As construction business climbs, wages are falling - By Ruth Morris, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
'It used to be construction workers were known as labor aristocrats. [The work] is dangerous and dirty, but the compensation used to make up for it. That's no longer true,' said Mark Erlich, a carpenter's union official who has written extensively on wage conditions.
Erlich said political and corporate attacks on unions had already gone a long way to depress salaries in the '70s and '80s, making construction jobs less attractive to some blue-collar Americans. Then immigrants began to fill the void.
'It was a perfect storm,' Erlich said, noting that the Southeastern states like Florida had a particularly weak union presence. 'You had degraded compensation in the first place, and then you had a sudden influx of immigrants ... and their illegal status makes them extremely vulnerable to their employers.'