Reply #14: I can say form experience, yes... [View All]

but I have to qualify it. First, i can only speak to what I personally witnessed in the construction trades in one area of the North Bay, and that was only in non-union shops (the unions weren't very successful at organizing up there).

When I took my apprenticeship,and through about the first 2/3 of my career, the wage scale was much higher than now. The demographic was also primarily white, with citizenship (I only say this to provide you with an idea of the demographics; one of the journeyman who taught me the most about the trade was an American born and raised Hispanic guy that I went to high school with).

About 7 years ago the demographic of employees shifted rapidly to Hispanic workers, primarily from Michoacan, and mostly here illegally. This I know for a fact because, having been in the trades for over 20 years, I was on very familiar terms with many of the employers in the various trades with which we worked.

Wages did drop, and some of the employers had the specific attitude of "hey, we just use these guys as a source of cheap labor", I am not using the exact words, but that was the exact attitude. Some employers were not so expoitative, but they were a definite minority.

Also, training programs often ceased to be as thorough; in many cases (not all) emphasis seemed to be on just training enough to get jobs done, not on creating well-rounded journeymen.

And again, only from what I have personal knowledge of, those wage savings were not passed on to consumers, but generally served to enrich the lifestyle of employers and a few key employees (often older, non-hispanic supervisors).

Yes, business costs DID go up during this period, but so did employer lifestyles, or so it seemed to me.

I was old enough, and well-experienced enough that these issues did not effect me personally. My skills and experience were valued, and I was always well compensated.

But anyone coming into the non-union workforce, no matter what ethnocultural background, were facing a career path of diminished earning potential.

This is all based solely on my own experience in one small sector of the economy. How representative it is I can only speculate.