Kansas City Company Accused of Mistreating Flood Recovery Workers

By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI

Flooded Cedar Rapids.

In the last week of June, 170 day laborers from Kansas City boarded a bus headed for eastern Iowa. They were bound for flood-ravaged cities like Cedar Rapids, where hundreds of workers from other states flooded into the region to help with the recovery.

The Kansas City workers had been hired by a local firm called One Source Staffing and Labor to do the dirty work of cleaning homes and businesses that were drowned in the storm. Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, agreed to house the temporary employees in their dorms while the company arranged hotel accommodations.

But after just a few days, the small, religious school’s chaplain, Catherine Quehl-Engel, was confronted with frustrated workers who claimed they were being underpaid and overworked — some to the point of hospitalization. Now, she and other religious leaders are calling for the mistreatment to stop.