Moving up the ladder
Hispanics play increasingly prominent role in Virginia’s construction industry

by Garry Kranz
for Virginia Business
May 2006

Luvin Ramos arrived in Virginia 17 years ago, a 19-year-old with dreams and not much else. He found work as a laborer with Southland Concrete Corp. in Dulles, where his godfather had advanced from a framing carpenter to a supervisory role as carpenter foreman. With any luck, Ramos hoped to at least earn a pile of money to help support the parents and siblings he left behind in his native Guatemala.

Upon his arrival, Ramos knew little English and was not skilled in any particular construction trade. But he did possess something that caught the eye of Southland President Randy Green: leadership instincts. “Luvin had the ability to see the big picture. He started out with us by putting in foundations, but it was clear that he understood how important it was for the different tradesmen to work together and be kept on schedule. Mainly it was his persistence to grow,” says Green.

Southland paid for Ramos to take courses at a local adult education center so he could master English. It also ponied up for blueprint-reading courses at local colleges. Just as important, Green and Executive Vice President Greg Kohlhaas encouraged Ramos when he expressed a desire to learn more about the industry, even allowing him to take home blueprints. Each night after dinner, Ramos would spread the architectural drawings across his living room floor and pore over them for hours, sometimes falling asleep right on the plans. “Every little chance I had to read blueprints, I jumped at it,” says Ramos, now 35 and an engineering superintendent.

Ramos’ hard work, and Southland’s investment in him, is paying off. Ramos has settled comfortably into a typical middle-class American lifestyle since leaving Guatemala nearly two decades ago. A side benefit to those company-paid English classes: That is where he met his wife, a U.S. citizen who is originally from El Salvador. Today the couple own a house in the suburbs where they raise their three school-age children. Ramos occupies one of the more pivotal jobs at Southland, a medium-sized company that generated more than $60 million in projects in 2005. He sketches in the structural elements on blueprints that work crews use to build numerous projects along the Northern Virginia-Washington, D.C., corridor.

Once dominated by white Southern men, construction in Virginia increasingly is populated by an ever-growing number of Hispanics. Southland’s experience is typical: Of the firm’s 600 full-time employees, about 500 (83 percent) are of Hispanic origin. This trend is national in scope, fueled by a worker shortage during a sustained building boom in both commercial and residential construction. According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, Hispanics make up about 14 percent of the U.S. construction work force. Exact figures for Virginia aren’t readily available, but it is generally believed that Virginia’s percentage of Hispanic construction workers exceeds the federal estimate by a fair amount.

Those numbers are expected to grow in coming years despite political tension over illegal immigrants. On Capitol Hill, the issue has drawn heated debate with some members advocating tougher laws for illegals and others pressing for changes that would grant temporary worker status and eventually citizenship to immigrants who have lived and worked in the U.S. for at least five years. A compromise on what would have been the biggest immigrant reform legislation in years fell apart just before Congress broke for its spring recess last month. In Virginia, the issue surfaced during last fall’s gubernatorial campaign with Virginia Republican Jerry Kilgore — who lost the election — taking a hard line against a proposed day-labor center in Herndon. In March, Virginia’s U.S. Sen. George Allen also took a stand against illegal immigration, arguing that people here illegally should not be granted amnesty but rather returned to their native countries before applying for legal residency in the United States.

The debate has prompted massive demonstrations by immigrants nationwide who are threatening a work boycott on May 1 to publicize the need for reform. It also has raised concerns among Virginia’s Hispanic population. “The tonality of a lot of laws [discussed] is that Hispanics are not welcome in Virginia,” says Michel Zajur, president and chief executive of the Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, referring especially to Kilgore’s comments during his campaign.

Speaking the language
Few states have as acute a need for construction workers as Virginia, especially in the greater Washington area, where commercial building remains red hot despite a slowdown in the housing market. To keep up, construction companies rely on an abundant supply of Hispanics with a reputation for industrious work.

“Our state economy couldn’t exist without the Hispanic work force. It would come crumbling down,” says Jim Cronin, vice president of operations for L.F. Jennings Inc., a Falls Church retail contractor that employs 400 people, roughly half of them Hispanics.

In fact Hispanics, who represent nearly 5 percent of Virginia’s population, exert significant impact on a wide range of industries, both here and across the country. A recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau found that the growth rate for Hispanic-owned businesses from 1997-2002 was three times higher than that of other U.S. companies. It also noted that nearly three in 10 Hispanic-owned firms in the U.S. were in construction and construction-related industries.

For Virginia contractors, Hispanic workers are arriving at a crucial time. Labor shortages have handcuffed the industry for years, causing companies to lose out on contracts or take smaller jobs. Experts say the industry also suffers from a poor image, with young people believing the jobs are either too hard or too dangerous.

A majority of American-born high school students are being steered into white-collar professions using computers and technology. “Because of that, this industry faces a work force shortage that will continue for years. There is job security in construction,” says Angie Lynd, vice president of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Virginia, a construction trade group.

And there is even greater job security if you are Hispanic and can demonstrate initiative. Construction firms here are responding by rolling out special apprenticeships and other training programs to groom Hispanics for leadership roles, well aware that a rash of retiring baby boomers in the coming years is expected to deplete management ranks.

Old Dominion Insulation Inc. in Richmond, which runs an apprenticeship program for promising talent, has promoted 10 Hispanic workers to supervisory positions, with another 10 undergoing training. The company provides commercial services relating to installation and removal of insulation products. “We’ve got a couple of young Hispanic guys in their late teens who speak English as well as I do. They are the ones who are going to make it to the next level, because they are talented, work hard and can communicate with everybody,” says company President Roddy Davoud, whose 275-employee work force includes about 140 Hispanics.

Companies also are trying to help Spanish-speaking workers assimilate into American culture. Many construction companies have in-house Hispanic advisory committees of bilingual leaders to provide advice to workers about crucial issues such as paying taxes, registering children for school or obtaining a driver’s license. Like many firms, Old Dominion sponsors a soccer team made up of Hispanic employees.

Yet the large influx of Hispanics poses some daunting challenges as well, most notably communication relating to safety issues. Since many Hispanics are still struggling to learn the language, safety notices must be put up in both English and Spanish. Construction accounted for the third-highest number of job-related fatalities (42) in Virginia in 2004, according to the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry, although the information is not broken down by number of deaths of each ethnic group or race. During the building of the Route 895 road project in Chesterfield County, two Hispanic construction workers died on the job, one in 1999 (when reinforcing rods collapsed while he was working on a bridge) and another in 2001, when a 500-pound support beam fell from a nearby crane.

Helping Spanish-speaking workers learn English is a high safety priority among contractors. Centex Corp., a Dallas-based contractor with a strong presence in Northern Virginia, pays for its Hispanic laborers and crew leaders who want to learn English as a second language. Also, English-only crew leaders or others in supervisory positions are taking classes to learn how to translate basic construction terminology —words like nail, hammer, tools, etc. — from English into Spanish. “We want supervisors to be bilingual so they can better assess a person’s knowledge and skills, and also so they don’t hurt themselves or somebody else,” says Steve Smithgall, Centex’s vice president of operations for Virginia.

Documentation of workers
Clearly, the biggest headache comes with making sure Hispanic workers are in the U.S. legally. Executives of construction firms bristle at the suggestion that large numbers of illegal workers are on their payrolls. In fact, contractors must do a lot of legwork to comply with federal regulations or face severe fines and other penalties, not to mention the fallout of losing high-dollar contracts if they are found in violation.

Three forms of identification are required to verify if a person is here legally, with companies needing to check as many as 19 residency requirements before they hire foreign-born workers. To handle the workload, some contracting companies are looking to add bilingual human resources professionals to attack the issue. Says Lynd: “Commercial construction companies are very concerned that the people they hire are here legally, because they have a lot to lose if they aren’t.”

But a recent report from the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington, D.C., research organization funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, points up how pervasive the problem of illegal workers actually is across the nation. Of the 7.2 million illegal workers employed in March, 14 percent work in construction, the group said in a recent study.

Questions remain on how long Virginia construction companies can continue to attract top talent without significantly boosting wages. The state added nearly 12,000 new construction jobs in 2005, a one-year jump of 5.3 percent, according to the Center for Urban Development at Virginia Commonwealth University. Although construction wages rose 5 percent last year, Hispanics looking for careers in construction could easily earn more in other states.

Virginia’s median wage of nearly $41,000 a year remains about $1,700 below the national average. “It is an increasingly competitive market and there is a lot more emphasis being placed on health packages, 401(k) plans and retirement benefits than just a few years ago,” says Smithgall of Centex.
Such is the price of running a construction company. And while it is sobering news for construction companies, to Hispanic workers talk of higher wages sounds nice in any language.