The Human Cost of Construction

Life, liberty and the pursuit of immigrant workers’ rights

By Yunuen Alvarado Bustos | @yunuentx

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SAN MARCOS — A construction worker dies every nine hours in the South.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the construction industry has the highest number of fatalities of any industry in Texas. Nearly 60% of the fatalities are caused by what is known as the “Fatal Four”— falls, electrocutions, being struck by or getting caught in between objects.

“The construction industry is one of the most dangerous industries in Texas in general, and it’s one of the most fast-growing and, really, the wealthiest industry in the state,” Workers Defense Project’s Austin legal manager and organizer Estefania Ponce said.

In a state infamous for not only its treatment of immigrants but also its workers regardless of status, construction laborers are amongst the most vulnerable population. According to census data, construction workers make up only six percent of the Texas workforce with over 950,000 workers since 2010, but account for 26 percent of all workplace fatalities in the state.

Workers are oftentimes denied rest and water breaks while enduring long and hot days, risking heat stroke and dehydration. Additionally, they also face exploitation in the form of wage theft.

Founded in 2002, the Workers Defense Project is a membership-based organization that supports low-income workers primarily in the construction industry by providing direct services and education. The organization has been at the forefront of the Austin-based movement for construction worker rights since its founding.

“When you really look at the whole ecosystem, if you get down to the bottom of the chain, you’ll see that there are a lot of workers who are being affected by such large [construction] projects,” said Ponce.

From the Ground Up

Liz Martinez arrived to the United States from Zacatecas, Mexico in 2015, cleaning up construction sites when she could, and bartending on the weekends to make ends meet. Her brother, who has been in the construction industry for 20 years, took her to her first construction site so she could earn more money.

Martinez learned how to tape and float first; from there, she also quickly picked up painting, framing and how to install cooling systems. It was something new to her, something interesting.

“It was something new,” Martinez said. “Just to see… and to arrive to the United States and see how skyscrapers rise from nothing. Every day, it was always something new, never the same because we were building it.”

Martinez is one of the few women in the construction industry nationwide. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women made up only 9.9 percent of the construction worker population in 2018.

With one woman per 100 workers at the front lines, gender discrimination is rampant in the male-dominated industry.

“I remember one time when I entered into commercial construction, I began with cleaning, but I remembered what my brother told me. He said: 'Learn. You’re not going to spend your entire life cleaning,'” Martinez said.

With that advice in mind, Martinez approached her boss at the time and him she wanted to learn how to do dry wall and sheetrock.

Her boss agreed, but with one condition: she had to buy all of her own tools first.

“They cost me over $700,” Martinez said. “But they wouldn’t teach me even a little bit unless I got my tools first. So, I arrived one day with my tools and everything and he said to me, 'No. Ponte a barer. Esto no es trabajo para las mujeres. Ponte a barer.'” No. Go sweep. This is not a job for women. Go sweep.

Martinez says the men at the construction site don’t think of women as strong or capable and refuse to teach them or allow them to grow in the profession. Being a woman in construction, she says, she has to work twice as hard and learn twice as much to get ahead even an inch.

Regardless, Martinez loves what she does.

“It makes me excited and passionate to turn around and see a building that big and majestic and see that our hands, our Hispanic hands, hands of hard workers lifted that from the ground up. We did that,” Martinez said. “I’ve driven past big skyscrapers in downtown Austin with my kids where I used to work, and I tell my kids: your mom was there working, part of those walls… your mom built them.”

A Stolen Livelihood the Workers Pay For

Since 2010, Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio have been listed among the top 10 fastest growing large cities in the nation, according to census data. Austin alone is estimated to generate more than $3.5 billion in construction wages annually for an industry that generates nearly $1.3 trillion worth of structures per year nationwide.

However, it is common practice for employers to deny workers their wages. A 2017 study by the Workers Defense Project showed that an estimated 29.8 million worth of income is lost to wage theft in booming cities that include Houston and Dallas each year.

Pedro Muñoz has been a construction worker for 25 years in Texas. Over the years, he has faced several cases of wage theft, but didn’t fight back until they got stolen by someone close to him four years ago.

“[Wage theft] affected me in that I trusted him a lot, he was very nice,” Muñoz said. His employer gained his trust and paid him regularly, until he didn’t. As time went on, his employer provided him with more jobs on a regular basis and even wanted Muñoz to be the project manager for his business.

Muñoz did not have a contract with his employer; instead, he was paid per day, as many immigrant workers are.

One day, his employer asked Muñoz to wait on him to sell the house they had recently finished building so that he could use those profits to pay the workers. Muñoz agreed, his employer asked again the next week to wait a little longer.

One week, two weeks, a month passed without pay.

When Muñoz confronted him, his employer verbally abused him and told him to talk to his lawyer. Next thing he knows, two months later his former employer is vacationing in Paris, France.

Muñoz is currently still fighting for his wages four years later with the help of the Workers Defense Project. During that time he has also become an outspoken leader in the Austin workers’ rights movement and was appointed to the City of Austin’s Construction Advisory Committee through his membership at WDP.

Karen Escobedo is a workplace justice organizer at the Workers Defense Project and supports the members directly when they face abuse at their job sites.

Escobedo often collaborates closely with Workers Defense Project’s legal department for assistance with legal strategy for her cases. When the legal route is not enough, however, is when Escobedo gears up alongside the workers to put public pressure on the employers to meet their demands.

“When we hit a wall,” Escobedo said. “That’s when I come in and I try to organize a direct action to help them win their wages with public pressure, because a lot of times they can win legally, right, but when it comes time to collect money, it’s basically impossible to do so.”

Blood, Sweat & Deportation

Injuries, big or small, are an everyday occurrence at construction sites. According to the Workers Defense Project’s 2017 study, more often than not, workers are forced to keep working through the pain in order to avoid reprimand, which can result in immigration authorities being called or having their paycheck withheld, among other punishments.

Leo Navarrete is an undocumented construction worker and has been in the business for 15 years throughout the Southern states, with Florida, Alabama and Georgia amongst them. Over the years, Navarrete has faced many injuries, including falling off of the roof of a three-story house and accidentally stapling his arm with a nail gun.

“I bled only a little,” Navarrete said in Spanish. “It wasn’t anything serious.”

Immigration status is a major source of stress for the workers, but many have grown used to the treatment they receive in the workplace for being undocumented immigrants.

At a lively worksite in Dripping Springs, workers hammer away while loud music plays from one of their cars. Signs declaring the site a safety area are spread out throughout the neighborhood-in-progress. “Hard hats required,” the sign reads. “Strictly enforced.”

However, there are no hard hats or any other form of safety equipment on sight as the workers chatter away in Spanish, tossing tools at each other from tall roofs of half-built homes.

Despite the camaraderie, however, many workers don’t bother to learn each other’s’ names. Immigration status is the factor.

“They will probably get picked up anyway,” one worker said in Spanish. “La migra.” By immigration.

On the other side of the country, an estimated 46,000 immigrant construction workers under Temporary Protected Status are also facing risk of deportation under the Trump administration’s ever-changing immigration policies.

According to a 2013 study on the state of construction workers in the South, Texas alone accounted for over 10 percent of all construction in the U.S. in 2008, with California coming in second. In 2011, the Lone Star state single-handedly accounted for over 16 percent of all new housing construction permits in the country –more than Florida and California combined.

Many of the workers are the main source of income and support for their families. When a worker gets deported, the entire family suffers not only emotionally, but financially.

“I think the undocumented immigrant community… a lot of them, just because of the rhetoric in general of politics that’s going on and attacking our community, but then just for how long it has been happening, because it’s not just been under this presidency, I think the community really feels like they don’t have any rights,” Ponce said.

Building a Better Future

As cities continue to rapidly grow, so does the construction industry. By 2021, Engineering News-Record estimates that the industry will create an estimated 2 million new jobs across the U.S., and women are expected to make up 25 percent of the overall industry by 2020.

Even with the growing industry and money it pours into the Texas economy, the workers still have needs that have yet to be addressed, and they can make a difference between life and death.

“Something I want changed in the [Texas] industry is that I wish there was insurance for all the workers,” Muñoz said. He says that while the businesses have insurance for themselves, the workers are overlooked. “If a worker gets injured on the job and he doesn’t heal well, his life is damaged forever. Who is going to answer for the worker?”

Despite the obstacles, workers and advocates at the Workers Defense Project carry on the fight as a community for the rights of all workers across Texas.

The Workers Defense Project led the fight in Dallas in 2015 to implement a local policy that requires construction companies to give their employees paid 10-minute rest breaks every four hours, following the death of Roendy Granillo, a 25-year-old worker who died by heat stroke while installing hardwood flooring. Before Dallas, only Austin had the policy implemented; everywhere else in Texas, workers don’t have the right to rest breaks.

In 2018, WDP members and advocates rallied once again to spearhead efforts to bring paid sick leave to Austin, making history as the first passed policy of its kind in the South. According to the Texas Observer, the ordinance benefitted approximately 87,000 workers in Austin.

“We are a community here. If we aren’t united, we aren’t going to do anything,” Muñoz said. “La unidad hace la fuerza.”

Unity makes strength.