boutons_deux
04-11-2013, 06:43 PM
Like almost everything in the Texas, the construction industry in the Lone Star State is big. One in every 13 workers here is employed in the state's $54 billion-per-year construction industry.
Homebuilding and commercial construction may be an economic driver for the state, but it's also an industry riddled with hazards. Years of illegal immigration have pushed wages down, and accidents and wage fraud are common. Of the nearly 1 million workers laboring in construction here,
approximately half are undocumented.
Many of those workers have been in the U.S. for years, even decades. This critical mass of eager, mostly Hispanic workers means it's possible for a family from New York or California to move to Texas and buy a brand new, five-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot home for $160,000.
Like almost everything in the Texas, the construction industry in the Lone Star State is big. One in every 13 workers here is employed in the state's $54 billion-per-year construction industry.
Homebuilding and commercial construction may be an economic driver for the state, but it's also an industry riddled with hazards. Years of illegal immigration have pushed wages down, and accidents and wage fraud are common. Of the nearly 1 million workers laboring in construction here, approximately half are undocumented.
Many of those workers have been in the U.S. for years, even decades. This critical mass of eager, mostly Hispanic workers means it's possible for a family from New York or California to move to Texas and buy a brand new, five-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot home for $160,000.
"We're talking large commercial projects, even state and county projects," she says. "So it's a problem that's widespread in the industry."
If wage theft is a nasty cousin of slavery, Tzintzun says there's a deeper, more fundamental sickness affecting the Texas construction industry: the misclassification of construction workers as independent contractors instead of as employees.
"We found that 41 percent of construction workers, regardless of immigration status, were misclassified as subcontractors," she says.
It works like this: Pretend you're an interior contractor, drop by the Home Depot parking lot and pick up four Hispanic guys to install Sheetrock for $8 an hour.
By law, these men are your employees, even if just for the day. But in Texas, as in many other states, it's popular to pretend they're each independent contractors — business owners. Which means you are not paying for their labor but for their business services.
With this arrangement, the contractor — you — don't have to pay Social Security taxes or payroll taxes or workers' compensation or overtime. Instead, you pretend the undocumented Hispanic worker you've just paid in cash is going to pay all those state and federal taxes out of his $8 an hour himself.
working Texas construction is a good way to die while not making a good living. More construction workers die in Texas than in any other state, the WDP-UT study finds. With in 2010, construction workers in the lightly regulated Lone Star State died at twice the rate as those in California, . That's compared with the in that same year.
http://www.npr.org/2013/04/10/176677299/construction-booming-in-texas-but-many-workers-pay-dearly
Homebuilding and commercial construction may be an economic driver for the state, but it's also an industry riddled with hazards. Years of illegal immigration have pushed wages down, and accidents and wage fraud are common. Of the nearly 1 million workers laboring in construction here,
approximately half are undocumented.
Many of those workers have been in the U.S. for years, even decades. This critical mass of eager, mostly Hispanic workers means it's possible for a family from New York or California to move to Texas and buy a brand new, five-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot home for $160,000.
Like almost everything in the Texas, the construction industry in the Lone Star State is big. One in every 13 workers here is employed in the state's $54 billion-per-year construction industry.
Homebuilding and commercial construction may be an economic driver for the state, but it's also an industry riddled with hazards. Years of illegal immigration have pushed wages down, and accidents and wage fraud are common. Of the nearly 1 million workers laboring in construction here, approximately half are undocumented.
Many of those workers have been in the U.S. for years, even decades. This critical mass of eager, mostly Hispanic workers means it's possible for a family from New York or California to move to Texas and buy a brand new, five-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot home for $160,000.
"We're talking large commercial projects, even state and county projects," she says. "So it's a problem that's widespread in the industry."
If wage theft is a nasty cousin of slavery, Tzintzun says there's a deeper, more fundamental sickness affecting the Texas construction industry: the misclassification of construction workers as independent contractors instead of as employees.
"We found that 41 percent of construction workers, regardless of immigration status, were misclassified as subcontractors," she says.
It works like this: Pretend you're an interior contractor, drop by the Home Depot parking lot and pick up four Hispanic guys to install Sheetrock for $8 an hour.
By law, these men are your employees, even if just for the day. But in Texas, as in many other states, it's popular to pretend they're each independent contractors — business owners. Which means you are not paying for their labor but for their business services.
With this arrangement, the contractor — you — don't have to pay Social Security taxes or payroll taxes or workers' compensation or overtime. Instead, you pretend the undocumented Hispanic worker you've just paid in cash is going to pay all those state and federal taxes out of his $8 an hour himself.
working Texas construction is a good way to die while not making a good living. More construction workers die in Texas than in any other state, the WDP-UT study finds. With in 2010, construction workers in the lightly regulated Lone Star State died at twice the rate as those in California, . That's compared with the in that same year.
http://www.npr.org/2013/04/10/176677299/construction-booming-in-texas-but-many-workers-pay-dearly