Immigration, Outsourcing, and Drug Testing-What Is Going On Here?

This area that I call home, the Ozarks, has experienced some rapid growth. To be more specific, I am talking about Taney and Stone Counties in southwest Missouri. The industries that drive the growth are tourism and recreation.

In recent years, much of the development has involved large national and multi-national corporations. That wasn’t always the case, in fact for a long time it was the opposite. The two industries, tourism and recreation, were for the most part, in the hands of local people. Even companies that went on to become “big deals” like, Silver Dollar City and Bass Pro-those were local outfits.

A lot of the people that I know, that I socialize with, are small business owners. I would even say that “most” are small business owners. Businesses like, construction, cleaning, restaurants, small resorts, plumbing, electrical, dock building, transportation-all of these are reliant, to some extant, on tourism and recreation.

I’m going to be using a lot of general terms here, at least for now. I’ve got to step lightly with what I’m going to get into so, I’m not going to mention any names.

In recent years there has been a ton of money flowing into this area, from outside sources. A lot of hotels, restaurants, timeshare joints, convention center, a big mall, other retail stores, a bunch of stuff that is being built by large corporations.

With all of this new cash flow, it would seem natural that a lot of these small business owners (sub contractors) would be getting in on it. Some are but, I have noticed that most, that I know, are not.

When I run in to a friend who is say, a framing contractor, I always ask something like; “Are you staying busy?”. And, they are usually staying busy. But, like I said, most of them aren’t working on the new hotel or retail outlet over in Branson. Most of them are building a vacation home for someone who lives in Chicago or something like that.

Now, I am always curious. I have to wonder why, a person that has gone to the trouble of maintaining a reliable crew of workers, isn’t pursuing these larger commercial accounts. Understand too, that these are folks that I know are very capable of handling these commercial accounts. So, I’ve been straight up, asking these business owners why they aren’t pursuing this corporate money flow.

The answer may surprise you.

The answer is drug testing.

These sub contractors are not pursuing these large corporate accounts because, they know that all of their employees would need to pass a drug test and, if that were the case, the upshot would be that they would lose a bunch of employees. So, rather than even messing with it, these contractors are building a succession of vacation homes for individuals. And, the thing is, most of them have stayed pretty busy doing just that. So far.

When I say “small businesses” I’m talking about, in general terms, 5-10 employees. A guy that has a small crew, maybe a couple of small crews.

So for instance, if you are a sheet rock contractor with four employees, in order for you to get this big, long term contract with this big corporation that is building a mall, your guys are going to have to submit to all of that corporation’s policies because, that corporation is holding the bag in terms of liability. You still have to carry workman’s comp on your guys-they aren’t going to help you out on that end and, your guys are going to have to pee in a cup because the corporation’s insurance requires it. If two of your four guys smoke a little weed on the weekend, and you don’t know two guys to replace them, you got to take your game somewhere else.

I know a little about this because, I have seen some of the job contracts. I have read a lot of contracts over the years. I’ve been involved in music business situations where contracts were needed. Music business contracts are often convoluted so, I have spent a good deal of time learning to interpret lawyer speak. I can usually read through a contract and explain it in layman’s terms. Every once in a while, somebody will ask me to do this. The contracts that I have seen, from these large corporate build sites, don’t make it easy for the sub contractor. The sub has to pay for drug testing up front and have it done at the place the corporation chooses. As a sub, if one of your guys fails the drug test, your whole outfit is subject to be dismissed. You are out the money it costs to have the testing (sometimes thousands of dollars for even a small crew) and subject to further penalties on top of that. If one of your guys is hiding drug use and tries to beat the test with one of those concoctions that they use, you are up a creek. If you know that a couple of guys won’t pass, you have to find replacements, guys who don’t know your routine and; How do you know those guys will pass?

Here is the part that gets really screwy.

I’ve got a friend that is negotiating to do some work for a company that moved to town a couple of years ago. This is an outfit that outsources housekeeping to resorts and hotels. Now, I don’t want to be wishy washy about things but, I feel like I have to, at this point. There are people that I know that are involved with this company and are depending on that income so, I’m not going to name the company right now. But, really the point I’m at is this: I’ve got some questions and I’m looking for some answers.

Anyway, this company hires housekeepers and places them at different hotels and resorts. A great deal of the these housekeepers are from foreign countries. I have heard that the number of foreign employees is between 2-300. This company also arranges housing and transportation for these foreign workers. I also know several local people that have small cleaning companies, that do exactly this same kind of work, that have turned down contracts from the same hotels and resorts that have hired this outside company to “outsource” these jobs because of the drug testing issue.

Now, this cleaning company, that is doing the outsourcing, is a nationwide one. I know for fact that this company is far larger that the local outfits that go out and clean rooms with a crew of four or five. I wonder if, being a large corporation themselves, that things like the drug testing issue, may be handled differently. In other words, it might be that the onus of liability rests with the cleaning company rather than the resort corporation and, that the cleaning company doesn’t need to abide by the resort company’s insurance requirements. Maybe the cleaning company, being a large corporation, is able to get by with their own (possibly more lenient?) drug testing policy.

Now, there are some other obvious issues that come to mind; this company has 2-300 foreign workers, in this local area, is it all on the up and up? Do all of these workers have green cards? If they do, can they all pass a drug test and, are these employees subject to the same drug testing standards that are keeping local companies away from pursuing this same work?

The fact that there are larger companies coming in to the area to outsource cleaning and construction jobs means that there is a demand for workers. At this point, there seems to be enough work to go around.

I think there is an underlying sense of nervousness among many of these area small business owners though. Nothing is a sure thing, you know? If the dividing line for being competitive or not comes down to things like drug tests; if anybody who cleans toilets or hangs sheet rock is not going to be able to smoke a joint in the off hours-so be it. It’s all good if there’s a level playing field. And, anybody can hire anybody from anywhere; if it’s on the up and up.

But, if it isn’t a level playing field; if larger companies that bring workers from elsewhere are afforded different levels of compliance-if it’s not all legal, immigration wise; what happens when there isn’t as much work to go around?

Immigration is a “hot button” issue. One thing I hear a lot is this business of, “illegals are doing jobs that Americans don’t want”. I hear a lot of people making that statement and defending it and, a lot of other people refuting it. It seems central to the debate.

What I’m seeing here, in the Ozarks is; a lot of foreign workers-don’t know if they are legal or not-doing jobs that small contractors a choosing not to pursue because, the deck is stacked against them; primarily with the drug testing issue.

With all the stuff that I have seen, in the media, about immigration, I have never seen any of this stuff discussed. I have not seen anything about large companies that “outsource” jobs by bringing foreign workers in to an area and, nothing that ties this issue to drug testing policies.

I wonder how much of this “outsourcing” by importing workers is going on elsewhere. In Branson, it appears to be the norm.