Industry publication, December 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

SI NEWS SITE DECEMBER 3, 200 1

Labor

DOOR CLOSES ON J-1 TRAINING VISAS ennis Laskin says he knows why At the jobsites, lowly work assignments program of training, research or study. more than half of the electricians grated on recruits who had resumes In the labor squeeze of recent years, he brought to work in the U.S. with from their home countries that included however, technology employers have visas from Eastern Europe earlier this mine and shipyard electrical work, proj- considered usingJ-1 visas. USA-IT applied year no longer are employed by a labor ect manager or even degrees in electrical the idea to construction and signed up company he helps run, USA-IT. They engineering. third-party sponsors and paid them a fee. were lured by the “big pot of gold” “They would let us bring the pipe, all They included the YMCA of Greater New placed in front of them by the Interna- the things that didn’t need a lot of skill,” York. Approved training programs exist

i tional Brotherhood of Electrical Work- says Aurel Potoroaca, a 3&-year-old from for all employers and sponsors, Laskin ers, he says. Union contractors now em- Petrosani, Romania, who now works says. In practice, little education took ploy many of the visiting workers for for the IBEW. ‘We could put fish tape in place, claim workers and Ronald Burke, twice as much as the $10 an hour USA-IT the conduit and pull the wire but then IBEW’s director of construction organiz- paid them. the other workers would do the termi- ing. “They were very content until such nation.” Building trades unions have made time as they saw the opportunity to make Any training that was provided was targets of other nonunion labor sup- twice as much money and remove us limited and sporadic, workers say. The ply companies and USA-IT had promi- from the process,” says Las- '11V nent clients. The - Green­ kin. n belt, Md.-based company USA-IT has been pre­ vented from using the J-1 Exchange Visa program to r charged a fee of $5 an hour on top of the work­ ers’ hourly wage for non­ import overseas workers » la.-.- union electrical contrac­ di for low-paying jobs at non­ tors that included Inte­ union contractors, but not grated Electrical Services because of the union alone. ' and Encompass Services A State Dept official brand- : ed the practice “an abuse” > and allowed the workers Mb 0 Corp. Neither company could be reached for com­ ment. However, a spokes­ already here to take new woman for IES told the jobs because it believed Baltimore Sun earlier this USA-IT had used a bait-and- year that it employed 340 switch technique. Some of workers supplied by USA- the workers complained IT at different locations that USA-IT never provided ’ and that there had been the promised “electrical no complaints. Work­ management” training, ers receive class and on- shunted them to low-skill thejob training, she add­ tasks and docked pay­ ed. checks unfairly for expens­ Still, the union contin­ es, including household NEW DEAL Union organizer talks to USA-IT staff in summer. ues its campaign against supplies. USA-IT. On Nov. 20, the Once they were in the U.S, USA-IT recruits seemed to understand that the IBEW won a representation election assigned the recruits to companies in dif- emphasis would be work, hoping to pock- among a handful of USA-IT workers in z ferent parts of the country. USA-IT is not et enough money to cover expenses, sup- the Washington, D.C., area, another set- g a contractor, but remained the workers’ port families back home and build a nest back for USA-IT. i employer. Some were crammed two-to- egg. But when the workers saw disap- Where he once saw promise in the J-1 I a-bedroom in apartments provided by pointing take-home pay, the apparent visa program and promoted it to con- ¥ USA-IT. ‘They didn’t care what our prob- lack of training seemed more troubling, tractors, Laskin now sees only wasted I lems were,” says Ocdabiam Barbu, a 28- It also proved to be the weak spot in potential. But the State Dept, had rea- I year-old Romanian. Barbu says that USA-IT’s innovation in using the J-1 visa sons to intervene, says Stanley Colvin, g among the deductions from his pay was for construction craft workers. Until director of the office of exchange coor- u a $7.50 charge for orientation. recently, the program had been used for dination; “We believed the workers were S All of the recruits were fully briefed scholars and camp counselors. Any work misled about what they would do and I I on pay deductions, replies Laskin. They done by the visa holder must be limited what they would make.” □ '! I needed “a lot of hand-holding,” he says, so that he or she can stick to a structured By Richard Korman ! 12 ENR/December 3, 2001

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