Reply to Why is private sector construction still working in DC?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a practical matter, construction doesn’t expose the general public to infection the way a restaurant does. On our big jobs, we’ve started staggering shifts, dividing the site into zones, instituting daily temperature checks and making sure that our subs have appropriate PPE. For tenant improvement work, we’ve advised the owner that we need to shit down if we can’t maintain social distancing. On those jobs, we’ve donated the PPE we would’ve used to the local hospitals. Many of the GCs in this country are trying to do the right thing—it’s just not as simple as telling our sub’s employees to go home and starve and forgo any chance of being able to afford healthcare.[/quote]

That is awesome that you donated your PPE to the local hospital. Because those hospital workers are essential, and they are at risk and need full societal support. If you need your crew to work, they should have PPE if they are actually essential right now, too.

You can pay the people on your payroll and send many of them home for a couple of weeks so that they live to work for you later. So can your subs. Ask your crew if they’d like to do that, or get a safe break at home and be eligible to file for unemployment relief. Right now there is no requirement to search for work on unemployment. But you can’t get it if your boss is still bringing you in. If your subs are hiring undocumented workers, they can show some basic humanity and pay them the paltry sum they usually do. There is now federal assistance so that companies can reclaim the payroll.

Their families are the public, too. Ask yourself if you would be willing to take the risks they are taking. Want to commute in a small car with four other guys from across county to the job site? Ride three to a cab to deliver supplies? Share that portajohn? Just do everything you can to reduce to TRULY essential work and give your workers all the relief and safety that you yourself receive. If you are already doing this, excellent and good for you. But you know most aren’t. Most are using vulnerable workers to keep up their profits just as long as they can. Most are convincing themselves that their employees are just so grateful to be there and have the work. Most are making announcements about how few local cases there are and how it is important to be safe, but let’s power through this and be tough, because we are “essential.”

And most won’t really feel any guilt or culpability if there’s an outbreak on their crew - they’ll be sad if someone dies, some kids lose their dad, oh, it will be SUCH a tragedy, but they won’t really, truly care that their drive to make that extra dollar and save an expense predictably led to a family’s devastation. So if it such important work that you would risk your spouses’s life over it, carry on, because some risks are necessary. But getting those luxury condos built right this minute? Doubt it.[/quote]

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