect: Fewer Hours, No Job Security
Cashier Lynette Harvey fears the worst - that it’s the call from her boss to shut down the business.
These days when the phone rings behind the counter at the Beshel Boat Launch in Pointe-a-la-Hache, Louisiana, cashier Lynette Harvey fears the worst – that it’s the call from her boss to shut down the business.
Every morning for the last 14 years, Harvey has opened the door’s of the shop at 5:30 a.m., greeting the fishermen who are already lined up to buy the staples of life they need for work on the water – hot coffee, fuel, groceries and ice.
“I like working here,” says Harvey. “I see people from all walks of life, different parts of the world, different states. We have little conversations. It’s an interesting job.”
On an average day in 2009, Harvey would sell $6,000-$7,000 in groceries.
But that was last year … before oil began gushing unconfined into the Gulf of Mexico for months, closing a large portion of Louisiana’s fishing waters around the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Since late April of 2010, customer traffic at Beshel Boat Launch has drastically declined, grocery sales are down more than two-thirds, and Harvey’s hours have been cut back slightly, resulting in loss of a day’s wages each week.
Pointe-a-la-Hache Boat Harbor
“I am working day to day,” says Harvey.
Usually an optimistic woman, Harvey is preparing for the worst, working all the hours she can get and saving all the money she earns just in case the dreaded call comes.
Until then, Harvey stands behind the cash register, watching and listening as all the players in America’s real life drama interact in the field – the fishermen still trying to make a living … the captains who have signed-on to make a bit of money from the BP clean-up … and, the Wildlife and Fisheries agents monitoring the waters.
She hears all the questions: How long is this going to take? If they close the waters today, is it going to reopen next week? Tomorrow?
The hardest question of all … What do we do until this is settled?
“Nobody,” says Harvey, “has an answer for that one.”
Category: Seafood Industry
