War Dangers Don't Deter U.S. Workers

Jobs Offering High Pay Lure Thousands to Iraq

BURNET, Tex. -- Late on the night of April 9, Sylvia and Allen Petty sat on the front porch of their small rental house here in the hill country northwest of Austin and talked about the future. With six daughters, ages 4 months to 14, it was the only time of day they had to themselves, what they called their "midnight dates."

They had been discussing for a couple weeks the idea of Allen Petty, 31, going to Iraq. Two fellow truck drivers at his company in the adjoining town of Marble Falls had already left for jobs driving trucks for KBR, a subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton Co.

That day, insurgents in Iraq had attacked a KBR convoy and killed four contract employees. But Allen Petty's $30,000 salary just didn't stretch far enough. The family had no insurance, no money for movies or new clothes, no savings, no credit, and their car was on loan from Sylvia Petty's father.

"We really prayed," she recalled. "This is a beautiful town, but we're not making it here. I told him, 'Baby, you have to go.' "

Allen Petty applied to KBR for a truck-driving job the next day, one of thousands of Americans competing, despite the dangers, for jobs with the contractors working to supply the U.S. military or rebuild the country. After a week of training, he left for Iraq on the first Saturday in May.

Many of the KBR recruits, like Petty, are working poor. They are willing to dare the hardship of 12- to 14-hour days seven days a week, and the risk of kidnapping or worse, given the beheading of Nicholas Berg, to bring back $80,000 or $100,000 in a year.

KBR has 24,000 workers in Iraq now, about half of them from the United States. The workers have gone to drive trucks, cook meals, and build and operate base camps as part of a contract with the Army to provide logistical support to the troops. The company has used 51 recruiters and 30 job fairs this year to find people to fill the positions.

And even with the continuing violence, the applications keep coming in, the company says, mostly from southern states or the East Coast. KBR has thousands of résumés on file and is processing 400 to 500 workers a week to go to Iraq.

The April 9 convoy attack changed little, said John Watson, a KBR recruiting supervisor. "For some, it was a reality check and they decided they didn't want to go. We also saw a huge level of patriotism, so it leveled out," he said.

Clifford Dunning, 28, an Army veteran who is now a barge worker from Kentucky and single father of a 2-year-old, headed to Iraq this month to be a logistics coordinator for KBR. The main motivation, he said: "Look, everyone here, it's about the income."

Preparing for Trouble

In a large circle ringed with chairs, in a converted J.C. Penney's store in Houston, a group of 50 KBR recruits, mostly men in blue jeans and boots pulled on yellow plastic suits as an instructor yelled, "Gas! gas! gas!"