Long Island NY pushing towards end of sweatshop construction , proposes law to put contractors at jeopardy of losing right to work in county.

The Federal Government is not doing it's job and the states need to do it for them.

A law has been proposed in long Island which will hold contractors who employ illegal aliens at jeopardy of losing their right to work in the county. From NY Newsday 3-05-08

Brian Beedenbender's (D-Centereach) resolution, which would be the first law of its kind in the state, would put contractors and other licensees at risk of losing their right to work in the county if they are found to be employing undocumented immigrants or fail to pay their taxes.

The resolution would apply to new and renewal licenses for electricians, plumbers and home contractors and also some furniture salesmen, precious metal dealers and landscapers, said Presiding Officer William Lindsay (D-Holbrook).

The bill will go before the Legislature's Consumer Protection Committee next week. Beedenbender said yesterday that he remains pessimistic he will have enough committee votes to move the proposal to the full legislature, but said he will seek the 10 petition signatures needed.

Any law which can take something away from the abusers of these undocumented is a good start. Those contractors that hire illegal aliens for construction work and pay them a pittance of the area standards, without overtime pay, without the bare minimal safety requirements, without workers compensation insurance, etc.. Having these workers under their thumb for slave wages while there are citizens who are having a hard time finding a job is unacceptable.

These contractors must be held accountable. This law would be a start and it would be up to the public to make sure that it is enforced such as the recent law in Arizona which punishes contractors which are found to use illegal aliens.

The purposeful, unregulated influx of illegal aliens here in the states is driving down the wages in every field and I don't see anything getting cheaper, do you? Why do the contractors who bid jobs legally and have qualified employees have to bid work at such an incredible disadvantage, while those unscrupulous contractors are having a field day at all of our expense?

The state must take action. The state must do it now. Just yesterday in NY Newsday:

The federal government is reimbursing Nassau and Suffolk only a fraction of the millions of dollars the counties are owed for housing undocumented immigrants in their jails, Sen. Charles Schumer said yesterday.

The State Criminal Alien Assistance Program obligates the federal government to pay to house undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of at least two misdemeanors or one felony. But Schumer (D-N.Y.) and county officials said the counties are receiving between 15 and 25 percent of what they're owed.

"Who's left holding the bag? The taxpayers of Long Island," Schumer said.
(continues)

"Everyone agrees that the federal government hasn't done nearly enough to bring illegal immigration under control," Schumer said. "When it comes to incarceration services, it's only fair that the federal government pays its fair share."

Get this through your thick heads, these are THREE DEMOCRATS that are saying this needs to STOP NOW!

Almost every day I see a worker hanging off a multi-tier scaffold without a safety harness, most of the time they don't even have a hard hat. It is criminal, and when someone dies due to the negligence of the contractor it is murder.

It can be seen on almost every block in Manhattan. Someone who is not trained , who is in fear of being fired, not payed or deported by a contractor if they speak about their safety concerns is working directly over your head.

Sweatshop construction contractors, those that use misclassified and/or illegal aliens workers, are robbing the public and their employees, through non-payment of taxes, through the misclassification of workers and by putting the burden onto the tax payers, of the social services which their employees rely.

They are destroying the New York labor standards. Some of the many infractions include and are not limited to, many do not pay on-the-books, some instances they do not pay at all, they do not adhere to safety standards, they do not supply safety equipment, they do not report accidents, they do not carry workers compensation insurance, they do not pay unemployment, they have underage workers, they force workers to work 7 days a week at 12 hours a day, they do not send their workers to any type of training, they do not bother to adhere to age requirements, they tell their employees who get hurt to go to the hospital and say it happened on their own time.

I can back all of this up if you read my other articles which should be listed in the Related Posts. Heres another article i came across recently, from The Chicago Tribune 3-02-08

Hundreds of Latino workers across the U.S. die annually in construction accidents, a toll that has mounted steadily. Two years ago 354 Latinos were killed in construction accidents, a 34 percent increase over 2003, the most recent government statistics show. More than one out of three Latinos killed on the job in 2006 lost their lives doing construction work, a far higher proportion than for white or black workers.

And as Latinos have flooded into the U.S., their fatality rates in construction have steadily exceeded those of non-Hispanic workers, although both proportions have trended down of late for full-time workers Many of the Latinos killed or hurt are like Lopez, who is an illegal immigrant from Guatemala. They tend to hunker down in the shadows fearful of being caught. Many can't speak English. Even those who do rarely point out on-the-job dangers because they desperately want the money.

Frequently they are hired off street corners for lower-paying, more dangerous construction jobs. Or they work for contractors "with poor or no safety programs at all," said Hester Lipscomb, a safety expert at Duke University.

When injured -- and they suffer more injuries than whites and other minorities -- they are less likely to have health insurance.

Latino construction workers are younger than non-Hispanics. They have less education, and often less experience, if any, in construction than non-Hispanics, according to the Center for Construction Research and Training, a Washington, D.C.-area think tank.

I have already called for the state of New York to sue the Federal Government for their part in allowing this to happen. The state should get back all tax monies which went unpaid, it should also sue for the cost all legislation which is aimed in trying to fix our illegal alien problems. According to FPI (Fiscal Policy Institutes), in construction alone it is estimated that the loss in tax payments by this criminal construction industry in NY is almost 1/2 a billion dollars, thats 1/2 a billion dollars! Thats a lot of Police Officer raises. Damn, the subway could be free if we got that back. Imagine what the estimates would be if it included all industries in New York? We could build an educational skyscraper.