Hear and Listen

 

800 Dollars

                I am writing this to tell you that when Donald Trump tells you something about immigration you should listen even if you don’t agree.  There’s more here than meets the eye.

                When I was in my early twenties I was in the construction business.  I worked in remodeling.  I performed kitchen, bath and home remodels.  I also performed small commercial projects.  One of my favorites was a high-end hair styling operation off of 5^th Avenue in Manhattan.

                Donald Trump had a big name in the construction business.

                He preferred, it was said, that HRH was a preferred contractor.  At the time I idolized Donald Trump.  He was a dashing businessman and everything he touched seemed to turn into gold.  At one point he was involved in a real estate deal involving railroad yards and as they began drilling into the lots to being construction they struck oil!  It was actually an oil railcar that had been buried decades before for whatever reason.  Nevertheless, it was a lighthearted story and contributed to the idea that New York City was the place to be.

                I worked very hard in my chosen career and began my own company.  I wanted to contract with HRH for my own reasons.  It was prestigious and appeared to be wealthy.

                I worked on a high rise building in midtown Manhattan.  One of my coworkers was from Ireland.  As we talked the subject of immigration came up for some reason.  He had been talking about Ireland.  He said in Ireland that the high schools taught carpentry, plumbing, electrical work and all the trades, including steel and glazier (glass) work.

                I asked why he didn’t stay there and start a company because he was truly an accomplished carpenter.

                He told me that there was no work.  That they trained them for the work but once you graduate the only realistic choice is to leave Ireland.  He decided to come to the United States and live in New York because his eight brothers had done the same.

                I really liked him.  We were sitting on top of the building having lunch.  I said, ‘Well, there’s room enough for everybody here.  I’ll take this side of New York and you can have that side.’, and we laughed our heads off.

                Eventually I ran into a construction manager from HRH.  I met him at a lumber yard.  Before Home Depot, Lowe’s and Menards arrived lumber yards were the choice of small and large contractors for construction materials.

                He said they had a new project with bathrooms and kitchens.

                ‘Jackpot!’, I thought.

                I went to meet him and he showed me the work needed to be done.  Rip out and replace the bath and kitchen.  All materials supplied.  Labor only.  Payment on the completion of each unit.

                The apartments had been rent controlled units owned by some Federal Agency.  I can’t recall which one but I believe it was held by the Federal Housing Administration for whatever reason.  The real estate company had bought them at a deep discount.

                They forced out all the tenants, including rent-control tenants, out of all of the buildings in a matter of months.  Once cleared out they started their work changing the buildings into condominiums. When the remodeling was finished the entire set of buildings was to be sold for a tremendous multi-million dollar profit.  What a flip that was.

                I was eager to start with the first one.  He asked me how long it would take me.  I said each one three to five days.

                He took me to an apartment under renovation.

                There were five Korean workers there.  They had pulled out all the cabinets and were using sledgehammers to dismantle the six inch thick tile work in the bathrooms.

                The construction manager told me that the Koreans completed each project in one day.

                I noticed they had no masks, their bodies and clothes were filthy and the air was clinging and cloying with dust and fibers.

                The construction manager told me they slept on site.

                I was bewildered.  At that time I didn’t realize I was looking at severe exploitation, illegal immigration and abuse.

                All I could think of was I couldn’t compete with that and I told him.

                I was leaving when he said he had something for me.  It working in the lobbies of all the buildings.

                I got a contract replacing mailboxes in a large residential development.  They had been housing built in the 1930’s by the WPA (Works Progress Administration).  HRH was doing the project for a construction group that reportedly included Donald Trump’s organization.  I thought this was great because I had this idea that I would work my way up in the construction industry and one day work for Donald Trump himself.  Those were heady days.  There were 32 of them and it was big job for me.

                America is great.  If you arrange things and work hard you can succeed, or fail.  But, if you fail, you can start again.  Donald Trump knows that well.  That is one thing that he says that people should listen to.  He has repeatedly been lambasted for going bankrupt so often, but, really, did he break the law?  No.  He used the established system to do that.  Am I defending him?  Heck, no!  It is important, however, for everyone to know that what he is criticized for doing is a widely known and practiced business behavior in the United States.

                Some foreign corporations do something similar, where they will work in the United States for a few years, then, change names and reincorporate.  New business, new clock, new calendar – and a separation from past work and sometimes debt.  It happens.

                So – I take the job.  It is to build a frame for the new mailboxes, stain and finish them, pull the old, brass sets out of the wall, hang the new mailboxes and dispose of the old.

                Great!  Good job, reasonable money, I was on my way.

                They fronted me the money for the supplies and two weeks work with a secondary payment mid-work and the balance on completion.

                Uh-oh!

                I went for it.

                We knocked out the work and were half done when I went for the secondary payment.

                The construction manager was nowhere to be found.  After five days of missing him “just by a minute” I finally found him.  He told me just to go to the office in Manhattan to get paid.

                So, I thought, ‘Okay, this is a pain, but I get to go to the Construction Office!  Great!’

                The next day off I go and I take two of my men with me.

                The office was in a high rise building but a little on the down side.  It had been built earlier in the century or before.  It was hard to tell.  1920’s, 1930’s or 40’s?  It wasn’t run down.  It was just plain.  I figured it would have more glitz if it was associated with Trump.

                In we go.

                I find the office on the third floor (low down in a building is considered ‘not good’ in Manhattan).  I open the door and – you know that scene in ‘BeetleJuice’ where bizarre people are sitting all around waiting for service?  No one had a shrunken head but many seemed like they had shrunken spirits.

I read Franz Kafka’s ‘The Trial’.  At one point the main character claims he is not impatient but he is tired of waiting for a conclusion to his trial.

In that room the walls were lined with plastic waiting room chairs, all filled with workmen – carpenters, plumbers, electricians – it was clear by their clothing.  The room itself was hardly twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep.  The room was packed.

There was only two seats available.  My two men sat down.

There was a glassed in office in the corner.  There was a clerk at the window, a woman answering a phone and man standing behind both of them staring at the floor.

I went to the window but had to wait.  I was third in line.  The man at the window was just finished up.  He was telling the clerk he would never work for them again and tell everyone.

He left.

                The second man was up at bat.  He was a plumber.  He could hardly speak English and spoke with a heavy Italian accent.  The disagreement was over getting paid for a job he had done a year before.

                It became heated.  They told him to come back the next week.

                He turned around to me with tears in his eyes yelling, ‘They don’t pay!  They don’t pay!  I’m ruined!’, then he stormed out

                My experience wasn’t much better but I got all the information I needed to know they weren’t going to pay up.  I wasn’t in a bad way so I all had to do was stop work.  I would go to small claims if they gave me a hassle.

                I left the work but after a month was encouraged to go back because the construction manager was making the rounds in ‘my world’, that is my social and business circle, talking me down and making lots of noise.

                I took the men back to finish the job though I reckoned I wasn’t going to get paid.

                When I got to the workroom to perform the last stage there were 20 Irishmen there.  Literally, from Ireland, trying to finish my job.  The construction company had tried to scab a contractor.  Weird.

                Some of them were hopping mad because they were all employed as maintenance at the complex and didn’t want to do the work we were doing.  They didn’t even know how.

                We took over, finished the job and left.  I received a check later in the mail but it was $800.00 short.  I just about cut even on that job.

                No profit.

                HRH ate the profit.

                I have, half jokingly, said since then that Donald Trump owes me $800.00

                It would have been worse if I had followed the path of all those other small and medium-sized contractors that had been stiffed.

                Keep in mind, that except for the illegal immigrants, everything that happened throughout this interaction, which was not unusual, was perfectly legal.

                Donald Trump, (whom I feel, perhaps against logic and circumstance still owes me $800), has stated repeatedly that everything he did to increase the wealth given over to him by his father was legal.

                Was it questionable?  Maybe.  But they don’t ask your morals in business, do they?

                Just ask Dupont about C-8 and 3M about PFOA.  

                When Donald Trump says that the immigrants will steal American jobs he is only partially correct.  Is it stealing if you do something that an American is taught to avoid like working in asbestos ridden, closed-in spaces for a barely living wage?  It is stealing, however, if the company hires them without properly ensuring that they are eligible to work in the United States.  If you don’t think that is a problem just check on how many H1-B Visa Workers are sharing visas provided to them by their consulting and contracting companies.  It’s not just farmwork and construction.

                I sometimes wonder what happened to those men and their families.  The men who were cheated out of their work, the men who were tricked into one job and forced into another, the men who were treated like slaves.