Posted on 09/20/2016 12:12:34 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.expressnews.com/business/national/article/Trump-deportation-plan-rattles-an-industry-9233080.php
America has a history for creating “slavery” to satisfy its greed.
It didn’t work out well the 1st time. What makes us think it will this time?
In Texas, undocumented construction laborers make an average of $11.10 an hour, compared with $14.22 for those born in the U.S.
A perfect example of wage suppression created by hiring illegals. And yet we’re supposed to pay fast food workers $15 p/hr. Progressives are insane and hypocritical.
What they mean is hard working labor..... Sadly many sitting on their butts are more than happy to get their government cheese not all but many
If they want a $15 minimum wage, I would agree as long as it applies to everyone, including illegal aliens, farm workers, wait staff, etc. Furthermore, employers who hire illegal aliens shouldvbe forced to pat a surtax per hour worked to defray the excess costs of caring for the illegal alien population.
Democrats have always liked slavery. Unfortunately, a lot of other people are going along to make a quick buck.
I had a close friend, retired CFO of a major national construction firm, tell me this 2 years ago or more. I cited his words regularly on free republic at the time. He said mass deportation would grind his industry to a halt. He actually blamed it on air conditioning in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. Said Americans have outside jobs at the bottom of their list.
I don’t disagree.
Consider a guy in his 20s who dropped out of school, can’t read or write, on the few jobs he has had his attendance record was as bad as it was when he was in school. His concept of a man is one who can con others. He is skilled at finding navigators who will help him get welfare.
What is that guy worth as a worker?
Consider guy #2 who also dropped out of school can’t read or write, can’t speak English very well. But his attendance on jobs has been perfect. His concept of being a man is to work.
Now consider 2 groups of men. In one group, 80% of the men are like guy #1. In the 2d group 80% of the men are like guy #2.
The 20% of good guys in group #1 face discrimination. The 20% of bad guys in group #2 enjoy affirmative action.
This is the problem we face.
Many anecdotes can be told of the 80% and of the 20% in each group.
When construction jobs pay more than welfare then the shortage of Americans who are willing to do them will disappear. Half my friends in high school went into construction trades. They bought the houses they built. Now you can’t rent a decent apartment on construction labor wages.
The illegal aliens are depressing the wages because they are willing to work under the table for wages that are half what they would be if we just enforced the immigration laws.
My nephew makes a very good living as the guy that fixes flaky outlets. Word of mouth only. He will get a call to do one - usually the microwave outlet and wind up doing the whole house once the home owner sees the potential for fire.
TFB. They wouldn't have that issue if they paid what the workers are worth. It's that pesky old supply and demand thing.
I still like the one FReeper's tag line from a few years back that said something to the effect of "If your business model relies on illegal laborers, you get no sympathy from the rest of us".
There, fixed it.
They are called poor black, and white, Americans. Hire them.
The $11/hr is only part of the story. The rest of the story is the illegals will work 60 hours per week for that same hourly rate—no time-and-a-half for anything over 40 hours. This is how the builder makes out like a bandit.
The other half of this is to cut welfare benefits. There is no labor shortage...there is a work ethic shortage. Jobs Americans won’t do? They are not hungry enough to bring home the bacon.
For several years now, I've noticed that no matter what job I needed done, there is someone suggesting a cheaper version. You can get home repairs, roofing, auto body work, yard work all done for 1/2 the price of American workers who have to comply. I'm sure there's a lot of other jobs in the same situation.
I’m not claiming a labor shortage. There are plenty of workers, both legal and illegal. All I’m saying is loose immigration enforcement forces companies to eventually hire lower wage illegals or risk being underbid on contracts. The law breaking companies get away with it, and that puts law abiding companies at a competitive disadvantage. We must control immigration to protect Americans.
Yes, I agree. The $14 an hour average wage for construction labor mentioned in this article is barely what some are saying should be the minimum wage. When I was graduating from high school, the best summer before college job possible was a construction job.
The median wage in 2005 dollars for just a high school graduate male working full time in 1975 was 42,000 a year. That would include the construction trades, many of which were unionized at the time, so their wages would have been higher than the median down to about the median. We are inflated another amount, since we're using 2005 dollars, so figure about 45,000 dollars median for construction workers today.
That works out to a $22 an hour wage today for construction workers, and we're being told in this article that it is just $14 an hour, iow, half of what one would have expected.
What explains the downward pressure over the years? A YUUGE portion of that would be attributed to wage competition from migrant, under-the-table workers.
It's not like we're building LESS in these days than in those.
Stats, see page 5 of: https://tcf.org/assets/downloads/tcf-GoingNowhere.pdf
Immigrants deported. Labor is dear, spurring competition....price of labor rises. Corporate tax reduced. Money is distributed to formerly idle labourers without government taking $0.70 on every dollar. Workers benefit; corporations benefit.
What’s not to like?
In the end though, we calculated that the method which I described that I used would achieve the same results without raising the cost except in construction time. I trained several of my brother's brighter workers in that method.
We'd like to think that at least some of them are doing exactly the job your nephew does.
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