I contacted a bunch of contractors last week and also posted to Bid Clerk. The house needs a new roof. Got the cash all lined up, ready to go. Doesn't matter if I keep the house or sell it, the roof needs to be taken care of. It has to be done now or during the next hurricane or big thunderstorm the house will be springing leaks.
A grand total of two contractors replied. In Houston at least it doesn't seem that small contractors are hurting for work.
I talked with a contractor who came out today. People complain about Mexicans taking jobs away from Americans. But I don't know of any Americans, whether they are black, white or native-born Hispanic, willing to work on roofs all day in south Texas during the summer. Close to the roof it has to be approaching 120 degrees up there. How much would you demand to do such a task? $30/hr? $40/hr? To re-roof my little 2-story crapbox will require 8 guys working over two days. If it wasn't for Mexicans getting paid $12/hr, there would be thousands of leaking roofs in places like Houston and San Antonio because homeowners couldn't afford to have their roofs replaced.
I do realize that my opinions about Mexicans puts me at odds with many of my readers. I've pointed out before that what we are seeing now is no different than what our great grandparents saw 100 years ago when we were swarmed with poor Italians desperate for work. Our great grandparents said the same thing about Italians that many of us are now saying about Mexicans. As a percentage of the total US population, new immigrant Italians represented a greater proportion of the total US population than Mexicans do today, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone now who thinks Americans of Italian ancestry aren't anything but great Americans.
I'll repeat the words I've said here many times: We need people to do the shitty jobs that Americans refuse to do, and I'd rather these people be lusty Catholics who enjoy their drink, go to church and bring good food to our shores, rather than people who are ashamed of their women and cover them up and pretend that normal human urges are forbidden and then demand that people with these normal human urges be killed in a sick, primitive manner.
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8 comments:
Forget the Mexicans, I'm more worried about those shifty Uzbeks coming to our shores. ;-)
Not this reader, Lou. I completely concur. If you are willing to make sacrifices like that for the betterment of your family and not break any laws other than Class C misdemeanors, I think this country needs you.
Just, you know, legally.
In my part of VA, the local processing plants are having trouble getting workers to shell and pick blue crab meat. Crab harvest is up, and price is down because the plants can't get the workers to do the processing. This work used to be done by African-Americans, but it's seasonal and the immigrants are the ones looking for work. But the plant owners are afraid to employ anyone without the proper visa.
Hey if they get here legal then OK, but otherwise you have billions of folks working for less than a dollar a day who would hop the first train here. The Mexicans are just lucky to have a rich next door neighbor to leach off of. When we get full employment here with a fair wage for the work, then let's let in what workers we need. I worked on roofs to pay for college, spreading tar ain't fun but it paid the bills. The problem is folks unwilling to pay a fair wage and simply making excuses.
"The problem is folks unwilling to pay a fair wage and simply making excuses."
Amen. It is that simple. Bogalusa employers are complaining that they can't get any employees, or any decent ones. The local Burger King offers $6.55 an hour to start; fast food places 30 miles away in Covington are offering $8.50 and up. Janitorial and housekeeping jobs are up to 50% higher than that. Construction laborers are being paid more than $12/hour on some job sites. I hesitate to think what roofers are getting.
Supply and demand. There are enough US workers, if employers offer enough. Otherwise, people who are out of work will do odd jobs under the table because it's more lucrative.
Employers have to offer more money and compete with each other a bit. Most of them want something for nothing.
Funny, but I've always admired Mexicans. I did my fair share of crappy day labor jobs in refineries as well as off shore work to pay my way through college. The only guys I knew would do the job and not bitch and whine all day were illegals.
Whether it was doing pipe fitting, ditch digging for a plumber, or roofing said plumbers house for him in August, the illegals he hired were freakin hard workers.
I never understood the whole "lazy Mexican" thing. Mind you, I quit doing that work and studied my ass off so I could graduate college. But it also what people define as livable wages. For the illegals, their standard of living and expenses where much less than ours. We'd earn the same as them and most of my friends and coworkers were always broke. The illegals did the same jobs for the same or usually less money, and still managed to send tons of it back home. That or they hit resale shops and flea markets, would buy tons of things they couldn't get down there, and would drive the whole kit and kaboodle down there whenever we had a turnaround.
And as for them being leaches, they used the exact same "free" public hospitals and emergency room the Americans that didn't have health insurance (which 99% of the contractors fall into that category) provided by their employer. They didn't have auto insurance just like all us gringos didn't since we either couldn't afford it or didn't care enough to get it.
It's not about race. It's about economics. Poor Mexicans really do act and behave just like poor white people or poor black people for the most part.
Paul...
Well, we have welfare, section 8, and the jackpot, disability. That soaks up a lot of possible workers. Further, taxes are so high that legit jobs at the low end are worse than not working. If you are going to be poor, you might as well not work. Males have been feminized, there's no physical competition anymore. When I was a kid, we'd compete to carry shingle bundles. I could do three, of the old 'Jets'.
Construction sucks. Pay by the hour, little future, no paid days off, nada benifits, no retirement. Working at McDonalds is better.
Rules, permits, paperwork, regulations, insurance. Buff your self up for the homeowner, the pitch, then motivate the lumpers, and now learn Spanish. If you can do all that, why stay in construction?
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