Thread: Immigrant influx leads to tension with unions

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Immigrant influx leads to tension with unions
Sunday, October 02, 2005
BY BRIAN DONOHUE
Star-Ledger Staff
The first demolition crew that arrived to knock down walls for a new cafeteria at the Bristol-Myers Squibb plant in Lawrenceville this July looked pretty typical: a bunch of guys driving pickups and carrying union cards.

Later, the night shift showed up: a van full of Latino workers so packed one supervisor said it resembled a circus "clown car."

A safety consultant hired to train workers checked the second group's Social Security numbers and said many were fakes. The shop steward with the New Jersey Laborers' Union checked their union cards. They, too, appeared fake, a union spokesman said.

Thus began a tussle increasingly playing out across New Jersey, one of a few states where the number of construction jobs is shrinking but the supply of immigrant construction workers and day laborers -- many here illegally -- is skyrocketing.

Sometimes, the disputes are resolved by the contractors, workers or unions. Often, they're not resolved at all.

Regardless, the oversupply of labor on union-dominated job sites is being blamed partly on massive cutbacks to the federal government's enforcement of workplace immigration laws.

There are no consequences for hiring illegal immigrants, said Michael Fix, vice president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

"It's an invitation to do whatever you feel like and that's why we have 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States," he said.

New Jersey is hardly alone in its influx of immigrants seeking construction work.

While states like North Carolina and Arizona have seen growing numbers of foreign-born construction workers over the past 15 years, they have experienced building booms to absorb the influx.

Only in New Jersey and four other states -- New York, Maryland, California and Rhode Island -- are the number of immigrant construction workers rising while construction jobs are dropping.

From 1990 to 2000, the number of foreign-born construction workers in New Jersey rose by more than 12,000 to 46,371, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data by Fix. Meanwhile, construction jobs dropped by more than 9,000 to 221,000, Fix found.

Those numbers do not include informal workers or day laborers, whose numbers have soared over the past decade and who construction workers and contractors say are widely used on sites across the state.

"Employers will look to cut corners, they'll bring in workers from off the street or wherever they get them from. To stay on top of it and monitor it on a day-to-day basis is near impossible, and a lot of contractors know that," said New Jersey Laborers Union spokesman Rob Lewandowski.


LOYAL AND CHEAP

Privately, many construction bosses utter a constant refrain.

Immigrants, often struggling to support families at home or abroad, are loyal workers. The $10-an-hour going rate for a day laborer plucked off the street corner is far cheaper than a full-time employee with benefits.

Frank O'Rourke, owner of Red Ball Demolition, the Ridgefield contractor that hired the men to work at Bristol-Myers Squibb, said the workers were legal, card-carrying union members with valid Social Security cards.

"We got them right out of the union hall," he said. "What happened, I have no idea. All I know is I got them right from the hall."

Lewandowski, the union spokesman, said they were not members. There were others on the job site who objected to the workers being there.

The safety consultant on the job, Pete Jensen, says he was fired after he complained to his boss that the immigrant workers had not received proper safety training. Jensen, who was hired by Yonkers Construction, is an independent consultant who inspects job sites and trains workers to make sure they comply with government safety standards.

Another supervisor on the job, Scott Hirschlein, says O'Rourke "went ballistic" when he questioned whether the workers belonged on the job.

"Listen, you can jump up and down and call me all the names you want, but these guys are not working," Hirschlein remembers telling his bosses. "It's all based on safety -- and also Bristol-Myers Squibb, they don't want a bunch of aliens walking around their building."


THE INTERNAL DEBATE

For the union, the dilemma mirrors an internal debate engulfing organized movement nationally: to abandon its historical opposition to mass immigration or to embrace the trend to win new members.

In recent years, the AFL-CIO has taken the latter tack, supporting a guest worker program backed by President Bush.

But when immigration disputes arise on a job site, the stance is often guided by more immediate concerns: whether there are enough union workers to do the job at hand and whether the union has time to pick a fight.

According to Lewandowski, the Laborers Union pressed Red Ball Demolition to sign up the workers for the union, but by the time discussions were under way, "the job was over."

O'Rourke, the owner of Red Ball Demolition, said the workers left that day, but he personally returned the next day with their Social Security cards and union cards. They then went back to work.

He said the men who raised concerns about the workers "had something against us. I don't know what it was."

Jayne O'Connor, spokeswoman for Bristol-Myers Squibb, said the company is investigating the incident, which officials learned about a month after the job had been completed.


LITTLE ENFORCEMENT

Jensen, meanwhile, says he called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, expecting officials would jump at the opportunity to deport more than a dozen possibly illegal immigrants. But attempts at whistle-blowing collided with another reality of today's immigration system: The federal government has all but gotten out of the business of busting businesses who hire illegal immigrants.

The number of employers threatened with fines for hiring illegal immigrants dropped from 417 in fiscal year 1999 to just three in 2004, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in June.

"I'm still waiting for a call back from somebody," Jensen said. "I would have thought I would have at least gotten a letter of receipt."

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Red Ball Demolition, Inc.(Source: Company)

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Red Ball Demolition, Inc.
Red Ball Demolition, Inc.

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From: The Infamous Vinnie gangbox <gangbox@...>
Date: FriÂ*MayÂ*5,Â*2000Â* 9:26 pm

Subject: Fwd: MORE ON THE DEATH OF BROTHER ANTONIO PEDRO, IUPAT LOCAL 806 PAINTER FOREMAN FOR YONKERS CONSTRUCTION CO.

gangbox@...
Send Email
from THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS ONLINE:
EDITOR'S NOTE:

THE CONTRACTOR ON THE MANHATTAN BRIDGE JOB, YONKERS CONSTRUCTION CO, HAS A REALLY BAD SAFETY RECORD, AND A REPUTATION AS AN OUTFIT THAT BASICALLY DOESN'T CARE IF YOU LIVE OR DIE, AS LONG AS THE JOB GETS DONE.

THIS CASE IS TYPICAL. THIS BROTHER, ANTONIO PEDRO, WAS ASKED BY THE COMPANY TO CHANGE A COMPRESSOR HOSE ON A CATWALK. WITH NO SAFETY HARNESS. AS A FOREMAN, HE COULDN'T REFUSE THE ORDER.

1) CHANGING HIGH PRESSURE HOSES IS THE OPERATING ENGINEER'S JOB, NOT A PAINTER'S JOB [A LABORER CAN DO THE WORK ALSO, IF NO OPERATING ENGINEER IS AVAILABLE, BUT NOT ANYBODY ELSE].

2) ON A BRIDGE JOB, everybody ANYWHERE NEAR THE EDGE IS SUPPOSED TO BE WEARING A SAFETY HARNESS, AND TIED OFF. THIS BROTHER WASN'T, BECAUSE IT
TAKES TIME TO MOVE AROUND IN A HARNESS, AND RETIE YOURSELF EVERYTIME YOU MOVE, AND, TIME IS MONEY.

SO, BASICALLY, YONKERS MURDERED THIS GUY. SADLY, BROTHER PEDRO IS NOT THE FIRST TRADESPERSON TO DIE ON A YCC JOB, NOR WILL HE BE THE LAST.

FRATERNALLY,
GREGORY A. BUTLER,LOCAL 608 CARPENTER,
FOR GANGBOX, CONSTRUCTION WORKERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.egroups.com/group/gangbox
http://www.geocities.com/gangbox/
From: News and Views | City Beat |
Thursday, May 04, 2000
Bridge Worker's Company
Fined in '96

The painting firm whose worker was blasted off the Manhattan Bridge on Tuesday had been fined for failing to properly train workers on safety issues including when harnesses should be worn.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Yonkers Contracting Co. in 1996 for violations at a job at the Cross River Dam in Bedford, Westchester County, OSHA area director Robert Kulik said yesterday.

It was fined $4,000 for five serious violations ( defined as failures that could cause serious physical harm or death ) including one for having no guardrails to protect against falls, Kulik said.

It was unclear whether Antonio Pedro, 41, was wearing a safety harness. A city transportation official said Tuesday he was not.

An OSHA official said yesterday that witnesses saw him wearing a harness. But he apparently was not tethered to the bridge or not tethered properly, the official said.

Pedro fell 130 feet from the bridge when a high-pressure air line used to power tools ruptured. If he had been wearing a harness tethered to the bridge structure, he would have been rescued, Kulik said.

Police continued to search for his body yesterday in waters between the Manhattan and Verrazano bridges, without success.

Michele McPhee and Pete Donohue

These two companies are just bad guys all around.