Recession has taken away work but not pride
The grind of morning traffic growled to a stop at the grimy corner of Charleston and Martin Luther King boulevards. Another day in the life of the Las Vegas recession had begun.
A ragged fellow held up a piece of cardboard claiming he is a hungry veteran who would work for food. A dapper soldier from the Nation of Islam engaged drivers trapped by a red light and attempted to distribute the latest copy of The Final Call.
There, amid the chaos and car exhaust, another man stood holding another sign. In neat lettering it read, “Contractor and Handyman Services. Licensed and Bonded.” Next to a Nevada contractor’s license number was a phone number: “574-9507.”
It was the start of the hardest kind of day for Orlando Diaz Jr. and his father, Orlando Sr. A day of no work. That’s what sent the son to the street corner with his sign.
The father has held a general contractor’s license for 10 years with his son as his right-hand man. It’s a small operation, their With Pride Construction Co. They are approved for residential and commercial jobs up to $700,000.
There was a time no sign would have been needed. Las Vegas was America’s last great boomtown, and construction jobs great and small stacked up. Cranes filled the Strip skyline. Acre after acre of desert was being transformed into stucco neighborhoods. Tradesmen from across the nation found work here. Immigrants from Mexico and other countries sojourned to the blue-collar Promised Land and were rewarded with work and wages.
Now all that work is gone. Unemployment in the construction trades is higher than 50 percent. Scores of skilled journeymen face the likelihood of no steady work locally for years to come.
Through all that, tiny With Pride Construction Co. holds on, hope against hope, working-class pride against good sense and grim reality.
On this day, they would take anything they could get. Hands that have built custom homes and efficient commercial buildings would gladly fix that faulty light switch, hang a door, or repair a patio. No job too big or small. Not on this day.
It’s like that often for the Diaz family and thousands of proud Las Vegas construction workers.
Orlando and his father have watched high-flying subcontractors that once employed hundreds of people shrink to a few dozen workers, and then disappear. The Diaz family fights to keep from joining those ranks.
The son isn’t complaining. He knows many people have it much worse.
“A lot of subcontractors we used to deal with on larger projects are out of business,” Orlando Jr. said. “The architects and engineers, they’re out of business. It’s been very difficult.”
There’s no money for conventional advertising. They no longer can afford to subscribe to Construction Notebook, where they once found many leads, and Orlando Sr. recently struggled to pay $800 to renew his state contractor’s license. The work might be scarce, but the government’s fees don’t stop coming.
And so, on the slowest mornings, Orlando Jr. takes to the street corner.
“Instead of watching my dad go out of business, I decided to get a sign made and go out and get the business that way because it’s free advertising,” Orlando said. He’s 36 with a young son. “I used to pay my cousin to go out there, but it’s gotten so bad I have to go out there myself and do it.”
The results? So far, With Pride has been hired to install a ceiling fan. Orlando just landed a homeowner electrical job, and he has collected a few promising leads.
“Actually, it has worked a little bit,” the son said. “It surprised me. People out there, they know the situation we’re in. We’re at rock bottom, almost, right now.”
They are without work, but not without pride.
John L. Smith’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.
