Day Laborers for a Construction Project

as workers, beings who work with their bodies need the protections a state has to offer more so than others, such as office workers. these protections have been “factored” in to the already low minimum wage and sit on top of the minimum wage. as someone who graduated high school in 1982, i have always believed these “protections” are a “given right”, just a little short of a civil right and that all workers in this country are equal. For someone to come on here and imply (and someone perhaps much younger than I, where is this world going?) that either people who work with their hands for a living are not entitled to those protections or people should not have them based on the color of skin – be it because someone has darker skin or someone has lighter skin (me) – is plain wrong. to allude to “day labor” on here is denying someone those protections.

this is not who we are on this board.

i know, people want this post to go away because it smells like a pile of ……. on the streets of brooklyn. leave it alone and i will not return to it.

@ejalbk: this is not a morality issue. it is a human rights and social issue – for those living in society who are concerned about its vulnerable.

the people standing on corners looking for jobs work for about minimum wage (and they are vulnerable). i am self employed, i understand this and will explain it. People who perform IT contract work get it and so will hiring managers. in my experience, people who least understand it are civil servants because they have the best benefit plans on top of what employers are required to pay by law. here goes:

when people hire someone to do hourly work, they are hiring an “employee” (they are not hiring licensed contractors, right? so what are they? they are employees. they may be “temporary”). the person hiring them should be providing them with 1/2 the social security tax (6% of pay), unemployment (about 4%), workers comp (17%), and a medicare tax (1.5%?). in NYC there are something about sick days. and while not legally mandated, most people expect it, so one has to factor in the cost of vacation and the mo st progressive reading this would agree that the cost of healthcare should be factored in. NO ONE READING THIS is going to escape retirement or a sick day. some will experience unemployment and many working with their bodies will experience an injury that will require medical care. The “employer” should be providing the LEGALLY mandated protections i list above and for someone making $25 an hour they come out to close to $10 an hour. in the event the “employer” does not provide these, the worker has no choice but to either purchase these or “self insure” because at some point they will come due. figuring the cost of these, that person making $25 an hour is pushed to right about $15 an hour – or minimum wage; the numbers do not lie.

OP was looking for experienced people. i bet his guess was to pay someone $25 an hour or minimum wage after taxes and required benefits. someone like myself would demand at least $50 an hour if i had to “pay” my own protections and $30 an hour if the “employer” paid them..

there is racism involved in the selection of people knowing we can effectively pay them minimum wage based on how they look. The OP did not come on here looking for “day laborers” hoping to find white people willing to work without legally mandated protections. when we hire people this way – especially adults (and it does not matter what race) who have families of there own – we contribute to social problems. and those problems result in all sorts of other issues including interactions with the police. this board cannot be used to propagate those social problems.

with a system like this as big as it is and existing pretty much out of the shadows and with the consent of many, including people reading this, i can safely say this is “systemic” racism. these past few months a lot has been written about “systemic” racism and journalists are saying that it is time for the rest of us to demand a stop to it. i understand some people do not understand how this has become racist; it takes insight and i have had to work in it for years to understand it myself (and i tried not to become a “participant” in it but the system is so rigged, we have to abide by it). now that i am pointing it out, i am going to say, this board cannot be used to propagate racism.

its not enough for any of us to put bumper stickers on our cars or hang signs in our windows with letters on them or tell our children to never use certain words. if we want a society based on equal rights and equal pay, we have to stop this where we find it. there is no way any of us should support equal rights and equal pay for people in air conditioned office buildings if we cannot demand it for those toiling with their hands.

Thank you for the opportunity Ejalbk.

If you go to Janovic or similar early in the morning you my find some folks looking for work. Contrary to what many may think, they do not work for minimum wage or anything close to it. I’ll leave the ‘morality’ of this to others as that wasn’t your question.

for those of you wishing to gain a better understanding of what it takes for a self employed person (who labors) to provide for themselves, there is an article titled “worn out bodies and little savings” in today’s NYT. it speaks to the challenges contractors face when retiring. IMO, the author, Tammy La Gorce, stops short though because she does not address the day to day challenges self employed people who work with their bodies face providing the a safety net; payments into social security, unemployment, workers comp insurance and healthcare in general. Her story does not even begin to touch on the racial aspects of this and how discrimination in the selection of people puts downward pressure on these benefits ALL people need.

maybe one of the real social progressives on this board could contact Ms La Gorce, and let her know there is a compelling story waiting for her in Brooklyn. wouldn’t it be great to see Brooklyn, a boro we love, where we live and work and care about one another – even people who do not look like us, featured in a story like this? B rooklyn could become the cornerstone of progressive reform for people who toil with their hands all across america.

if you are wondering why this “carpenter” is reading the NYT, i used to read it. until 2009. one week ago, we in this house realized that there is too much noise out there, too many people saying things they have no idea what they are talking about, people repeating nonsense and often taking short snipes at one another because they themselves cannot process the information put before them; we do not want to be those people and we resubscribed.

sorry no permitz, one hour ago while you were posting your comment, i was down stairs working – sanding a piece of trim. For me to write on here about something that we should all be concerned about – i have to take time from my self employment. i do not have the luxury to write a nice, flowing and well edited piece to post here and the result is something over numerous posts. at least i had the insight and gumption to push back on something i feel is a serious issue and wrong to many.

i think you and a lot of people are reading what i am saying and realize that I am correct in what i am saying and that it should have been said long ago. that does not mean everyone likes what i just said or agrees with it. with a name like “no permitz” i suspect you are more of the “free market” ilk and you know that what i am saying means more regulation and more costs and that goes against the “free market”, regressive way of thinking.

had the moderators of this board seen the OP’s post and realized the implications and removed it before i saw it, none of this would be happening.

But he IS right.

Steve is having a full blown conversation with himself

you know, if these people over here where i lived heard me talking about issues such as equal pay for equal work and race and gender equality, they would put a rock through my window. i am glad they do not read brownstoner and am happy i was able to come on here and say what i did to a group of like minded people; i have always felt as though brooklyn is a safe haven for people who believe in human rights and dignity.

i am commenting here again today to keep this current. and i have more to say.

in practice, in the business world, it is ok to pay people less if the SKILLS are not there but they cannot pay them less based on race (and for some reason when you used the term “day laborer”, i do not think you were thinking recent immigrants from white Eastern Europe; that term has “racist” connotations to me). In NYC it is illegal to discriminate against contractors based on race and “immigration status” (check the law) among other attributes. these people you refer to as “day laborers” are, by virtue of their free lance ways of working “contractors” (and they should be licensed) but just because they are not does not mean they are not contractors; by the city’s definitions, they are “unlicensed contractors”. by paying them hourly, you manage to make them “your employee” in theory and therefor you think you skirt the city’s licensing rules but then you are denying them a very long list of legally mandated protections which you should now be paying for – including workers comp in surance, payment into social security, taxes, disability insurance, the NYC sick days, etc, etc. this is your responsibility.

I get push back when i bring this conversation up with my free market friends out on long island (i do not want to get political on this board, so i use the economic term “free market”) – “let the market dictate the rate of pay” they tell me (i recently commented to someone “these same ‘free market’ types would have children working in sweat shops if we let them”). here in the city when i speak to people who think like i do, and have long believed in “equality” and “equal pay” and that the the color of one’s skin (and gender) should not dictate what one get’s paid, people agree with what i am saying. I hope the OP and others do as well – especially the women reading this since the “equal pay for equal” work discussion has been going on since before i was born (at least according to what i heard justice ginsberg say in an interview on pbs last night or do we not care what justice ginsberg had to say? ).

This is our city folks. Before we complain (or go out and protest) about social problems and the resulting violence in other cities, we have take a close look in our own backyards and consider what we are doing to contribute to social problems here. and this board should not be used to propagate those problems.

this is how things have changed over the years. in the past (in my lifetime) someone like the OP would have found some people – i don’t mean to sound sexist but they would have asked around for some “guys” who could take care of this. at that time, they might have been one or two classes of people: college students who learned to do this to get through college or men who had full time jobs and were looking for side work or were on layoff. theses classes of people would have been able to do this side work for (at the time and on long island for about twice minimum wage). but those people had other protections by virtue of their parents or their full time job that they worked during the week or would return to.

Using people the way i describe above is ok so long as it does not become the norm. once it becomes the norm and we are paying adults with families of their own this way, with no legally mandated worker protections and no health insurance, something is wrong and we are feeding into a system designed to benefit one class of people at the cost of an other set of people. i am sorry to have to point this out – but with all the talk and writing about buildings and architects and history on here, this has to be part of the conversation.

i am a contractor. for me to come on here and point this out could be harmful to my business, right? here is my position on that: there are people out there who understand why this is wrong and why it hurts our society people who toil as individuals and our society as a whole. i know who they are when i talk to them. and by looking at some of the bumper stickers on the backs of their cars. those are the people i want to have as customers. in so far as people who do not think human beings are worth the cost of benefits – at least those mandated by law but more in line with what they maintain for their own families – i do not want to know those people.

i could have come on here and posted the name of a drywall person. he is not from the US but is employed full time and probably has some benefits – at least the mandatory minimums. when he does side work, he gets $40 an hour. if he were fully self employed i would have to guess he would have to get a minimum of $70 an hour; so $40 an hour is a great deal. if OP is thinking that $40 an hour sounds like the worth of a human being, let me know and will post this individual’s name.

i know someone who could help you and he is not licensed and i could contact him and see if he is busy and i could introduce you. but i would have to feel like you were not out here to take advantage of human beings.

we know people hire day laborers. but there is so much wrong with doing this and even if people think they are doing something great if they pay them a couple dollars extra, what they are being paid really does not come close to what it would cost to pay a fully self employed person who exists out of the shadows and has to think about retirement and have insurance and pay taxes (we have to pay into social security too you know, you don’t want people like me walking around on welfare when i am 80 do you? sponging off your tax dollar?). what you are doing can and will result in social problems for our communities later. and there is a racial element to this as well, would you talk to me if i walked up and wanted to do this work? no, because i know my rights and would demand them and you would know that by looking at the color of my skin. if we want to end social problems in our society and give our youth some incentive to go into this work, we have to begin taking care of people like they are human beings and something tells me the term “day laborer” means you are thinking something else.