Posted on 03/15/2018 6:09:14 AM PDT by PapaBear3625
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.
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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.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Drive by every construction site here in CA, and it is obvious the illeal Mexicans have taken over. Think twice before entering any recently constructed building here in earthquake country.
In LA, working class blacks once were heavily employed in the construction industry, the illegals pushed them out.
Illegals are also taking over the trucking industry.
Mr. Trump has a huge task ahead of him to reverse all this.
How can illegal aliens live on 11 dollars per hour in California where the cost of living is astronomical and still have enough money left over to send a couple hundred bucks a month home to Mexico?
Because they are getting very generous California welfare payments, often under multiple false identities.
Living off the EBT card is a way of life in California
Ironically, they’ll probably be building the wall, which will be fairly useless until they take away the incentive.
“Virginia was low crime, Republican and English speaking before George W. Bush was President.”
911 was the time to build the wall and enforce our immigration laws. Instead Bush kept them wide open and started a pointless war with Iraq.
Except for FEMA and Army Corps contractors. They are all white and from everywhere other than here.
Quotes on rebuilding modest homes in the fire areas of Sonoma county range from $450-$650 a square foot and that is without plans. I cannot imagine the cost if the labor was 40% higher.
The article is accurate. The crews are largely Mexican. If you are white, you cannot get hired especially if you don’t speak Spanish. And talk about racism; you had better not put together a crew of illegals from different parts of Mexico. They need to be all from the same region or they will kill each other, or at least fight all the time.
“construction industry in California once offered a starting wage of about $45 an hour in the late 1980s”
Is this true? Inflation adjusted from 1989 it would be $93/h. It’s certainly not desirable.
“Building a house or commercial structure got cheaper due to illegal alien labor just when, exactly? That’s right, it never got cheaper. The contractors have been taking it in markup.”
I’m in the highrise construction industry (engineering side).
The illegals are 3 times cheaper but take 2 times as long to do anything right and waste materials. Plus there is time wasted on fake paperwork, etc. The actual difference on a project with illegals is maybe -5-10% while other costs increased. Construction prices havent gone down but up.
Competition is so heated that big profit only comes via “creativity”. Bids are often below the point when a job is profitable. All the profits come from cutting corners and dredging up the max possible change orders.
Developers are the ones who by far extract the most profit on a job and their chunk has steadily increased as shoddy construction became the mainstream. Essentially, people are willing to pay higher prices these days for trash build quality. And developers pocket from people’s ignorance.
If you want quality, you must cut out any developers. Buy your own lot directly from an owner and build to your own specs with a recommended contractor. It’ll cost more per sqft but you aren’t getting garbage slapped together by illegals to maximize developer profit.
I have several friends and family in construction, in CA.
They’re all either independent contractors now, or totally broken down.
Those that are independent justify hiring the illegals by saying the white guys don’t show up sober, with a lunch ready to work every morning. Of course that’s a lie.
The truth is they pay the illegals $25-$30hr (Journey level). Not as employees, but B2B via 1099.
No overhead.
And for those who tried to make it without being an independent contractor...as just a worker...they’re all over 50 and physically broken. Unable to walk across the room kind of broken.
$45 an hour in the 80’s? That is insane.
I don’t believe $11 an hour current day.
Construction labor, White, Black, or any other color is in short supply. Wages have gone up and are way above that, unless the heavy tax burden and cost of doing business in CA has kept wages low.
I’m in construction and have constant price pressure, even though wages and material costs are sky rocketing. I’d love it if people really put their money where their mouth is. Instead of asking why I’m more expensive or if I will match a low ball price from a sleazy competitor, they should be asking what my employee wages are and if I’m paying all the Worker’s compensation and payroll taxes.
I’d love to be able to pay my labor $45 an hour, but I’d never sell another job or go out of business very quickly.
I will never again allow unskilled labor on to my property.
In 1979 I did construction job site cleanup and ran errands sounds like I had the same job you had- no foreigners, no illegals at all. It was in Arizona so the illegals had not begun to take over even there yet. I was the oddity on that job, only woman working on the whole site- they were building 300 houses. I know Americans were doing those jobs, I ended up working into an office job- saw illegals begin to take jobs, the company I worked for would not hire them but others did. Made the bidding process totally unfair. One contractor cheating on labor takes the competition out of it. It all should have been stopped then.
I had many family members working agriculture jobs and construction jobs, one by one most of the jobs went to illegals. No one cared except the people doing those jobs. People say you are pretty sorry if an illegal can take your job- they don’t understand the cost savings to the employer. Employers think they can replace a legal worker with a couple illegals and still come out ahead. Some of the jobs were skilled, so quality suffered but no one seemed to care about that either. Try to find someone to build real custom cabinetry, do detailed wood work in high end homes. Try to find someone that understands working with high end imported floor tile than cannot just be slapped down on the floor. Truly skilled construction workers are a thing of the past.
That happened in GA also. Now that we have run most of them out you see Americans back in construction.
The last house I had built was constructed on my own lakefront lot in 2005. Did my due diligence on the contractor, multiple bids from different contractors and didn’t go with the absolute cheapest. He came highly recommended, beautiful houses he’d built, glowing recommendations from owners. He turned out to be a nightmare, I don’t know what happened, drugs? Substitution of inferior materials that had been specified in the contract, foundation was to have been poured and formed concrete but he built it cinderblock, I had to hire an attorney. And, he used illegals so green they couldn’t understand a word of English. I’ll not be building another house anytime soon, it was not a good experience. Beautiful place though, ended up having to sell it due to the crash in 2008, made money on it. Would have made considerably more had I sold it a year earlier, though.
Building a house or commercial structure got cheaper due to illegal alien labor just when, exactly?
That’s right, it never got cheaper. The contractors have been taking it in markup. The benefit never was passed onto home buyers or businesses building a new office or warehouse.
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Exactly.
Now the illegals have the skills, too. One of the jobs I had while in Florida was kosher supervisor on a dairy farm in the panhandle. The entire veterinary department aside from the doctor himself were illegals. And they knew how to care for the sick cows.
I also remember that there were some good ol’ boys on some of the framing crews when I was in that. They smoked reefer all day, but high as they were, they could put up units faster and better than the illegals, and got paid on a higher scale. Still, I would not want to work around potheads with power tools.
And th price of new homes are skyrocketing in CA.
See if you can get the connection to the civil war.
A while back I read some commentary from someone who pointed out that one of the major reasons for the riots in New York in 1863 were the fear that newly freed slaves would depress wages. It is a perspective I had never previously considered, and it makes me notice which groups of people are pushing for illegal immigration, and which groups are opposed to it.
Apparently the power brokers like wages to be as low as possible, but it is not good for the middle class.
Outstanding! I'm going to try to remember that. It sums it up perfectly.
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