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To: snarkybob

I’m a small remodeling contractor, and there are few young, hardworking English speaking Americans who are willing to work hard in the trades. They want to make $25 an hour for standing around. There is always a large group of Hispanic guys in the Home Depot parking lot who will work cheap. I refuse to hire them because I refuse to hire illegals, and I would never bring someone who I don’t know to a customer’s home. For the most part, I work by myself, taking and pricing jobs accordingly. Hispanic labor has driven labor rates down.


38 posted on 12/01/2012 8:12:28 PM PST by Freestate316 (Know what you believe and why you believe it.)
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To: Freestate316

“I’m a small remodeling contractor, and there are few young, hardworking English speaking Americans who are willing to work hard in the trades. They want to make $25 an hour for standing around. There is always a large group of Hispanic guys in the Home Depot parking lot who will work cheap. I refuse to hire them because I refuse to hire illegals, and I would never bring someone who I don’t know to a customer’s home. For the most part, I work by myself, taking and pricing jobs accordingly. Hispanic labor has driven labor rates down.”

I live in Texas and until a few years ago I worked as a cabinet maker. Not a serviceman or one of the guys on a production line putting tenon A into mortise B, but a cabinet maker and woodworker who knew the tools and the materials and how to read a blueprint and all the things associated with woodworking and cabinetry.

I gave it up because the wages were actually falling and this was still in the building boom when I was repeatedly told that I should be happy with $10.50 an hour and that the contractors had to hire armies of illegals to keep their prices low, even tho I never saw the price of anything go anywhere but through the roof.

I remember one job interview where the shop forman was up against a really bad deadline. He told me that he had 15 employees, who BTW were all illegals, but not single one of them had skills.
I told him I was interested and I had been making $15 an hour but was willing to start at $12 an hour.
He told me he could start me at $8.50 an hour with an option for a .50 cent an hour raise after 6 months. Then he said that was still a dollar an hour better than flipping burgers.
I agreed it was a dollar an hour better than a burger flipper made and then suggested he go hire a burger flipper.
He was actually kind of POd that I didn’t take the job.

I’ve certainly seen my share of unmotivated workers, but I’ve seen just that many who did want to learn it and get it right.


43 posted on 12/01/2012 8:35:07 PM PST by snarkybob (')
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To: Freestate316

Brother, you and I are living the same nightmare. I’ve been dealing with everything you mentioned in your post for well over a decade now.

Sometimes I think you won’t be able to find a native born American in the trades in another ten years.


63 posted on 12/01/2012 9:35:10 PM PST by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: Freestate316
I’m a small remodeling contractor

Get a good ladder...It worked wonders for me...

70 posted on 12/01/2012 9:55:05 PM PST by Iscool (You mess with me, you mess with the WHOLE trailerpark...)
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