Invisible Army

[Editor’s note: This article has been changed from the version in the print edition to reflect corrected information from the Department of Labor and Industries.]

Across King County, men who can barely afford to pay their living
expenses are building the homes of tomorrow. In Seattle, one man
reportedly gets dropped off after work at a house he shares with 14
people, including five children. In Federal Way, eight men are said to
share a one-bedroom apartment with a single mattress. And in Bothell,
eight men reportedly share a house they rent from the construction
foreman they work for.

These men—according to a source who works undercover to
organize workers on construction sites around the city—are the
workers who paint, lay carpet, and hang drywall to feed the Seattle
area’s ongoing residential building boom. Despite the national housing
crisis, demand for three-to-six-story apartment buildings and townhomes
in Seattle remains steady, with applications for nearly 500 new
residential buildings currently under review at the city.

Many of the workers who make this housing boom possible are
undocumented immigrants recruited from Mexico by labor hunters, and,
because they are not legal residents, none were willing to talk about
their experiences. But several labor advocates provided nearly
identical accounts of how these workers live. They earn about half as
much as their unionized counterparts, and they live in rooms rented
from their employers, far from construction sites and bus lines. This
situation, the construction-industry source says, “opens the door for
[the men] to be exploited” by employers who set the hours they work,
sleep, and take breaks.

“These [employers] are getting around state and federal law by
deliberately classifying these folks as independent contractors,” says
David West, director of Puget Sound Sage, a housing and labor
nonprofit. Real independent contractors, unlike these workers, set
their own hours and work at multiple job sites. By designating workers
as contractors and requiring them to buy individual business licenses,
employers avoid paying for injury insurance, sick leave, health-care
coverage, and other employee benefits. “From what I can tell,
two-thirds to three-quarters of all construction work in this
residential market is done by workers under these conditions,” West
says.

Jeff Kelly, a field representative for the International Union of
Painters and Allied Trades District Council #5, says, “You’ve got
people building low-income housing who can’t even afford to live in
low-income housing.” If the undocumented workers speak up, Kelly says,
they risk losing their jobs—and they won’t sue their employers
because going to court would mean risking deportation.

Taxpayers wind up footing the bill for misclassified “independent
contractors” hurt on the job, and the public pays for social
services—like government-funded housing and food stamps—for
employees who lose their jobs.

Businesses that cut corners on contractors have another advantage
over competitors. Because their costs are kept artificially low,
they’re able to underbid competing businesses.

Brenda Mailloux, co-owner of Drywall Wizards in West Seattle, says
her company “did lose out with other general contractors who thought
they would line their pockets with the extra money [by paying
misclassified workers less] as long as they could get away with
it.”

So far, the state departments that enforce business regulations have
done little to curb these abuses. “The state is aware that it is going
on but hasn’t cracked down on it,” says West.

But that may be changing, albeit slowly. Since 2004, the state legislature has been funding fraud-prevention programs, including four fraud auditors and three field team members to investigate job sites. Carl Hammersburg, manager of the Fraud Prevention and Compliance Program for the Department of Labor and Industries, says the state attorney general recently hired a dedicated prosecutor, who has charged 25 contractors for fraudulent employment practices. Of the 10 cases that have been resolved, he says, all have resulted in convictions. According to an L & I spokeswoman, one of the companies convicted of employment fraud is Schram Brothers Excavating, a construction company in Vancouver. But Hammersburg acknowledges that many cases go undetected. “We can’t track it all,” he says.

“We know that the steps the state is taking are not enough,” says
Kelly, who works with Spanish-speaking union members who accept jobs on
construction sites to try to organize their fellow workers.

“They need to understand that the majority of people being taken
advantage of speak Spanish, and their staff needs to reflect that.”