In what could be the first good news to come out of the company since it first started pumping oil into the Gulf in May, oil giant British Petroleum (BP) is looking to hire 4,500 unemployed workers in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida to be at the ready to clean oil off the Gulf coast beaches.
Deb Witmer, BP public affairs officer, tells CNN Money that workers will be paid $18 an hour to rake and shovel debris, operate front-end loaders or power washers to clean rocks and beach areas, as well as wipe and wash oil-covered items and remove trash. Supervisors on those jobs will be paid $32 an hour.
BP is looking to hire at least 1,500 workers in Mississippi, 1,000 in Alabama and 1,600 in Florida, according to CNN.
The first 400 workers were deployed to Florida and Alabama beaches last Saturday.
“There have been thousands of applicants who have come forward for these positions,” Robby Cunningham, spokesman for the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation, told CNN. “This event is still unfolding and as we need to employ more people to clean up the beaches, we are prepared to do so.”
The new hires will get between four and 40 hours of paid training. Once the training is complete, the workers will be on call, with between 12 and 18 hours of notification.
Only workers who have already filed for unemployment with their state office in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida are eligible for the jobs. The program was created in conjunction with the unemployment offices in those states as the region has been hard hit by double digit unemployment.
In April, Alabama’s unemployment rate held at 11 percent for the second month in a row; Mississippi’s unemployment rate was 11.5 percent. More than 1 million workers were out of a job in Florida, which topped the region with an unemployment rate of 12 percent, reports CNN.
Photo by NASA via Flickr.