Job killed by oil spill – and now BP is best option

By Kerry Sanders, NBC News Correspondent

ST. MARY PARISH, La. – First came the oil.

Then the fishermen lost their jobs.

And now the next wave: the support jobs.

Latoya Wilson, 26, made her living cleaning and preparing oysters for shipment to restaurants – until the oysters were no longer.
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A single mother raising three kids, this high school drop-out earned up to $500 a week at the AmeriPure Processing Company.

For the last 11 days, newly unemployed Wilson’s only source of income has been the $1,500 compensation check she received from BP for her loss of income.

The irony is not lost on her – she lost her job due to BP’s oil spill, and now the oil company is her only source of income.

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Unemployment compensation will eventually kick-in, but that’s a process that is clogged with red tape, and she has bills to pay.

She recently sat down and added up the balance sheet of her life.

Rent, food, utilities, insurance, and all the other bills last month totaled $1,543.34.

The check BP sent her: $1,500

Wilson said, "It’s depressing."

With her hand on her forehead, and a stack of bills on her kitchen table, she said, "It takes a toll on me."

Life has not been easy for Wilson.

Her mother is in prison. As a result, she has been raising her 12-year-old sister, as well as her own 12-year-old daughter and her 11-month-old baby.

Faced with mounting bills, her first cutback is painful. She’s decided she cannot afford her baby’s first birthday celebration. "It’s not fair for my baby Leary," she said.

On Monday, she sat with her daughter in her lap and her cell phone on speaker. She listened to one of those maddening phone recordings. "Press one for English. Press two for claims."

It was a 10-minute exercise in frustration.

"All I want to know is when my unemployment check will come, but there’s no information," she said.

Her rent is due at the beginning of the month. She says the pressure of suddenly being unemployed "keeps me awake at night."

This week she trolled the Internet for a new job. She found two potential jobs near her home. Both are minimum wage jobs.

Wilson did find a better paying job a distance from her home.

The employer: BP.

"That’s disgusting" she says. "I lost my job because of them and now they will pay me to clean up their mess?"

Wilson says the better-paying job is not an option.

BP’s clean-up jobs do not allow a single mother, raising three children, to juggle a hectic schedule.

She says she had a job that let her do that, but now it’s gone, "lost in the oil."