Jesse Carter’s first job out of homelessness and a crack cocaine addiction took him on an improbable journey, from a Philadelphia ghetto to the top floors of Boston’s Marriott Copley Plaza, where he worked on an $18 million renovation of the towering Back Bay hotel.
Arranged by his church, a Christian drug rehabilitation ministry called Victory Outreach, the job offered Carter hope of a steady wage and a fresh start. But inside the Marriott his optimism quickly faded, displaced by unshakable fatigue and pain from the daily demands of the work. He said he was moving furniture 12 hours a day, six days a week — part of a crew from Victory Outreach working around the clock last winter to remodel the hotel’s 1,100 guest rooms.
Comments
Driving down the contract price then pretending not to know how much people get paid is a farce. The Marriott knew, the contractor knew. Welcome to the world where the "job creators" get rich while the workers scrape by in slave labor coditions.
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So great that these guys found their power and fought for their rights.
When I read the title of this article, I thought it was about the Red Sox...
Great reporting. Exploitation on every level. Bravo to the AG for taking steps against this rip-off of vulnerable people. Kudos to the reporter for showing us these men's lives and all the levels of ugliness at work here. The buck stops at the top. Marriott should have known better than to let this happen under its roof in Boston. Where else does this go on?
There is one main solution to THE PROBLEM OF ILLEGAL DRUGS: KILL THE DRUG DEALERS. Replace the War On Drugs with and All-Out War Against Drug Dealers: - Enact the Death Penalty as an option for judge/jury to apply to 2nd and 3rd time offenders, but to 1st time offenders who are in law enforcement. - Carry out a war against cartel drug lords world-wide similar to the very successful war against terrorists - using the same tactics and then some more, and aim drones successfully - against drug lords and against any top level politician in the native country providing support to any drug lords. - Demand more work-place testing for drug use and make random drug testing among public employees mandatory - with dismissal from employment after some number of failures. - Have the Natioonal Academies (The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council) carry out a thorough study to set standards, objectives and guidelines that all so-called drug rehabilitation centers must abide by and demand more quantitative oversight by US HHS. Its parameters must include that NO EX-DRUG USER OR EX-DRUG DEALER MUST BE ALLOWED TO WORK IN ANY SUCH FACILITIES IN ANY CAPACITY. - Drug dealers are destroying (killing) individuals, families and communities every day in the name of the almighty dollar. THEY DESERVE TO DIE AS THE SERIAL KILLERS THAT THEY ARE. - Society destroys rabies dogs. DRUG DEALERS ARE WORSE THAN RABIES DOGS! Therefore, exterminate them. ETC. --- BOTTOM LINE: 1ST priority: KILL THE DRUG DEALERS, 2ND priority: DRY OUT THE DEMAND.