http://www.goedwardsville.com/site/news ... 3648&rfi=6

09/29/2006
Immigrants among us?
By NORMA MENDOZA , nmendoza@theintelligencer.com

Union pickets Hampton Inn site
About 60 people turned out for a rally recently on Route 157 in Glen Carbon where the Carpenters Union has set up an informational picket at the construction site for a Hampton Inn.

"We know it's a non-union job," said business agent Kevin Hamilton of the Carpenters District Council of Greater St. Louis. "It's not so much that we're complaining about -- we're calling this an issue of right and wrong."

Hamilton said the union wants to know if Pro-Built Construction Management out of South Dakota is using immigrant workers to construct the frame work for the hotel.

The union also has questions for the subcontractor, Road Runner Construction out of Arkansas, which brought workers here for the job.

The union contacted U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello, who referred the matter to the St. Louis office of Immigration and Naturalization, now under the Department of Homeland Security.

Hamilton said Immigration was non-responsive to requests to inspect the job site.

They told him they are more concerned with preventing terrorism.

He said he thinks they are just overwhelmed.

When Costello learned of this, he offered to set up a meeting with Immigration. Hamilton said the congressman has arranged a meeting to be attended by the head of the Southwestern Illinois Building Trades and a representative from the Carpenters Union.

"This is not a case of discrimination," Hamilton said. "We want to know if they are here illegally and if they are, they shouldn't be allowed to work here. If they are legal guest workers, our issue is with our government. We want to know why they were brought in when we have plenty of people here waiting for work. They are supposed to be coming here to do the jobs we don't want to do or don't have the people to do, but we've got plenty of people waiting to do the work."

The Carpenters District represents union carpenters in 33 counties in Southern Illinois and 44 counties in Missouri.

The union's attention was brought to the employment practices at the Hampton Inn construction site when Hamilton got a phone call last week telling him that people were working on the job site at 5:30 p.m. last Thursday. He said they had probably been on the site since 7:30 a.m., making for a longer work day than union carpenters work. That's when the Carpenters Union began to monitor the site.

"They were bringing people in two white vans with six or more people in them and dropping them off," Hamilton said.

Union members at the picket Tuesday said SBC telephone installers wouldn't cross their picket line, but a reporter watched a Beelman Redi-Mix Concrete truck driver leave the site after making a delivery. The picketers said they are waiting to see if the electricians and plumbers will cross the line.

Hamilton said a similar situation occurred in O'Fallon, Mo., where 40 to 50 illegal immigrants were working on a job site. That construction involved federal money, he said, and was soon resolved. The Hampton Inn in Glen Carbon is financed with private money.

It is a project of Premier Properties under local developers Steve Gardner and Kevin Jones. The project created a stir of controversy on the Village Board when trustees raised the question of whether Route 157 can support the increase in traffic that a hotel will bring.

The final plat was approved by the Village Board on Dec. 13 by a vote of 3-1 with one trustee absent.