>
>
>Furthermore, unless you are in a niche, the bidding process, pitting one
>little company against another  for construction work, is messed up. If
>there are 10 of us bidding a job, and only one doesn't provide vacation
>time, health care, sick days, etc for his/her self or employees, then NONE
>of us can. Oh sure, there will be the customers willing to pay the
>conscientious contractor a little higher price -- for a while -- but
>eventually, the larger market will sink to the lowest common denominator
>until everyone is so worked out, sick, broke, or dead, that someone (union,
>government) has to step in and regulate it. Again.
>
The general tendency of industrial managment of labor is to treat it as
an interchangeable commodity. This is dehumanizing. The double-edge with
construction is that there is enough wide open territory that an
individual can run against perception in the market as a commodity
(value-added) through the acquisition of specialized skills that are in
demand, but at the same time has to gain the skills in an unregulated
and generally unfair competitive market. One problem with unions is that
though they assure the 'benefits' they also reinforce the
commodification of labor and damper the acquisition of new skills. The
union also excludes large portions of the existing workforce -- and on
occasion construction unions have alliances best not encountered (Friday
at the appointed hour standing on a street corner with an evelope of
$500 in cash in your pocket to hand to the shop steward who is on
methadone therapy ever since he was let out of Rikers after his
manslaughter problem is not an ideal situation, and neither is it
pleasant when Bobby is bouncing around his face two inches from your
face and saying that his buddy RIck the operating engineer is hungry for
his cut). The unregulated construction industry is one of a few venues
that allows freedom for an individual to not be perceived as one more
interchangeable commodity. There is also, despite union or government,
the underground economy which will continue to provide labor without
benefits.

Southampton, where there is wealth, and their own town police force. In
Southampton people leave their bicycles standing on the lawn without
locking them up. In Southampton you can work on a parapet on the roof of
the Chase Manhattan bank until 1 AM and nobody ever comes around and
says anything more than a pleasant, "Hello."

So at the north end of town sit about 200 hispanic day laborers. It is
obvious they are there for work. It should also be fairly obvious that
they are paid in cash, and it is likely that many of them are not legal.
(I spent a year of mornings with a day labor group in Maryland.) It is
also my assumption that they would not be allowed to be there if the
fine people of the Hamptons did not want them. Somebody has to mow the
lawns and dig the holes to plant trees and all these guys sitting around
is as much a resource for the wealthy as their own police force.

I saw they have some sort of Steinbeck festival in Southampton each year.

][<

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