Contractors Divided Over Day Laborers

Day laborers gather in a Home Depot parking lot in Freeport, N.Y., waiting for work. The construction business on Long Island, once dominated by local whites, now relies heavily on Hispanic immigrants. (By Michelle Garcia -- The Washington Post)

By contrast, Lippolt has a hard time finding workers, even among family members. His subcontractors -- the middlemen between him and the laborers -- hire day laborers. He says the shortage of locals entering the trades drives up labor costs, creating a need for day laborers. He asks: "Are you gonna pay me thousands of dollars more" to not use day laborers?

Economics aside, Lippolt and Stokes form their views on immigration and illegal workers by their feelings about the security of their work, their place in the Long Island pecking order.

Many of Lippolt's clients live in estate homes and reap the rewards of the financial world. There, Lippolt is viewed as the guy who didn't go to college. Often, he says, they seem to see little difference between him and an immigrant day laborer.

"I can see the reaction, the lack of respect, if you come to their houses," Lippolt says with a sigh. "You're definitely looked down upon, especially on Long Island. You're looked upon as a day laborer to these people, as their servants."

Lippolt says he feels like part of a "dying breed." Even his relatives show little interest in carrying on his work. He once took his son Logan, 13, to a job site. "He doesn't want to sweep up," Lippolt says, bowing in disappointment. "He wants to be a snowboarder." Still, he urges Logan to consider the trades as "something to fall back on."

Rain and a cold wind blow in. The day laborers never budge from their spots in the parking lot. Lippolt keeps his eyes trained on them, and after a long silence he says he worries about "the direction of the country" when native-born Americans don't want to do the backbreaking work.

But he's beginning to adapt to the changes brought by immigration, including the increased competition from new Hispanic contractors. He bought a few tapes to learn Spanish, to better compete with them for the best workers.

"It's easier for them," Lippolt says. "They can get the cream of the crop."

Stokes glides down the winding roads of suburbia with its low-slung buildings and small, wooded estates. An outdoorsman at heart, he keeps a canoe stowed in the back of his truck for afternoon getaways.

"I have yet to do a job that the client did not appreciate what we did," he says. "They don't have the impression that I'm less professional than anyone else."

Still, attitudes about the blue collar have "evolved," Stokes acknowledges, and sometimes the reminders hit close to home. "My wife yells at me; she doesn't want me doing it. She says, 'You're so smart,' " he says. "She thinks I'm wasting my abilities."

He pulls up by a split-level house that's stripped to its framework bones. Stokes's son, Robert Jr., 21, installs hand-cut tiles in what will be a bathroom. A nephew works on the living room walls.

They handle the general tasks; he's the "trim guy," a specialist in moldings and woodwork. The best part about hiring family and close friends is not having to worry that they will run off with tools or slack off on the job, he says.

And if he didn't have nine brothers and sisters and a posse of nephews to staff the jobs? "I would do smaller jobs. I would rather work by myself," than hire a day laborer, he says.

But he concedes that the industry has suffered losses. His solution: Bring back vocational training in high schools; don't bring in temporary workers. He opposes the idea as creating a "subclass of humans" and antithetical to the American way.

"These people should be able to come here legally and build themselves up," he says, adding that if workers are needed, the country should "change the laws to let them work legally." That means Long Island will look different, he says, and people don't like change.