NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN June 24, 2007
Is it work Americans won't do?
For Troy Smiley, 43, farming isn't simply about managing workers, budgets and machines. Most days, the fifth-generation, college-educated farmer works a section of the 100 acres in Ridgetop, Tenn., where he grows vegetables, runs irrigation lines and sometimes butchers pigs. He works alongside a crew of temporary legal immigrant workers with a hat on, a wad of tobacco tucked between his lower lip and gum and his head down. He has an up-close view of immigration, its impact on the labor market and the complicated sentiments surrounding the issue. "I was out there, head down, same way as usual," Smiley recalled of a day working in the field. "Somebody driving by, I guess, looked over and saw what they thought were a bunch of Mexicans working. "They slowed down and yelled something, well, something I won't repeat and you probably couldn't print. But basically, this person wanted my guys to know they need to go home and stop 'taking our jobs'. Something similar happens two or three times a month, Smiley said. Whether it is taunts yelled from a truck window or a screed unleashed online, frustration with what President Bush has described as the nation's "broken" immigration situation has reached a new high. And at the crux of it all is one issue: jobs and who will fill them. Immigrant workers comprise about 15 percent of the American work force and about 6 percent of the labor force in Tennessee. And although the state's overall unemployment level is low, Tennessee, along with seven other states, has seen native-born employment drop as the immigrant work force has grown. Immigration is not the only plausible explanation for the change in the work force, some experts say. But, across the country and in the Midstate, debate about immigrant labor has grown so fierce that it begs two questions. Are there really jobs that Americans won't do? And does the growing number of immigrant workers really threaten you?
What jobs do they fill? Of the occupations tracked by the Bureau of Labor statistics in 2004, there were three categories — plasterers and stucco masons, tailors/dressmakers and sewers, and graders, sorters and agricultural workers — in which foreign-born workers outnumber those born in the United States. Even in the case of plasterers and stucco masons, the occupation with the highest concentration of immigrant workers, 43.7 percent of jobs are held by American-born workers. But there are also 154 other occupations — from roofers, painters, waitresses and hotel staffers to bankers, pharmacists computer scientists and doctors — in which more than 15 percent of workers are immigrants. Comparable occupational data is not available on the state level. "What people have to go on is what they see and their own emotions," said Daniel Cornfield, a labor sociologist at Vanderbilt University. But what applies to them individually as a worker may not be true about the labor market as a whole." Between 1990 and 2005, Davidson County's immigrant population grew from 2.5 percent to 10 percent of the area's total makeup, Cornfield said. And average annual unemployment for the same time period totaled 3.9 percent. "That's what most people and certainly most economists would consider pretty good," Cornfield said. Not everyone sees it that way. "I can predict without being there what's being said," said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies. "Tennessee has reached a point of near full employment; immigrants are taking the jobs that American don't want or no longer have to fill." The center is a nonprofit research organization that supports restrictive immigration policies. But, said Camarota, most of the immigrants who have arrived in this country since 2000 have high school diplomas or less. And, in a country where the majority of American-born workers do not have a college degree, many workers are competing for the same types of jobs. "This is where you get that disconnect," said Camarota. "The public is saying and seeing one thing, and the opinion-makers … the business leaders … most of them have college degrees. So, they don't see or sense the same things. That's why you have guys like Lou Dobbs (CNN commentator who almost daily decries illegal immigration) with a 40 percent increase in ratings this year." Away from the emotions and the numbers though, there are business owners trying to make a living.
Farmer needs the help Smiley's family has always grown vegetables. But about seven years ago, as a number of tobacco farmers moved out of golden leaf and into blueberries, vegetables and other types of farming, the Smileys were forced to plant more ground to compete. Suddenly, the farm became more than Smiley, his father and one other worker could manage. This year, just as he has for the past six or seven years, Smiley filled out the federal forms to request eight temporary agricultural workers. Smiley signed a contract saying he would pay the men nearly $9 per hour, that they would work from April until about December and that housing meeting federal standards would be provided. Seven men, many of whom Smiley has worked with for years, arrived in late April. "There's so much demand for workers through the program now, that it took a little bit longer to get them (here) this year." At the gas stations on the main highway running through Ridgetop, nearly all the telephones bear stickers that read "Llame Mexico, 3 minutos por $1" (Call Mexico, three minutes for $1). Smiley said there is no way he could run a competitive vegetable-growing operation without the help of the legal but temporary immigrant workers he requests each year. "That's just a part of doing business up here," said Smiley. "Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants these jobs. I know because when you go through the program, you've got to advertise those jobs before you can fill them" with migrant workers. American disinterest in agricultural work isn't a matter of laziness, Smiley said, it's a matter of options. American workers can get better-paying work in less extreme conditions. To pay more or automate, Smiley said, he would have to charge more for his produce than buyers are accustomed to paying.
Shortage hits construction The work force shortage in the construction business did not pop up without warning. Johnny Finch remembers when federal labor officials began warning in the 1970s and 1980s about the advancing age of the average construction worker and strongly suggesting that construction companies recruit more minorities and women. "In this area," said Finch, 53, president of Goodlettsville-based PBG Building Group, "construction workers were 40-, 50-, 60-year-old white guys, carpenters and plumbers coming from surrounding counties like Dickson." Factories that relocated from other parts of the country had begun to draw some of these workers and many of their children away from construction work, Finch said. At the same time, schools began cutting technical training programs and union shops (companies that signed contracts with labor unions determining work conditions on a job site and agreeing to hire union tradesmen) began to disappear, said Bill Young, executive director of the Tennessee Associated General Contractors. Union contracts also called for apprentice training. "In '86, the last union shop around here closed," said Young. "The open-shop movement took hold, and nobody thought a whole lot about training. …We just plain shot ourselves in the foot." The '80s brought a recession that slowed down construction activity, said Finch, and when a building boom began in the 1990s, the industry needed labor fast. Finch said most contractors are so busy with work, trying to meet deadlines and deliver quality that they don't have a lot of time to put into issues such as recruiting. But despite what people may think, Finch said, the industry does not have a preference for immigrant workers nor does he believe there are many contractors who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. "Think about it," said Finch. "Usually, but certainly not always, there is a language barrier. ... That alone limits what you can do with work groups, how you can distribute them around a job and just really makes everything a little harder." In the late 1990s, the Associated General Contractors tried to establish a technical education program but couldn't attract enough students, Young said. "Truth is, this is hard work, outdoors work that just isn't going to appeal to everybody," said Young. "There's not a lot of glamour in this job." By the start of this decade, the association had begun printing all of its worksite posters and safety manuals in both English and Spanish.
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