What are you doing to try to get more workers into the area? I don't just mean you personally, but the area leaders as well. My brother was in Florida and Louisiana 5 months ago and he said it seemed like most of the contractors wanted illegals and in fact many contractors brought them with them to start reconstruction. He was working in insurance claims, he was employed and not seeking work, while he was there- just going by what he saw happening. There was an article here on FR about workers who were already on the jobin LA being laid off as illegals came in. These stories scare people away from the South. My nephew wanted to try for work there, but did not want to travel all the way there to find out jobs were taken by illegals.
What ever jobs are open, you all need to try to get the word out. I believe in rational solutions to these issues also, if workers are really needed from other countries, we need to make sure the companies can get them. We also need to make sure it is a genuine need, so companies will not use the system to get cheap labor without really trying to get US Citizens to do the work first.
I don't know about the rest of the country but i just moved from Southwest Florida.
I can tell you why the dry wallers and framers are illegals..... cause most (sorry for the broad brush) of the locals that were hired by my friend a subcontractor, showed up drunk, stoned or developed "workers comp" back pain...so he hired a couple of guys from the labor pool. they did their job, worked their asses off and never complained.
They might have gotten drunk on Friday after work, they might have been "illegals" but he basically didn't have to worry about them doing the job. He ended up paying them the "going rate" for starters and kept the best workers from the labor pool as permanent workers.
I think there are a lot of "jobs" but the quality of some of the workers is lacking. If you look around you'll see that some of the low paying jobs are filled by undereducated college grads, high school kids or just people with poor work skills.
I have worked in the civilian sector in several jobs and have never seen the "best" employee fired. There is always room for hard workers. Usually the best workers move on or move up the ladder, cause it's rare to find somebody that will work and won't complain all the time.
I don't know about the rest of the country but i just moved from Southwest Florida.
I can tell you why the dry wallers and framers are illegals..... cause most (sorry for the broad brush) of the locals that were hired by my friend a subcontractor, showed up drunk, stoned or developed "workers comp" back pain...so he hired a couple of guys from the labor pool. they did their job, worked their asses off and never complained.
They might have gotten drunk on Friday after work, they might have been "illegals" but he basically didn't have to worry about them doing the job. He ended up paying them the "going rate" for starters and kept the best workers from the labor pool as permanent workers.
I think there are a lot of "jobs" but the quality of some of the workers is lacking. If you look around you'll see that some of the low paying jobs are filled by undereducated college grads, high school kids or just people with poor work skills.
I have worked in the civilian sector in several jobs and have never seen the "best" employee fired. There is always room for hard workers. Usually the best workers move on or move up the ladder, cause it's rare to find somebody that will work and won't complain all the time.