What Do Contractors Make Off Cheap Labor in the Construction Trades?

the short answer is “very little”.

as some of you know i have been writing about our reliance on cheap labor and the conditions it creates for people who toil with their hands. as i have encountered people in Brooklyn in recent weeks who read what i write on here, the conversation continues face-to-face and when it does something like this is said and i literally just got off the phone with someone who asked it (someone from here): “what about the contractors making all this money off the backs of this cheap labor?” this has been said to me three times in the past month by people who are otherwise highly intelligent and highly educated and all in professional positions and i suppose who also follow informative, investigative media.

i will tell you the truth about what happens when contractors try to make money off cheap labor: they do not get the job. I learned it in 2007 when i bid a job with me grossing $300 or 350 a day (that includes any state mandated protections and benefits) and a laid off electrician grossing 200 or 250 a day (who was a friend a nd i was not going to profit off of him): they will hire someone who uses cheap labor and if that contractor tries to make a 100 a day off that labor, they will keep shopping until they find someone willing to take advantage of the vulnerable, the people among us with the least protections and the fear of saying something or making a complaint that can cost them their next meal (and these people are living six to a room, hand to mouth in bad times and month to month in good times; no sick days, no vacation).

what can we do about this?

First, to appease the free market and capitalist types reading this (those who detest regulation) we do not need new laws. for those of us interested in helping working people achieve the same sense of security we have and want our children to have, their are systems in place, progressive laws passed by the likes of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, designed to protect workers. we just need citizenry and leaders who believe in the rule of law and who believe in enforcing the laws, uniformly and without any discrimination (something most of us on here abhor, i hope). if the laws were enforced equally on all, we would get rid of the bad actors and everyone would have a fair shot.

i had to explain this here because most of us who work are silent. we don’t put our fingers to keys and start typing. Something is missing about the issues and the causes of it in the media, say on NPR. In recent weeks, i realized that many do not understand that contractors cannot simply set their prices and profit off the cheap labor or even pay them fairly or provide needed and required benefits and that is because of a system designed to reward bad actors and law breakers.

this had to be said because i have realized that even the brightest people out there do not understand the competitiveness of the industry and what that does to those at the bottom.