Mercedes Employment Practices Questioned (they screwed Bama!)
07-30-2003, 10:22 PM
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Mercedes Employment Practices Questioned (they screwed Bama! ***very long, summary at end***
Firestorm over foreign workers
In Alabama, Eastern Europeans are helping to expand a Mercedes-Benz plant. Are they reaching for the American dream? Or are they taking jobs from needy Americans?
July 24, 2003
BY JENNIFER DIXON
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
COTTONDALE, Ala. -- At 6:20 in the morning in central Alabama, the six men of Apt. 1404 throw their lunches into plastic grocery bags, dash down the stairs to the sidewalk, and climb into a white van.
Then it's off to nearby Vance, where DaimlerChrysler AG is doubling the size of its Mercedes-Benz assembly plant. The man are among those building the portion where luxury vehicles will be painted, clocking as many as 65 hours, and as many as seven days a week, on the job.
Their take-home pay, according to them: the equivalent of $1,100 a month.
But Piotr and Piotr, Jerzy and Andrzej, Stanislaw and Edward do not complain. Things could be worse. They could be back home in Poland earning just a fourth of what they make in the United States.
A spokeswoman for Mercedes says the men of Apt. 1404 and dozens like them are in the country legally, on visas that permit them to work at the plant because they are installing a highly specialized paint system.
"Mercedes-Benz always encourages its contractors to meet all federal and state laws," Linda Sewell said. "That's very important to us."
But union officials question whether the visas were obtained under false pretenses. They say the Polish men are doing the same work as any skilled U.S. pipe fitter or sheet-metal worker, and that the Poles, along with men from elsewhere in Eastern Europe and Britain, were imported just because they are cheap labor.
A member of Congress is investigating the visas, while the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement says the men's B1 visas are supposed to be used by foreigners on short-term business, not for extended stays.
For the Polish workers, this is the American dream, circa 2003. They live here for three to six months in a furnished apartment supplied by their bosses. While they earn only a fraction of their American counterparts, it is still enough to furnish their homes in Poland.
For U.S. workers, this is the hard reality of the American economy, circa 2003, where large international companies export jobs to places like China and India and, even more disquieting, import labor from overseas.
"I imagine that's the way America is working these days," said Ezzard Davis, a 51-year-old union sheet-metal worker from Mobile who would like to work on the Mercedes site, about a four-hour drive away. "It's unfortunate. It's a shame that if they're not sending jobs out of the country, they're bringing people into the country."
And never mind that the Polish workers represent only a fraction of the 6,500 workers who have helped expand the Mercedes plant. What really hurts, Davis and union leaders say, is that Mercedes got $253 million in incentives, mostly from state taxpayers, to build its original plant in the mid-1990s and an additional $119 million for the $600-million expansion.
They thought the tax breaks were supposed to create jobs for Alabama workers. Now, with the national unemployment rate at 6.4 percent, and at 5.7 percent in Alabama, dozens of jobs created by Mercedes' expansion are going to foreign workers.
"I think that it's a crying shame that we're giving tax breaks to a company that's allowing foreign workers to come in. I don't appreciate it at all, and the Alabama people shouldn't appreciate it," said Robert Payne, an organizer with the Sheet Metal Workers Local 441 in Mobile.
Polish imports
Union leaders from Michigan and Alabama have asked members of Congress to investigate, saying the foreign workers may have improper visas.
Diana McBroom, district director for U.S. Rep. Sander Levin, a Royal Oak Democrat, said the Bureau of immigration and Customs Enforcement has agreed to Levin's request to investigate the men's visas. The inquiry began in early June.
"Our office would be deeply concerned if there were individuals or entities trying to take advantage of a system that is designed to allow individuals to come into the U.S. fairly, and work where there is a need, without taking jobs away from American workers," McBroom said.
Mercedes spokeswoman Sewell said she was unaware of Levin's inquiry.
Levin's office was alerted to the situation by Bob Donaldson, business manager for Local 292 of the Sheet Metal Workers union in Troy.
Donaldson visited the Mercedes site this spring with a Polish-speaking colleague, Stan Karczynski, president and business manager of the Sheet Metal Workers Local 73 in Chicago, at the request of union leaders in Birmingham, Ala.
Donaldson says that no other auto plant paint shop in the United States has been built with imported construction workers. Other automakers building or expanding factories in Alabama -- Hyundai, Honda and Toyota -- all say they use U.S. labor.
The foreign workers at Mercedes are employed by two companies -- Transsystem of Poland and Gregorec Ltd. of Britain. The businesses were hired by Eisenmann, a German company that is installing the paint shop. Mercedes is expanding its factory to add a second assembly line, which requires a second paint shop. The factory will produce two vehicles: a new M-class SUV and the Mercedes-Benz Grand Sports Tourer.
The first Transsystem workers arrived in January, and as many as 37 have come to work at Mercedes, including the men of Apt. 1404. Today, there are 32 Transsystem and 23 Gregorec workers at the site.
The Polish workers said they stay either three or six months, and when they return home, others are brought in to replace them. They say they travel from job to job, and from country to country, doing similar work.
Transsystem says it specializes in works for paint shops. Gregorec is an industrial pipe-fitting company.
Sewell said the Gregorec and Transsystem workers have B1 visas. Those visas allow foreign workers to come to the United States to install, service or repair commercial or industrial equipment or machinery purchased from an overseas company. The foreign worker must have specialized knowledge.
Sewell said Eisenmann and Transsystem assembled, tested and disassembled the paint shop equipment in Germany. It was shipped to Alabama and reassembled using the same workers who built the equipment overseas.
"This is a common practice, not only in the automotive industry, but in many industries, when you're dealing with complex equipment and manufacturing processes," Sewell said.
Eisenmann has done work for Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp., but used local labor. The difference this time: The company says new technology requires specialized workers from Transsystem and Gregorec, which helped develop the process for assembling the paint system.
The Polish men themselves and union leaders like Donaldson and Karczynski, who have seen their work, say it is not specialized and could be done by Americans.
"I paint, I cut," a Polish worker said. "I do everything an assembler has to do."
An industry insider also said installing paint shops is not complicated.
"Hundreds of companies in the United States do that. I could understand if they were installing a nuclear reactor, but they're installing sheet metal in a paint shop," the insider said, speaking anonymously for fear of jeopardizing future work with automakers.
"Any U.S. firm could do that."
The men's visas raise a second issue: Are they the proper visas for workers who are in the United States for months at a time, living in an apartment and working six or seven days a week?
Sarah Mouw, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said: "Typically, an alien does not work and live in the U.S. on a B1 visa. A B1 visa is to do business here, not to have a job here."
Cornelius Scully, who retired from the State Department in 1997 after 35 years in the visa office, said the situation involving the Polish workers puts them in the "grayest of the gray" area of immigration law.
He said the Polish workers have a legitimate reason to be in the United States if the work they are doing is highly specialized.
"If it's routine stuff that anyone can do, it's not legitimate. The question is who is telling the truth."
The paycheck
Union leaders also question the workers' wages and say Transsystem is undercutting the paychecks of U.S. laborers.
The size of the workers' paychecks depends on who is asked.
Marola Szubart, human resources manager for Transsystem, said the workers net about $2,800 a month.
But the men of Apt. 1404 say they will net -- in Polish money -- the equivalent of $1,100 a month. They say their checks are deposited in their banks in Poland and Transsystem pays their living expenses while in the United States.
Karczynski said the workers told him they make about $5 or $6 an hour, plus overtime.
In comparison, members of Local 48 of the Sheet Metal Workers union in Birmingham, Ala., earn an hourly wage of $20.71.
Sewell from Mercedes declined to discuss the men's wages. An Eisenmann executive said he was unfamiliar with the foreign workers' pay, working or living conditions.
"I have no knowledge of what they are getting paid," he said. "It must be a decent salary or they wouldn't be here." When Mercedes built its plant in the mid-1990s, it used another German company, Durr Industries, to install the paint system with U.S. workers.
Brent Newsome was a general foreman on the job. Today, he is business representative with Local 48. He, Sam Rollan Jr., business manager for the local, and Sammy Dodson, president of the Central Alabama Building and Construction Trades, say the decision to use foreign workers is all about money.
"They think they can come down here to Alabama and nobody will figure out what they're doing," Dodson said.
" 'Bout right," Newsome said.
They don't fault the Poles. "They're just being taken advantage of," Dodson said.
Apt. 1404
It is Saturday evening in Apt. 1404, and as the six men come home from work, it is time for a swim in the pool, housekeeping and a procession of visitors.
The men have worked six days straight.
Andrzej scrubs a dirty pan and tosses out two empty vodka bottles.
Jerzy vacuums the living room's kelly-green carpeting, then steers the Dirt Devil down the hallway toward the bedrooms. Piotr and Piotr peel potatoes over a garbage bag in the dining room.
Andrzej boils the potatoes in one pan; in another, he cooks chopped onions in an inch of oil.
Soon, dinner is ready. Andrzej fills each plate with potatoes mashed with the onions, adds a couple of meat patties and drizzles gravy on top. The men add a serving of homemade coleslaw.
The roommates eat in silence, their forks clinking against the plates. There are no napkins at the table, no salt and pepper shakers, nothing to drink. They finish in five minutes.
The television is on at all times, tuned to cable stations that promise segments on "Hot Young Hollywood Stars."
After dinner, the men drift to the living room or the small balcony for a smoke.
As the sky darkens, Andrzej gets out the vodka. He lines up several glasses on the kitchen counter, pours a large shot into each, and adds a splash of Sunny D with Calcium, an orange drink.
Cheers, they toast each other.
Sunday is a short day. While they still start at 7 a.m., they are done by 1 p.m. Tonight, they can relax.
Entire days off are precious. On one of them, they drove to Florida and back, just to see the sand and the water and the palm trees. They told their story in their native Polish through Free Press photographer Sylwia Kapuscinski, giving only their first names.
As they talk, some of their friends stop by to visit. One who is celebrating because he is returning to Poland stumbles in, drunk. He is asked to leave. Too much vodka, a worker says.
Rural Alabama is not what the Polish men expected, another worker says, in English.
"Until we came here, everyone saw America in the movies -- New York, Chicago, Miami," said Maciek, 25. "We were a little bit shocked when we came here -- that people live in trailers, there are forests, no skyscrapers."
He says the Transsystem workers were brought to the United States because Eisenmann trusts them. The older Piotr says it is because they are the best workers -- they work the longest days and can get the job done on time, so 2,000 American people can start working in the factory.
The Polish men's paychecks will be waiting for them at home.
"It's a lot of money," Maciek said. "There are jobs in Poland, but here you can earn more money. Working here, you can build a house or buy a flat. If you stayed in Poland, you couldn't do that."
------------------------------
Basically everyone in Alabama gave Daimler-Benz (now Daimler Chrysler) about $80 to screw them over. This is from incentives and tax breaks. A plant and expansion, that was supposed to be done by local workers, is being built by Eastern European workers who work cheap on possibly fraudulent or fradulently obtained visas.
J.
Firestorm over foreign workers
In Alabama, Eastern Europeans are helping to expand a Mercedes-Benz plant. Are they reaching for the American dream? Or are they taking jobs from needy Americans?
July 24, 2003
BY JENNIFER DIXON
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
COTTONDALE, Ala. -- At 6:20 in the morning in central Alabama, the six men of Apt. 1404 throw their lunches into plastic grocery bags, dash down the stairs to the sidewalk, and climb into a white van.
Then it's off to nearby Vance, where DaimlerChrysler AG is doubling the size of its Mercedes-Benz assembly plant. The man are among those building the portion where luxury vehicles will be painted, clocking as many as 65 hours, and as many as seven days a week, on the job.
Their take-home pay, according to them: the equivalent of $1,100 a month.
But Piotr and Piotr, Jerzy and Andrzej, Stanislaw and Edward do not complain. Things could be worse. They could be back home in Poland earning just a fourth of what they make in the United States.
A spokeswoman for Mercedes says the men of Apt. 1404 and dozens like them are in the country legally, on visas that permit them to work at the plant because they are installing a highly specialized paint system.
"Mercedes-Benz always encourages its contractors to meet all federal and state laws," Linda Sewell said. "That's very important to us."
But union officials question whether the visas were obtained under false pretenses. They say the Polish men are doing the same work as any skilled U.S. pipe fitter or sheet-metal worker, and that the Poles, along with men from elsewhere in Eastern Europe and Britain, were imported just because they are cheap labor.
A member of Congress is investigating the visas, while the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement says the men's B1 visas are supposed to be used by foreigners on short-term business, not for extended stays.
For the Polish workers, this is the American dream, circa 2003. They live here for three to six months in a furnished apartment supplied by their bosses. While they earn only a fraction of their American counterparts, it is still enough to furnish their homes in Poland.
For U.S. workers, this is the hard reality of the American economy, circa 2003, where large international companies export jobs to places like China and India and, even more disquieting, import labor from overseas.
"I imagine that's the way America is working these days," said Ezzard Davis, a 51-year-old union sheet-metal worker from Mobile who would like to work on the Mercedes site, about a four-hour drive away. "It's unfortunate. It's a shame that if they're not sending jobs out of the country, they're bringing people into the country."
And never mind that the Polish workers represent only a fraction of the 6,500 workers who have helped expand the Mercedes plant. What really hurts, Davis and union leaders say, is that Mercedes got $253 million in incentives, mostly from state taxpayers, to build its original plant in the mid-1990s and an additional $119 million for the $600-million expansion.
They thought the tax breaks were supposed to create jobs for Alabama workers. Now, with the national unemployment rate at 6.4 percent, and at 5.7 percent in Alabama, dozens of jobs created by Mercedes' expansion are going to foreign workers.
"I think that it's a crying shame that we're giving tax breaks to a company that's allowing foreign workers to come in. I don't appreciate it at all, and the Alabama people shouldn't appreciate it," said Robert Payne, an organizer with the Sheet Metal Workers Local 441 in Mobile.
Polish imports
Union leaders from Michigan and Alabama have asked members of Congress to investigate, saying the foreign workers may have improper visas.
Diana McBroom, district director for U.S. Rep. Sander Levin, a Royal Oak Democrat, said the Bureau of immigration and Customs Enforcement has agreed to Levin's request to investigate the men's visas. The inquiry began in early June.
"Our office would be deeply concerned if there were individuals or entities trying to take advantage of a system that is designed to allow individuals to come into the U.S. fairly, and work where there is a need, without taking jobs away from American workers," McBroom said.
Mercedes spokeswoman Sewell said she was unaware of Levin's inquiry.
Levin's office was alerted to the situation by Bob Donaldson, business manager for Local 292 of the Sheet Metal Workers union in Troy.
Donaldson visited the Mercedes site this spring with a Polish-speaking colleague, Stan Karczynski, president and business manager of the Sheet Metal Workers Local 73 in Chicago, at the request of union leaders in Birmingham, Ala.
Donaldson says that no other auto plant paint shop in the United States has been built with imported construction workers. Other automakers building or expanding factories in Alabama -- Hyundai, Honda and Toyota -- all say they use U.S. labor.
The foreign workers at Mercedes are employed by two companies -- Transsystem of Poland and Gregorec Ltd. of Britain. The businesses were hired by Eisenmann, a German company that is installing the paint shop. Mercedes is expanding its factory to add a second assembly line, which requires a second paint shop. The factory will produce two vehicles: a new M-class SUV and the Mercedes-Benz Grand Sports Tourer.
The first Transsystem workers arrived in January, and as many as 37 have come to work at Mercedes, including the men of Apt. 1404. Today, there are 32 Transsystem and 23 Gregorec workers at the site.
The Polish workers said they stay either three or six months, and when they return home, others are brought in to replace them. They say they travel from job to job, and from country to country, doing similar work.
Transsystem says it specializes in works for paint shops. Gregorec is an industrial pipe-fitting company.
Sewell said the Gregorec and Transsystem workers have B1 visas. Those visas allow foreign workers to come to the United States to install, service or repair commercial or industrial equipment or machinery purchased from an overseas company. The foreign worker must have specialized knowledge.
Sewell said Eisenmann and Transsystem assembled, tested and disassembled the paint shop equipment in Germany. It was shipped to Alabama and reassembled using the same workers who built the equipment overseas.
"This is a common practice, not only in the automotive industry, but in many industries, when you're dealing with complex equipment and manufacturing processes," Sewell said.
Eisenmann has done work for Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp., but used local labor. The difference this time: The company says new technology requires specialized workers from Transsystem and Gregorec, which helped develop the process for assembling the paint system.
The Polish men themselves and union leaders like Donaldson and Karczynski, who have seen their work, say it is not specialized and could be done by Americans.
"I paint, I cut," a Polish worker said. "I do everything an assembler has to do."
An industry insider also said installing paint shops is not complicated.
"Hundreds of companies in the United States do that. I could understand if they were installing a nuclear reactor, but they're installing sheet metal in a paint shop," the insider said, speaking anonymously for fear of jeopardizing future work with automakers.
"Any U.S. firm could do that."
The men's visas raise a second issue: Are they the proper visas for workers who are in the United States for months at a time, living in an apartment and working six or seven days a week?
Sarah Mouw, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said: "Typically, an alien does not work and live in the U.S. on a B1 visa. A B1 visa is to do business here, not to have a job here."
Cornelius Scully, who retired from the State Department in 1997 after 35 years in the visa office, said the situation involving the Polish workers puts them in the "grayest of the gray" area of immigration law.
He said the Polish workers have a legitimate reason to be in the United States if the work they are doing is highly specialized.
"If it's routine stuff that anyone can do, it's not legitimate. The question is who is telling the truth."
The paycheck
Union leaders also question the workers' wages and say Transsystem is undercutting the paychecks of U.S. laborers.
The size of the workers' paychecks depends on who is asked.
Marola Szubart, human resources manager for Transsystem, said the workers net about $2,800 a month.
But the men of Apt. 1404 say they will net -- in Polish money -- the equivalent of $1,100 a month. They say their checks are deposited in their banks in Poland and Transsystem pays their living expenses while in the United States.
Karczynski said the workers told him they make about $5 or $6 an hour, plus overtime.
In comparison, members of Local 48 of the Sheet Metal Workers union in Birmingham, Ala., earn an hourly wage of $20.71.
Sewell from Mercedes declined to discuss the men's wages. An Eisenmann executive said he was unfamiliar with the foreign workers' pay, working or living conditions.
"I have no knowledge of what they are getting paid," he said. "It must be a decent salary or they wouldn't be here." When Mercedes built its plant in the mid-1990s, it used another German company, Durr Industries, to install the paint system with U.S. workers.
Brent Newsome was a general foreman on the job. Today, he is business representative with Local 48. He, Sam Rollan Jr., business manager for the local, and Sammy Dodson, president of the Central Alabama Building and Construction Trades, say the decision to use foreign workers is all about money.
"They think they can come down here to Alabama and nobody will figure out what they're doing," Dodson said.
" 'Bout right," Newsome said.
They don't fault the Poles. "They're just being taken advantage of," Dodson said.
Apt. 1404
It is Saturday evening in Apt. 1404, and as the six men come home from work, it is time for a swim in the pool, housekeeping and a procession of visitors.
The men have worked six days straight.
Andrzej scrubs a dirty pan and tosses out two empty vodka bottles.
Jerzy vacuums the living room's kelly-green carpeting, then steers the Dirt Devil down the hallway toward the bedrooms. Piotr and Piotr peel potatoes over a garbage bag in the dining room.
Andrzej boils the potatoes in one pan; in another, he cooks chopped onions in an inch of oil.
Soon, dinner is ready. Andrzej fills each plate with potatoes mashed with the onions, adds a couple of meat patties and drizzles gravy on top. The men add a serving of homemade coleslaw.
The roommates eat in silence, their forks clinking against the plates. There are no napkins at the table, no salt and pepper shakers, nothing to drink. They finish in five minutes.
The television is on at all times, tuned to cable stations that promise segments on "Hot Young Hollywood Stars."
After dinner, the men drift to the living room or the small balcony for a smoke.
As the sky darkens, Andrzej gets out the vodka. He lines up several glasses on the kitchen counter, pours a large shot into each, and adds a splash of Sunny D with Calcium, an orange drink.
Cheers, they toast each other.
Sunday is a short day. While they still start at 7 a.m., they are done by 1 p.m. Tonight, they can relax.
Entire days off are precious. On one of them, they drove to Florida and back, just to see the sand and the water and the palm trees. They told their story in their native Polish through Free Press photographer Sylwia Kapuscinski, giving only their first names.
As they talk, some of their friends stop by to visit. One who is celebrating because he is returning to Poland stumbles in, drunk. He is asked to leave. Too much vodka, a worker says.
Rural Alabama is not what the Polish men expected, another worker says, in English.
"Until we came here, everyone saw America in the movies -- New York, Chicago, Miami," said Maciek, 25. "We were a little bit shocked when we came here -- that people live in trailers, there are forests, no skyscrapers."
He says the Transsystem workers were brought to the United States because Eisenmann trusts them. The older Piotr says it is because they are the best workers -- they work the longest days and can get the job done on time, so 2,000 American people can start working in the factory.
The Polish men's paychecks will be waiting for them at home.
"It's a lot of money," Maciek said. "There are jobs in Poland, but here you can earn more money. Working here, you can build a house or buy a flat. If you stayed in Poland, you couldn't do that."
------------------------------
Basically everyone in Alabama gave Daimler-Benz (now Daimler Chrysler) about $80 to screw them over. This is from incentives and tax breaks. A plant and expansion, that was supposed to be done by local workers, is being built by Eastern European workers who work cheap on possibly fraudulent or fradulently obtained visas.
J.
07-31-2003, 07:50 PM
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Re: Mercedes Employment Practices Questioned (they screwed Bama! So these guys will be gone in few months. I've gone worked overseas for extended period of time because my company was short on people there and the assignments were short enough (3 months) that there was no point of getting anyone else to do the job. I don't see a problem.
08-02-2003, 12:26 AM
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Re: Mercedes Employment Practices Questioned (they screwed Bama! Sadly, this is why American companies are sending their work out of the United States. 20.71 an hour for a pipe fitter??? Come on now, my uncle works at a "coce" plant in Birmingham Al and makes good money. The bad thing is he was unemployed for about six months when the union decided they wanted more in the new contract. When is it enough? I dont like the Union idea, especially since they make so much off of union dues but when they dick around and tell all the union members that they are going to strike they become reather scarce when families are starving and struggling. Therfore I say **** on your union. Buck up and do your job, quit pissing and moaning over some competition before all you have to pis and moan about is your lack of a job because you spent too much time whining instead of working.
08-02-2003, 08:44 AM
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Re: Mercedes Employment Practices Questioned (they screwed Bama! Lets see they hired 50-60 foreign workers out of 6,500 and all of Alabama is going crazy. What about GM sending thousands of jobs to Mexico, Canada and elsewhere? I see that "American" companies don't always have American interest in mind, they like any other company are looking for the most for their dollar, rubel, peso, etc... If you want to know why housing cost more in places like New York and Chicago - look to the good ol' unions. I've helped bulid a few businesses in the Chicago area. Union workers seemed well trained, but tended to stretch jobs out and make the cost of jobs go thru the roof.
For example, I have seen similar canopies built for gas stations in two different states, one in Chicago with union labor and one in Houston. In Chicago the job took 10 working days and required 5-6 workers- BTW you can't tell union workers anything even though they are working for you.
In Houston 4 days and 4 workers
The difference is the guys in Tx. were looking to work and not relying on gouging the consumer in order to keep their jobs.
For example, I have seen similar canopies built for gas stations in two different states, one in Chicago with union labor and one in Houston. In Chicago the job took 10 working days and required 5-6 workers- BTW you can't tell union workers anything even though they are working for you.
In Houston 4 days and 4 workers The difference is the guys in Tx. were looking to work and not relying on gouging the consumer in order to keep their jobs. Trending Topics
08-02-2003, 09:44 AM
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Re: Mercedes Employment Practices Questioned (they screwed Bama!
Lets see they hired 50-60 foreign workers out of 6,500 and all of Alabama is going crazy. What about GM sending thousands of jobs to Mexico, Canada and elsewhere? I see that "American" companies don't always have American interest in mind, they like any other company are looking for the most for their dollar, rubel, peso, etc... If you want to know why housing cost more in places like New York and Chicago - look to the good ol' unions. I've helped bulid a few businesses in the Chicago area. Union workers seemed well trained, but tended to stretch jobs out and make the cost of jobs go thru the roof.
For example, I have seen similar canopies built for gas stations in two different states, one in Chicago with union labor and one in Houston. In Chicago the job took 10 working days and required 5-6 workers- BTW you can't tell union workers anything even though they are working for you. In Houston 4 days and 4 workers The difference is the guys in Tx. were looking to work and not relying on gouging the consumer in order to keep their jobs.
For example, I have seen similar canopies built for gas stations in two different states, one in Chicago with union labor and one in Houston. In Chicago the job took 10 working days and required 5-6 workers- BTW you can't tell union workers anything even though they are working for you.
In Houston 4 days and 4 workers The difference is the guys in Tx. were looking to work and not relying on gouging the consumer in order to keep their jobs. 