A vital part of the bay area's building boom is a nearly invisible army of people who work in the largely unregulated, and often dead end, day labor market.
By TOM ZUCCO, Times Staff Writer
Published September 9, 2005
A man who's building some of the most exclusive condominiums and townhouses in the Tampa Bay area hurries unnoticed into a homeless shelter in St. Petersburg and digs a plastic fork into the last plate of Beef-a-Roni.
John Ruel, who hasn't eaten all day, carefully folds his paper napkin and takes small, dignified bites.
He has spent the last eight hours knee deep in the foundation of what will become the Valencia townhomes on 106th Avenue N. There was no shade, and what little breeze there was never made it down into the trenches.
He came home on the bus with $50, muddy pants and a back so sore he could barely stand.
"I don't plan to be doing this much longer," Ruel said. "But I've been saying that since I got here four months ago. I've just got to make a change."
The trouble is, the local economy needs people like John Ruel.
More than 50 condominium, townhome and apartment projects are in some stage of development in the Tampa Bay area, with some units selling for as much as $6-million each.
The projects need skilled and semi-skilled electricians, plumbers, masons and carpenters.
But they also need people from the day labor pools. The ones who carry concrete block, clean up debris, climb down into a trench to set rebar and do the other grunt work the others can't or won't do.
Nearly 80,000 people in the Tampa Bay area are employed in the construction business, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics - almost twice as many as 10 years ago.
Nearly a third of them are unskilled laborers. And the numbers are growing.
It's the same across the state. In Naples, where one out of every six jobs is in the housing-related industry, the ratio is the same.
"Day laborers are an integral part of the industry," said Joseph Narkiewicz, executive vice president of the Tampa Bay Builders Association. "They supplement the work force and as everyone knows, the construction industry is very labor intensive."
And very busy.
"More and more day laborers are needed to meet the demand," Narkiewicz said. "We need them."
The people who run the companies that hire day laborers and farm them out to contractors say they have more jobs than workers and that they can find something for just about everybody.
But some of the workers say it's just the opposite. That if you're not among the first at the office, and you're not someone they know, you stand an even chance of wandering the streets the rest of the day.
"And if you complain or make trouble," Ruel says, "you won't work for them again."
Day laborers who can wire a house or drive a backhoe usually make several dollars above minimum wage. Those without skills start at the bottom - $6.15 an hour.
After deductions for taxes, workers' compensation and a bus ride to and from the job, an unskilled laborer could be left with as little as $42 for eight hours' work.
There are no benefits, no sick leave, no raises and no guarantee how long the work will last or how well they'll be treated.
"Most of the bosses treat you like everyone else," said Ruel, 43. "But sometimes . . . it's like you're some kind of slave."
The $200-250 a week he makes never takes up permanent residence in his wallet. And if he can't save money, he can't leave the trenches.
He pulls a few small bills out of his jeans. He had planned to stop by the grocery store up the street. But not tonight. He's too exhausted.
His entertainment this evening, as usual, comes from the photos in his wallet. In one, a smiling little girl is riding on a young man's back.
"Me and my daughter," he said. "From a long time ago."
Ruel used to repair circuit boards on machinery, had a wife and a family and a house in Holiday.
But his job required him to travel, and he hates to fly. That led to a drinking problem. And that led to the divorce. And now his family is gone and he's here. At Beacon House shelter with 30 other strangers who have no place left to go.
Soon he'll climb the stairs, take a shower and try to sleep in a room full of narrow cots.
In Florida, the temporary employment business is unregulated and conditions vary among companies.
The people who run the businesses say they pay taxes and workers' compensation, treat all their workers fairly and hire a large portion of people with skills, or who only want to work part time.
"We're always fighting the stigma that it's just homeless guys doing this," said Todd Wiseman, spokesman for Able Body Labor, a Palm Harbor-based employment company.
No agency or government office keeps track of day laborers. No one knows exactly how many there are, where they come from, what they need or how many are illegal immigrants.
Deborah Berry, chief investigator for the Pinellas County Office of Consumer Protection, said worker complaints about day labor companies are rare.
"But these are the type of people who don't usually report problems," she added. "If they do, they won't get any more work."
There is an alternative.
A few blocks west on Central Avenue, there's a roundabout. On any given morning, half a dozen men looking for work linger on the sidewalk, waiting for a contractor or a foreman to drive by.
Here on the street there are no forms to fill out, although workers need a Social Security number or a green card.
"Most communities have such a place," Narkiewicz said. "Sometimes it's a park. The agricultural industry also uses them to find workers.
"It is what it is. Cash for labor."
Lots of cash. This so-called stealth work force, which experts say is made up mostly of day laborers and illegal immigrants, generates nearly $1-trillion a year in compensation nationwide.
And it is expanding.
"Unburdened by pesky taxes and government rules, this underground economy is growing faster than the one populated by legitimate business owners and workers," Fortune Small Business magazine reported recently.
Whether they get jobs through a day labor pool or on the street, only a handful of unskilled laborers make enough to rent apartments and own cars.
So they end up at one of the few places that will take them. Like Beacon House, where a $5 donation gets a man a bed and a hot meal.
But there's a housing issue here, too. When a bed opens up, there's always someone ready to fill it.
In the first seven months of this year, 997 men had stayed there, nearly a third of them veterans, nearly all of them day laborers.
"They do pretty much all the work somebody else doesn't want to do," said Brent Jenkins, who for the past six years has run Beacon House for the St. Petersburg Free Clinic. "Manual labor at its finest.
"But it's better than nothing."
Jenkins said he hears complaints about favoritism, and about men not being able to find work. Then there are the ones too old or sick to work in the heat.
"There really is no one looking out for them," he said. "A lot of these guys are hanging on by a thread."
Housing officials acknowledge that while there will always be a need for manual laborers, as the housing market cools, the demand will taper off.
John Ruel knows that, too. And that rolling the dice for a job every day is slowly but steadily taking him to a place he doesn't want to be.
So he rides the bus on weekends to a public library and searches newspapers and the Internet for a different job.
