Cristobal Garcia doubts he’ll be able to make up the $2,900 he lost by closing his Cielo Martierra carnicería on Federal Boulevard on Monday.
Denver Drywall Co. estimates it will pay $68,000 in overtime costs to catch up on jobs that were canceled when 85 percent of its 500-person workforce skipped work to attend last week’s immigration rally.
While economists said it will be hard to gauge the economic impact of last week’s “We Are America” march and the coinciding economic boycott, a survey of dozens of businesses by The Denver Post suggests that contractors and Latino-owned businesses were among the hardest-hit.
The effects of the boycott, which called for immigrants and their supporters to spend no money on May 1, appear muted. Metro-area malls, grocers and big-box retailers reported no change in business. Some downtown businesses actually saw a spike in sales as the throng of 75,000 marchers descended on downtown.
Kris Donhowe, owner of the Subway at Civic Center Station, close to the rally, reported a 40 percent increase in sales that day. The Subway at 16th and Champa streets sold 250 sandwiches compared with the usual 200 during the two-hour lunch rush, said manager Dan Nohner.
The event increased foot traffic on the sidewalk in front of Argonaut Wine and Liquor on East Colfax Avenue and bumped up normal Monday sales by about 5 percent, said Argonaut owner Ron Vaughn.
Meanwhile, many businesses that depend on immigrant workers, including meatpacking plants, restaurants, hotels, hospitals and nursing homes, were able to alter production schedules or bring in additional workers to cover absences.
“It will be very interesting to see if the effects are going to be largely symbolic,” said Jeffrey Zax, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “In general, I wouldn’t expect much long-term impact.”
Cargill Meat Solutions in Fort Morgan, one of the state’s largest meat processing plants, shifted production from Monday to Saturday in support of workers’ attendance at immigration rights rallies. Of the plant’s 1,900 employees, 70 percent are Latino.
Greeley-based Swift & Co. shut down its 1,700-employee Greeley beef processing plant but made up the lost time by increasing workers’ hours throughout the week.
Most of Commercial Cleaning System’s 1,300 employees work in the evenings, cleaning about 200 buildings in the metro area. So they had free time to attend the daytime demonstrations without affecting the company’s work, said Nancy Sotelo, a company spokeswoman. Almost all of the company’s employees are immigrants, she added.
While many businesses said that employees told them in advance of plans to take the day off to attend the rallies, some landscaping and construction operations said they were surprised by absences – and forced to close once they discovered they were hobbled by the lack of workers.
Ed Weimer, the assistant manager at Pacific Supply-Denver, a drywall supplier, said he lost about $40,000 in sales for the day. But he recouped much of that loss through the rest of the week because of heavier demand, Weimer said.
He said he probably had to spend about $1,360 on overtime costs Tuesday and Wednesday to catch up on stalled deliveries.
Robert Ritter, human resources manager of Academy Roofing, said about 65 percent of the company’s 170 employees took the day off.
“We had some projects that just had to sit there. It was like a ghost town at some construction projects,” Ritter said.
Latinos account for about 35 percent of the construction workforce, said Dick O’Brecht, spokesman for the Associated General Contractors of Colorado. The concentration of foreign labor is highest in concrete, drywall, roofing and landscaping businesses.
In landscaping, he said, immigrants make up about 90 percent of the workforce.
O’Brecht theorized that restaurants, hotels and other businesses that serve the public may have found it easier to get through the day without closing than subcontractors in some trades.
“In a restaurant, they can still cook food and serve food; they can just say, ‘If you get bad service, you get bad service.’ When hotel workers go out on strike and you have management people performing their functions, you can function, just not at peak efficiency. But if you need 20 laborers to finish a concrete pour and float the concrete before it turns hard, it takes the whole crew to get the job done.”
A handful of subcontractors said they were too understaffed to work on the massive T-REX transportation project along the southeast corridors of Interstates 25 and 225.
The effects of the march expanded far beyond metro Denver and into some mountain communities.
“We lost a lot of productivity, but not enough to impact schedules or cause anyone to miss deadlines or cost anyone any money,” said Kassie Inness, a project engineer with R.A. Nelson Construction, the company spearheading a major redevelopment in Aspen. “If it was more than a day, it probably would have been a lot more crucial.”
In other parts of the state, however, the impact of any worker walkouts was barely noticeable.
“In all honesty, I had not heard it was happening,” said Bobby Lieb, director of the Durango Area Chamber of Commerce.
In the metro area, the effect of the rally was particularly visible in heavily Latino business districts including parts of Federal Boulevard in Denver and East Colfax Avenue in Aurora. Many business owners in those areas said their personal beliefs, lack of business and, in some cases, social pressure contributed to their decisions to close.
“I closed because there were no people around,” said Garcia of the Cielo Martierra carnicería and grocery store in the Federal Village shopping center at Federal Boulevard and West Florida Avenue. Garcia typically employs five to six people, and most of them asked for the day off.
A few doors down in the brown-brick strip center, Raul Valles said he wasn’t bothered by the $1,300 he likely lost by closing the Tres Hermanos restaurant, which he owns with his brother, Juan.
Business would have suffered even if he stayed open, he said.
“It was dead in this area. Nobody was out,” he said.
While some business owners thought the lost revenue would never be made up, others figured it would come back in the form of more business later in the week.
“People will just do their laundry another day,” said Ken Rini, owner of A-All Coin Laundry & Dry Cleaning on Federal Boulevard. Ninety-five percent of the laundry’s customers are Latino, he said.
The fact that the rally seemed to hit Latino-owned businesses and companies that employ immigrants hardest had some questioning whether its overall impact would be positive.
At the El Paisa bakery in Aurora, owner Jose Herrera estimated that he lost about $1,000 by closing. Most of the small Latino-owned businesses surrounding his store also closed, he said.
The bakery employs Herrera’s sisters and six other workers. All of them attended the rallies.
“It didn’t help businesses,” Herrera said. “But maybe it got the attention of the government.”
Staff writers Dave Curtin, Electa Draper and Steve Lipsher contributed to this report.
Staff writer Kristi Arellano can be reached at 303-820-1902 or karellano@denverpost.com.
