We don't need to wait 20 or 30 years ,the theft of 500,000 high paying commercial & industrial construction jobs is complete and I watched it happen durring my 32 years in bldg trades ,I started off as an apprentice roofer & Waterproofer in 1976,became a Master after 4 years trade school & received my 1st journeyman's card ,I was immediatly transferred to the sheet metal Dept and spent another 4 years earning a Journeyman card in Architectural sheet metal so I could perform both jobs & not get into trouble with the union ,on my 9th year i began being prepped to become the company crane operator by spending weekends in the yard getting hands on experience with my 1st crane and Pettibone , after completing the course in heavy equipment operation I became one of 5 full time crane operator at the company ,I used that experience to jump ship & sign on with the world's 7th largest construction company and spent the next 22 years with them .
When I 1st apprenticed in 1976 the Commercial roofing trade was 70% white & 30% black ,Mason's were 70% black & 30% white ,cement finishers were 99% black ,plumbers were 70% white & 30% black ,sparkys and operating engineers were ,90% white & 10% black ,Iron workers were half native American and half white ,all job feilds fell right in with the country's population percentages per race and showed extremely equal opportunity employement for AMERICANS .
That all began to change in the late 1990s and it didn't take long to realize all American tradesmen we're being phazed out In favor of illegal Hispanics ,every winter as work slowed down and American tradesmen we're laid off for the winter the main office would only call back 90% of our workforce ,we'd start the season short handed the 1st 2 weeks & out of nowhere came 10 to 15 Mexicans with basic construction knowledge who were immediatly put through apprentiship schools and shake and baked into journeymen overnight ,in the year 2000 my company started replacing Black & White Americans with Mexicans they actively sought out with a recruiter based in Guadalajara Mexico at the rate of 15 to 20 men a year ,I watched my white and black friends I'd worked with for decades lose their boats ,campers ,summer cottages ,sports cars , motorcycles ,empty their children's college funds ,cash out stock portfolios ,sell their wedding bands etc until finally losing their homes and being forced into poverty within 6 months of formerly being middle class ,I couldn't stand it so I called La Migra every job we went to ,sometimes illegals would be arrested and deported but most times not ,in 2002 one of the big shots from our home office in Sweden climbed up on my crane and told me " the next time immigration shows up YOU are FIRED ,the last decade I worked my base salary was $240,000 before travel pay and bonuses so my options were to take a job at a scab company earning $15 an hour running a sorry boom truck ,or STFU & ride out my days doing everything I could to become a wallflower ,we had roughly 40,000 employees in 2002 and by the time I retired in 2012 the jobs I worked had only 2 or 3 token Americans out of up to 100 men on the job ,it wasn't millennials who destroyed the commercial & industrial construction industry ,it was politicans allowing forigen based mega contractors like Skanska Global to replace US tradesmen with 3rd world Hispanics willing and wanting to work 90 hours a week at double production rates than US journeyman we're putting out , when I was a roofer in the 70s our 20 man crew tore off & put back about 100 squares a day ,the last roofing job I ran crane on in 2010 the Mexicans we're tearing off & installing 200 to 220 squares a day ,most share housing with 20 men per house and 1st thing payday is to hit Western Union and ship 90% of their $2,500 paychecks to Mexico .
The reason millennial Americans refuse to work construction is simple ,the big union company's who pay journeymen $30 to $120 an hour and build americas factorys and high rises refuse to hire and apprentice them ,when they look for work in residential construction their starting pay is $12 to $15 an hour with foremen only making $25 an hour ,they can earn the same pay working for McDonald's and not have to work their fingers to the Bone .
Until something concrete is done to deport the 10 million illegal aliens currently robbing America's construction industry of 500,000 jobs and supporting our national economy, no US citizen will be willing to enter the job market as a blue collar bldg trsdesman,if I wasn't a token minority my employer would have replaced me with an illegal alien too .