Thread: Whistleblower Says Illegal Aliens Have ‘Taken Over Every Trade’ in CA Construction, D

Whistleblower Says Illegal Aliens Have ‘Taken Over Every Trade’ in CA Construction, Driven Down U.S. Wages

by JOHN BINDER
14 Mar 2018
Washington, D.C.
3,581 comments

A whistleblower in the southern California construction industry says illegal alien workers have “taken over every trade” in the business while driving down wages by an estimated 40 percent.

In an interview with the group Progressives for Immigration Reform, a whistleblower who was an independent contractor throughout the 1980s and 1990s explains how the California construction industry transformed into one in which American men could make a middle-class living off blue-collar work to a business where wages have plummeted and illegal aliens dominate the field.

Blaine Taylor, the whistleblower, said the construction industry in California once offered a starting wage of about $45 an hour in the late 1980s. Fast-forward to 2018 — nearly two decades into when illegal aliens began flooding the industry — he now says that wages have fallen by more than half, standing at just $11 an hour.



TAYLOR: If I hired a framer to do a small addition [in 1988], his wage would have been $45 an hour. That was the minimum for a framing contractor, a good carpenter. [Emphasis added]

For a helper, it was about $25 an hour, for a master who could run a complete job, it was about $45 an hour.

That was the going wage for plumbers as well. His helpers typically got $25 an hour.

…

TAYLOR: The reality is that a person that was hired as a laborer in 1988, I paid $15 an hour and within a month if I could leave him on the job alone, he got $20 an hour. If I hired somebody that already knew how to do certain types of labor or certain types of operations, they would get $20 an hour.

Now, the average wage in Los Angeles for construction workers is less than $11 an hour. They can’t go lower than the minimum wage. And much of that, if they’re not being paid by the hour at less than $11 an hour, they’re being paid per piece — per piece of plywood that’s installed, per piece of drywall that’s installed. Now, the subcontractor can circumvent paying them as an hourly wage and are now being paid by 1099, which means that no taxes are being taken out. [Emphasis added]

Taylor says that the flood of illegal alien workers contributed to wages in the California construction industry plummetting between the 1980s to today.

Between 2008 and 2016, construction wages were actually lower than in 1998, representing a roughly 40 percent drop in pay. At the same time, construction materials, Taylor said, increased by about 50 percent.

INTERVIEWER: It’s really strange because as a young man, of course, just entering your working life, you’re making a living wage, and then as you got middle-aged, the wage dropped, which is like… you know most people don’t expect in their careers that they’re going to start out at the top and they’re actually going to fall below where they are when they start.

TAYLOR: Well, part of it was due to the market, but then there’s the other part that really pulled it down and that was the influx of just a flood of undocumented workers. [Emphasis added]

Meanwhile, Taylor says that illegal aliens are dominating the blue-collar trades in the California construction industry, with an illegal alien population that potentially exceeds more than three million.

TAYLOR: Unfortunately, what I have found, is that [the construction in California is] overwhelmingly being built by illegal immigrants that have basically taken over every trade. [Emphasis added]

Just to go back for a second, in the 80’s and early 90’s when I was a contractor, it wasn’t unusual to see undocumented workers doing landscaping, demolition, then it became roofing, and concrete work. So the heavier, more difficult, and dirtier sort of trades where you actually got in the ditches were the first trades to be taken over [by illegal aliens], then the rest of them began to fall.

The drywall was next, painting, framing was the last, and now electrical and plumbing has been taken over. All the trades finally went to the illegal immigrants. [Emphasis added]

In a 2017 report by the Los Angeles Times, the left-leaning paper admitted that at the time illegal aliens began flooding the California construction industry, wages drastically dropped.

“You can’t live on a wage of $11 an hour for a construction worker,” Taylor said. “There’s no hope for people. Young people, as a young man growing up in Detroit, you looked forward to hopefully working in the construction industry.”

“That was an attractive career to go into as a young person,” Taylor said.

The big business-preferred cheap labor economic model of importing more than one million new legal immigrants every year to compete mostly for working and middle-class jobs against Americans has resulted in decades of stagnant and even decreased wages for U.S. workers:



Median earnings of full-time, year-round workers, 15 years and older, 1960 to 2016.

For instance, the massive importation of low-skilled foreign nationals to the U.S. has translated to a cheap-labor economy that has aided in keeping American men’s wages stagnant for at least 44 years, as Breitbart News reported. Median earnings for American men working full-time were actually lower in 2016 than they were in 2007.

On the other hand, President Trump’s economic nationalist efforts to tighten the labor market by increasing interior enforcement of illegal immigration has helped secure history-making wage growth for American workers in the construction industry, the garment industry, for workers employed at small businesses, and for black Americans.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...own-u-s-wages/

Have lived through seeing this change and knew many construction workers who lost their jobs. Politicians don't care, it isn't their jobs being taken over.

I have mixed feelings about this.
--If a construction worker is in a licensed trade they are going to be protected by both their union and by the state laws. Of course, there are people who opt for unlicensed people to do work for them. but they are taking on a risk. If "electrical and plumbing" is being done by illegals this is something that should be reported to the state construction industry agency. (In California it is the Contractors State License Board)

Secondly, so much work even in the skilled trades is done off the books, and I really don't feel sorry for them. With budget deficits, and recurring discussion of Social Security deficits, tax evaders are just making things worse.

Nevertheless, illegal aliens should be stopped from taking these jobs. I have reported this type of thing several times to our states contractor's board. If they are employing illegal aliens, they are usually also in violation of things like workers comp. insurance.

It's disgusting what we've allowed to happen.

My family has been in the residential construction industry for many years and are barely hanging on. Our business is a legal business that takes taxes out and pays benefits. One of my husband's long time employees has just announced he's leaving to work for a business that gives 1099's out and its employees, (all foreign ), pay no taxes.
Illegal aliens have truly decimated the residential construction industry in this country. It's so sad.

They are not here to just "pick our lettuce"!

No DACA
No Path to Stay
No Amnesty
No freebies and NO anchor babies...they are not US citizens.

1099 workers don't have tax deductions but all earnings are reported to irs and it is mandatory to file. The state and city also requires their share by filing. Possibly they don't go after foreign names. Or maybe they file for a child tax credit too and get thousands$$$.

We see that irs knows @ ss# fraud and does not connect & inform ss. They allow a tax id # just to permit all this foreign illegal workers. Totally disgusting that our gov't allows this and permits businesses to drive down our wages. The almighty dollar! And desire to change America to dummies.

Noticed illegals are taking over many market areas, stores, the costs of rents are prohibitive to merchants now but the illegals have the monies for rents via drug cartels. Tell me where they would get the money to pay the rents & merchandise with small traffic?

They are taking over the 100yr old Italian Market in Philadelphia. It started with 3 blocks reserved for them - this was planned - no 4 rent signs for a while then boom filled with mexican stores. Now they are beyond those 3 blocks into every block. No one else can afford the rents. But somehow they can with selling their little produce etc. They stand @ with that "this is my territory" look. That area is 10 blocks from center city proper and houses are expensive. Don't understand why with all the hispanic areas in Philadelphia, they didn't go there. This is sanctuary city mayor kenney's neighborhood - connect the dots.

They can probably do it because they've got cash coming in from various sleazy enterprises. The IRS tax gap (uncollected revenue) zoomed from about $260 billion in 2000, to close to $500 billion now. Plus they probably have a well established grape vine that tells them where to get in on various government and private freebies. They have a survival instinct to do everything on the cheap, while a lot of American young people fritter their money away, expecting that things are just going to somehow work out.

Here's the bottomline of what I have learned. If you don't have the legal system protecting your rights you are not really living in full status as a citizen. Everyday I read about the ACLU initiating some new lawsuit on behalf of their favored groups. What do conservatives get? Seems like just a handful of legal advocacy groups, and they are highly specialized.

Having been a union member, of course groups like Right to Work or the Freedom Foundations are really uninterested in my issues. Yet my union has played havoc in a number of ways, and unlike the licensed trades, has a very low bar for people to get into it. Similarly with the legal advocacy groups representing religious freedom; they are very narrow in their scope.

As those of us to believe that illegal immigration should be stopped, of course I don't hire any illegals---and this is costly. I have some neighbors, both in the law profession, and they seem to go out of their way to have illegals doing various jobs, although it has curtailed apparently in the last few years. But an American citizen who follows the law, and bears the costs should have their legal rights protected and this is not happening.

We would need a whole new section just to discuss the impact of this. On of our local radio program hosts (who has now relocated to California) was discussing the appointment in CA of an illegal alien to a state board. I pointed out that under federal law illegals being foreign principals cannot engage in grassroots lobbying, which is what has been happening, and will everytime there is a new amnesty proposal. But nobody who can do anything about this seems to grasp it.