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As construction business climbs, wages are falling
By Ruth Morris
Staff Writer

August 14, 2005

Edilais Saintelus has been able to pull himself up a little by working in construction, but his paycheck still never stretches quite far enough.

A Haitian immigrant, he shares a small house in Fort Lauderdale with his wife and her two children, and his pride is the cluster of 20 trees in the yard, including a glossy-leaved mango. They make him feel rich.

But when he puts his hands in his pockets, "I know I'm poor," said Saintelus, who earns $12 an hour building trusses. "We call that money because there is no other name for it, but that's not money."

South Florida's building industry continues to thrive, with new homes seemingly around every corner and high-rises exploding onto the skyline like fireworks. Yet the men and women putting their muscle into the actual construction are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. While the new homes go up, wages for construction workers have been depressed, pushing Florida toward the bottom of the wage scale for such jobs as drywalling, roofing and clearing concrete. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show only seven states pay less.

According to the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, a federation of labor organizations, average hourly earnings for all construction workers declined 17.5 percent nationwide between 1973 and 2002, to $20.85.

New arrivals, however, tend to see construction jobs as choice positions where they can earn between $8 and $12 an hour, compared with minimum wage, $6.15, in harvesting jobs, or slightly more for yard work.

Labor analysts and union representatives say there are several factors behind the thin wages, starting with a weak union presence in the state and a steady supply of immigrants to fill low-skill jobs within the industry. But they also point to a more disturbing trend, in which corrupt labor contractors prey upon undocumented workers, boosting their profits by ducking out of insurance payments, pocketing tax deductions, and, in some cases, disappearing on payday.

Many labor contractors abide by the law, but those bending the rules are able to offer lower bids for jobs, which puts pressure on competitors to follow suit. This drags down wages across the board, union representatives say.

"For a contractor who wants to pay illegally [off the books], the savings are 25 to 40 percent," said Terry Darling, director of business development for the Florida carpenter's union, referring to unpaid workers' compensation insurance, unpaid income tax and unpaid social security. "That's all money in their pockets. They're unscrupulous and they are destroying the standard of living for people who want to work legally."

He also said unethical contractors are making it difficult for law-abiding businesses to compete. Materials represent fixed costs, while labor costs offer more leeway. Some union companies have even shifted to niche markets, like upscale, custom-made homes, because they can't or don't want to compete against companies that rely heavily on underpaid undocumented workers.

Low-end subcontractors typically gather day laborers from street corners or from their homes, delivering them to worksites in vans and old school buses. They sometimes charge a "ride" fee of up to $35 every two weeks, while docking income tax and social security from paychecks. If the workers are undocumented, though, there is little incentive to pass on those taxes to the government.

Fraudulent subcontractors also know undocumented workers are unlikely to report abuses, for fear of arrest or deportation, and that they're unlikely to demand raises or bring up safety issues if they aren't paid overtime.

An undocumented construction worker who identified himself as Vacilio, for example, said he was thankful for his construction job, which pays handsomely compared with his $3 daily wage in Guatemala clearing weeds from coffee plots. When he came to Jupiter two years ago, he left behind a wife, five children and roughly $4,500 in debts. He's been able to pay off all the money he owed, he said, and he sends home $400 a month to pay for school supplies and the butcher's bill.

"What they decide to pay we accept because we need to work," Vacilio said, sitting at a cheap kitchen table with odd chairs as a housemate picked a guitar outside. A stripped bicycle frame lay on the grass nearby. Inside, worn shoes, covered in fine cement dust, lined the wall.

Pressed on whether he thought he was earning a fair wage -- $9 an hour to break up concrete in remodeled homes -- Vacilio hesitated and then smiled. "The company decides how much to pay," he said.

Other workers told stories of labor contractors who simply vanished when payday rolled around, or stopped answering the phone when a worker was injured on the job. One of the men Vacilio lives with fell from a one-story ledge last year, and he hasn't been able to find steady work since. Nor has he received any consistent workers' compensation payment, he said. Now he's thinking of returning to Guatemala.

"It used to be construction workers were known as labor aristocrats. [The work] is dangerous and dirty, but the compensation used to make up for it. That's no longer true," said Mark Erlich, a carpenter's union official who has written extensively on wage conditions.

Erlich said political and corporate attacks on unions had already gone a long way to depress salaries in the '70s and '80s, making construction jobs less attractive to some blue-collar Americans. Then immigrants began to fill the void.

"It was a perfect storm," Erlich said, noting that the Southeastern states like Florida had a particularly weak union presence. "You had degraded compensation in the first place, and then you had a sudden influx of immigrants ... and their illegal status makes them extremely vulnerable to their employers."

Saintelus, the Haitian man, has tried other jobs, but he's hoping construction work will pay off as his skill level rises. A recent Wednesday evening found him in carpenter's class at Fort Lauderdale's Carpenters, Millwrights and Pile Drivers training center, drilling planks.

Unlike the Guatemalan men in Jupiter, Saintelus is a legal resident. Even so, he said, he could barely sustain himself on his meager salary. And he said he had to carefully time the payment of his utility bills to make sure there was money in his account.

"Overdraft. Over limit," he said, reeling off some new words he's learned in English. "I have two credit cards and I never finish paying them off."