Unions are reaching out to the foreign workers who crowd U.S. construction sites, and some see them as a heaven-sent solution to sliding membership rolls.
As employers turn to cheaper nonunion workers, some unions that represent the construction industry are trying to organize the immigrants who take those jobs – regardless of their immigration status, said Jim Gleason, executive secretary of the Mountain West Regional Council of Carpenters.
Adding the newcomers to union rolls could mean the difference between survival and extinction for a labor movement that is struggling to remain relevant.
In return, the union offers job protection, good wages and benefits to immigrants – legal and illegal – who are struggling to survive at low-paying jobs.
“In 20 years you are not going to see many white middle-class kids getting involved in this business,” Gleason explained. “The growth in the workforce is going to be in the immigrant population.”
Nationally, union membership has declined steadily over the past two decades.
It peaked in 1983, when 20.1 percent of all employees belonged to unions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By 2004, just 12.5 percent belonged.
The carpenters union has 3,000 members in Colorado, but Gleason sees room to grow.
The Center for Immigration Studies estimates there are more than 9 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Another estimated half-million enter the country each year.
Gleason estimates that two-thirds of Colorado’s construction workers are immigrants, and more than half are undocumented. Yet unionizing a population that fears deportation has been an uphill battle.
Most submerge themselves in an underground economy where wages are low and working conditions poor. In many cases, they work without benefits and earn less than the $12.42 to $22.70 an hour paid to union members.
Not everyone agrees that the number of foreign workers is as high as Gleason’s estimate. The number of non-native workers on a construction job depends on the trade, said Rich Forsberg, owner of Englewood-based insurance company Forsberg Engerman, which insures contractors.
Many of the workers hold temporary work visas, he said.
As the number of undocumented workers on payrolls increases, unions have little choice but to organize them, said Vernon Briggs, professor of economics at Cornell University.
“If the employer is hiring illegal immigrants, the only thing the unions can do is ignore them or organize them,” Briggs said.
Unions aren’t required to ask for proof of immigration status, an obligation that rests with employers.
It is almost impossible to tell how many might be here illegally.
The carpenters union is making its push at a time when construction is booming throughout the nation but industry wages are stagnating.
For generations of American workers, construction was a path to the middle-class. As companies increase their reliance on immigrant labor, it is becoming a low-paying industry, said John Keeley, a spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan think tank that favors stricter immigration rules.
“What we have seen contractors do is rely increasingly on day labor,” Keeley said. Contractors frequently avoid taxes and other costs by paying undocumented workers off the books, he said.
Immigration has become a hot-button issue for lawmakers trying to balance the desires of business for more foreign labor with concerns about border safety and job opportunities for Americans.
In Colorado, activists have proposed a constitutional amendment that would bar illegal immigrants from receiving most state services.
Nationally, the Bush administration has proposed ambitious enforcement programs to control the nation’s borders and a guest-worker program that would give more immigrants some kind of legal status.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce advocates the expansion of temporary visa programs and the creation of a process for some undocumented workers to qualify for legal work status.
“There are some U.S. workers taking these jobs but not enough,” said Angelo Amador, director of immigration policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “There is a shortage, and it is growing.”
Keeley calls the labor shortage cited by Amador a red herring. Americans are available, but businesses prefer cheaper foreign labor, he said.
“The current immigration policy has morphed into a labor subsidy,” Keeley said. “A lot of unscrupulous players have turned a cold shoulder to a native workforce expecting $15 to $20 an hour.”
