“There just aren’t as many 17- and 18-year-old white kids out working their summers doing construction anymore,” says Troy Hilton, a former Big50 remodeler who is now a project superintendent with Progressive Builders, in Fort Myers, Fla. “But we can find 10 Hispanic guys for every job opening we have.”
Tim Wallace, owner of T.W. Wallace Inc. in Arlington, Va., says that when he went into business in 1972, “there were almost no immigrants, period,” in the construction work-force. Today, seven of his nine employees are Hispanic. One is Nery Munzon: Since 1999, the Guatemalan has worked his way up from laborer to carpenter, and his boss wants to promote him to lead carpenter. Remodelers shouldn’t “be afraid of us just because we’re immigrants,” Munzon says. “We start from zero, and we come to this country to start a new life and do the best we can.”
PROUDLY WORKING-CLASS More than having sheer numbers in their favor, immigrants have attributes that make them excellent employees, several remodelers say. Echoing others, Wallace notes that “Hispanics don’t mind doing physical labor, and they are very quick learners, hard workers, reliable, honest.”
For about 15 years, one of Gary Moffie’s “most loyal and conscientious workers” has been a member of his field crew who escaped from Vietnam when Saigon fell to the communists. The employee, Tam Tang, typically gets to work a half-hour early, “never stops working, and, in fact, hates when he’s not busy,” says Moffie, president of The Remodeling Co., in Beverly, Mass. “I wish I could find more employees like him.”
“The blue-collar work ethic is alive and well among immigrants,” Pagés says. “They haven’t been brainwashed to think that everyone can be a ‘leader’ or a brain surgeon. They still see construction work as honorable.” What’s more, he notes, they appreciate their jobs and always thank him on payday. Many also bring specialized skills from their own countries; he has known a number of Vietnamese electricians who were electrical engineers in their native country, for instance.
Something else Pagés finds appealing about immigrants is their versatility — a trait that, he says, reflects the “polychronic” (nonlinear, multitasking, group-oriented) cultures many people grew up in. “They don’t mind if you interrupt them and ask them to go over there and do some caulking, then trim out a window,” he says. “An Anglo guy is more likely to say, ‘I’m a framer, I don’t do that,’” Pagés says.
Another remodeler making this observation is Mirek (Mark) Golczynski, who moved from Poland to the Washington, D.C., area in 1991. He tends to hire other Eastern Europeans because of their flexibility. “They can handle the different kinds of jobs,” he says, from carpentry to plumbing and electrical work. Some of this versatility reflects his workers’ educational backgrounds (for example, Golczynski has a master’s degree in economics).
From the client perspective, jobs go more quickly, he says, “because I can often handle the entire job with my guys. There is no delay in scheduling subcontractors.” Clients also develop a comfort level in seeing the same workers every day — even on additional jobs years later. Golczynski has helped some employees get their green cards, and for their interesting, well-paying jobs and their supportive boss, they stay with him.
PERCEPTIONS AND REALITIES Remodelers who don’t employ immigrants cite a variety of reasons, from the simple explanation that none have applied for jobs, to rational concerns involving legality and language barriers, to more dismissive assumptions that reveal ignorance, prejudice, or both.
“I only employ legal AMERICANS,” asserted one member of the REMODELING Reader Panel in a recent poll. The implication of this and other responses is that most immigrants are here illegally — and that their employers are either willfully flouting the law in order to hire cheap labor (and undercut honest businesses) or taking chances that no law-abiding remodeler would risk.