Drywall Firms Investigated for Illegal Workers : Employment: More than half of 800 employees in five Southland companies were found to be in U.S. illegally.

After finding that more than half the 800 workers employed by five Southern California drywall companies last year were illegal immigrants, the U.S. Border Patrol has begun investigating the hiring records of 46 additional drywall firms.

The probe, expected to last through mid-June, involves companies in Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego and San Bernardino counties that together employed about 3,000 residential drywall installers last year.

Many of the workers are members of Carpenters Union Local 2361 in Orange, but the union is not being targeted in the investigation, said David Garrett, supervising agent of the Border Patrol’s employer sanctions unit in Temecula.

If the probe results in barring hundreds of illegal workers from the industry, as Board Patrol officials intend, it could lead to labor shortages and construction slowdowns just as the Southern California housing industry begins recovering from four years of deep recession.

The investigation has angered several drywall companies. Their contract with the carpenters union calls for the union to screen workers and verify their legal employment status.

Gordon Hubbell, the drywall union contract administrator for the Southern California Conference of Carpenters, acknowledged that the pact calls for the union to screen workers. But he called the screening clause an effort by the union to assist employers--not to assume their legal responsibilities.

Drywall workers in Southern California’s residential building industry conducted a five-month wildcat strike in 1992, complaining of exploitation by employers because they were not members of a union.

The installation of drywall--an inexpensive and near universal replacement for plaster finishes on the interior walls of homes--tends to draw undocumented workers because employment is transitory, the work is not highly skilled and knowledge of the English language is not a requirement.

The Carpenters Union agreed to represent the strikers and in November, 1992, most of Southern California’s large residential drywall installation companies signed a master contract agreement. Garrett said federal law holds the employer responsible for verifying legal status. The contract between the drywall firms and the union is a civil contract and doesn’t relieve the employers of their responsibility, he said.

As a result, one of the five companies initially investigated by Garrett’s agents--SMR Drywall Inc. in Lake Elsinore--is being fined $17,500 because it has not maintained worker eligibility records, called I-9 forms, since the union contract took effect in 1992.

Of 117 workers employed by the small company last year, the Border Patrol agents identified 26 as illegal immigrants.

Jim Duddy, SMR Drywall’s chief executive, said he intends to file an administrative appeal of the fine.

The other four companies involved in the initial probe all had I-9s on file for their employees, Garrett said.

One of those companies was Orange County Drywall in Tustin, a third was Cal West Drywall in Yorba Linda. Although most of the illegal workers used falsified papers to establish legal status, the employers are not required to detect forgeries and thus are not being held liable, he said.

Brian Maag, president of Orange County Drywall and president of the Pacific Rim Drywall Contractors Assn., said the union’s apparent failure to properly perform employee screening as called for in its bargaining agreement “could very well” become an issue when contract negotiations begin later this year. The present contract expires Jan. 1, 1995.

Garrett of the Border Patrol also said that no arrests of workers or deportation hearings are planned.

“The problem isn’t that there is a lack of documentation for many of these people, but rather that a lot of it is falsified,” he said.