Thread: Doing battle with cheap labor

http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_3165324

Longtime workers often find themselves forced out of the market
Sara A. Carter, Staff Writer

Robert Boyd isn't tarring roofs like he used to. The 62-year-old expatriate from Liverpool, England, says he's waging a losing battle with illegal day laborers.

The Upland man, who's run his own business for 22 years, has been fixing leaky roofs since before he came to the United States. From the day he turned 16, and ever since completing a five-year apprenticeship in his trade, he's dedicated his life to construction.

"I know what I'm doing and I do good work because I've been trained to do it," Boyd said from his seat at the Black Watch Pub in Upland, where he was watching a soccer match on television one recent day.

"They are paying these guys $12 a square to roof ... and then when they mess up the job, I get called in to fix up their mess," he said.

Research released late last year by the Center for Immigration Studies reveals that unemployment among native-born workers grew by 2.3 million, while employment among immigrant workers increased about the same amount.

The study, which used U.S. Census data, was no surprise to Boyd, who usually crosses paths with undocumented workers on Inland Empire construction sites.

"I know a man who makes $800 a week under the table while his wife collects food stamps," he said angrily. "The major construction companies don't want to pay living wages to trained workers, so they hire illegals to do the job for cheaper."

The cycle is perpetuated when construction companies compete for the cheaper undocumented workers while putting licensed workers and general contractors, like himself, out of business, Boyd said.

Low-skilled labor jobs dominate much of the work for undocumented immigrants in the United States, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. It is estimated that nearly 10 million illegal immigrants reside in the United States, many of whom work in construction, service labor and agricultural jobs.

For an undocumented worker, those industries can be a haven, said John Rutherig, a general contractor from Rancho Cucamonga.

Rutherig and his partner, Cesar Barreto, also a general contractor from Rancho Cucamonga, face the daily dilemma of competing against cheap labor, but attribute the growth of the illegal work force to the lack of skilled legal workers in the United States.

"America has become a service nation," Rutherig said. "Young kids don't want to do manual labor and they expect high wages for their work, and they don't want to break a sweat. They'd rather work at McDonald's than dig a hole."

Rutherig and Barreto applied for their general contractors' licenses so they could be exempt from worker's compensation laws they say are the main reason contractors hire illegal immigrants.

"If we hired a crew of guys to work for us, we'd have to pay nearly $40 for every $100 we paid per worker, just for worker's comp," Rutherig said. "How can anyone but the biggest construction companies afford that?"

Like Boyd, Rutherig and Barreto said they often are called in to fix jobs that unskilled day laborers were hired to do.

"People don't realize that hiring unskilled day workers could cost more in the end than hiring a general contractor," Rutherig said. "I'm not worried about losing work."

Barreto, an American citizen whose parents live in Sonora, Mexico, said solving the problem might be as easy as giving day laborers worker's visas and training.

"People will continue to hire illegal workers if the price is right," Barreto said. "I can't hire or train them to make them better because it's against the law. But they continue to get work ... they are subcontracted to build homes for big construction companies, and that is tough to compete with."

For Boyd, it's a matter of principle.

After he arrived in the United States in 1983, he had to wait nine years to get his green card.

"During that time, I couldn't even go back home and visit," he said. "I started working, but I had a worker's visa. I did it the right way, and so should the people crossing the border."

The dilemma, Boyd said, is that cheap labor isn't always cheap.

"Costs add up in the end," he said. "Some of the illegals know what they're doing, but most of them don't. There is also the issue of security. How do we know who's working construction at secure sites if the majority of them are illegal?"

Sara A. Carter can be reached by e-mail at sara.carter@dailybulletin.com or by phone at (909) 483-8552.

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I know a contractor who only fixes screw-ups of others who hire illegals. It's a very lucrative business for him.

had_enuf posted:

"America has become a service nation," Rutherig said. "Young kids don't want to do manual labor and they expect high wages for their work, and they don't want to break a sweat. They'd rather work at McDonald's than dig a hole."

Coming from 20 years in construction, yes, you have to be motivated to do the hard work that the industry has. But, wages have not moved a whole lot since the days of Ronald Regan and his vow to bust the unions. In fact, you can see in certain parts of the country that the wages have flat not changed. Because of this, young kids are smart in seeing that there is no future in construction because of what the contractors get away with. We have to re-introduce the blue collar jobs to our own kids with wages that are liviable. If our kids don't go for it, then the contractors would be forced to raise what they are willing to pay and this will attract more young people. Instead, they are allowed to hire illegals without consequences to bypass the raising of wages that should have followed the raises of cost of living in the last 20 years. If this had taken place, we would see our kids in jobs such as construction today and we wouldn't be here talking about this.

had_enuf posted:

Rutherig and Barreto applied for their general contractors' licenses so they could be exempt from worker's compensation laws they say are the main reason contractors hire illegal immigrants. "If we hired a crew of guys to work for us, we'd have to pay nearly $40 for every $100 we paid per worker, just for worker's comp," Rutherig said. "How can anyone but the biggest construction companies afford that?"

I say if you can't afford to do business leagally in the US and pay your workers a livable wage, you shouldn't be in business.