Worker Weathering Walkout : With Family Support, Sacrifice

The hands of Antonio Vasquez seem to tell the story. The fingers on his big and paw-like hands have thickened like fat sausages from more than 16 years of drywall construction work.

“I can remember the good years,” Vasquez said during an interview in Spanish at his home Wednesday. “Well, ’73 was good and so was ’77 and 1979. That’s when my daughter Nancy was born, and I used the medical insurance from my union to help pay for the hospital bill.”

With that union now long gone, Vasquez, 55--one of an estimated 500 striking drywall workers in Orange County who are demanding a return of the union and higher pay--has tied his fortunes to the ebb and flow of the county’s construction industry. He and his wife, Marta, have managed to have a comfortable life raising their nine children--until now.

He has been out of work five weeks, ever since the strike began. Instead of rising at 5 a.m. to be at the job by 6, he spends his days waiting at the Carpenters Union hall in Orange, desperately seeking news about when the strike might end or where they might demonstrate next.

Vasquez said that at his age he knew the strike would be a tough fight. He didn’t know that he and two sons who are also drywall workers would be arrested during a protest that turned violent in Mission Viejo last week and ended with 149 protesters being thrown in jail.

Jailed for five days, Vasquez and his sons Uvaldo, 33, and Jose, 23, face court hearings next Wednesday on trespassing charges.

His wife said it was the first time her husband has ever seen a jail from the inside. The experience, she said, traumatized her as well.

“I was very sad,” she said. “He hadn’t worked for five weeks, and now he was in jail. I keep asking him how long does he think he’s going to do this.”

Financially, Vasquez and his wife have had to cut back. Gone are the steady paychecks he used to earn. The recession caused a slowdown in construction and caused the price of drywall labor to bottom out at 4 to 5 cents a foot, he said. He was averaging $350 for five days’ labor or $500 for seven days, working 12-hour days.

That leaves very little to pay off a mortgage, buy groceries and pay for gasoline. In addition, his wife is ill and in need of gall bladder surgery, which has been delayed until he figures out how to get the $5,000 they will need for hospital costs.

The financial problems have also affected their 19-year-old daughter, also named Marta, who has had to postpone her college plans.

“It’s hard, because I needed to earn money, so I’m working as a sales clerk at a Marshalls (store),” she said. “I’m trying to save enough money to go to Fullerton College next year. I want to be a flight attendant.”

All year, the couple’s 14-year-old daughter, Carmen, has patiently waited for her quincenera --a Latina’s traditional coming-out party. But family finances have squelched that dream.

“My birthday is Saturday,” Carmen said, pausing to maintain her composure and hold back tears. “It’s really important to me. We were planning a quincenera, and they wanted to, you know, give me a fiesta. . . .”

Her father interrupted: “I wanted to give her a fiesta. You know, for her. But now I can’t.” The rental of a hall, catering costs, a formal dress and other expenses would have pushed the bill to more than $2,000.

After a silence, Carmen said, “I understand.”

In fact, the family seems to have drawn closer while they weather the strike.

They lead a relatively comfortable life. Vasquez and his wife rode a fruitful tidal wave with the county’s construction boom in the 1970s. In 1977, after a plentiful year, he bought a four-bedroom home in a nice, quiet Fullerton neighborhood. Then he helped put a down payment on a second, three-bedroom home nearby in Fullerton that a son and daughter-in-law now occupy.

When an elder daughter married, he helped with a down payment on a condominium in Oxnard. But his daughter’s husband, also a drywall worker, couldn’t find enough work and their condo was repossessed. The couple, Rosendo and Antonia Saldana, and their son, Esteban, 14, have moved in with the Vasquezes, hoping to save enough to find a place of their own.

“It’s always been my dream to help my children buy their homes. It’s why I came from Mexico to this country,” Vasquez said. He has since become a naturalized citizen, and although he has a profound love for Guanajuato, the Mexican state where he was born, he considers California his home.

“We’ve never been a problem here,” he said. “It hasn’t been easy with so many children. I mean, I’ve been poor but never on welfare. I consider this my country now, and I know the problem that welfare can be, and that’s why we’ve never applied for it, and we’re not going to either.”

Vasquez added that he would rather move to Morgan Hill in Northern California, where he first worked on a horse ranch two decades ago, than go on welfare. “At least there, they can let me live in a home. It’s not as much pay as construction though,” he said.

Vasquez’s sons Uvaldo and Jose can only offer advice to the family’s younger members.

“I have told my sisters to study hard in school so they don’t end up like us, worrying about our next paycheck. Not to get any boyfriends. If you have a lover, make it education,” said Uvaldo.

“Yeah,” agreed Jose. “We tell our nephews who are real young, ‘Don’t grow up to do what we did. Don’t be a wall hanger.’ ”