Immigration Status of Drywall Workers Probed : Labor: Border Patrol expands its inquiry after finding hundreds employed 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 more drywall companies.

The inquiry, 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 inquiry leads to the barring of hundreds of illegal immigrants from the industry, as Border Patrol officials intend, labor shortages and construction slowdowns could occur just as the Southern California housing industry is beginning to recover 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 eligibility to work legally.

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 and not something that means the union will assume their legal responsibilities.

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

The installation of drywall--an inexpensive and near-universal replacement for plaster finishes on the interior walls of homes--tends to draw illegal immigrants because the work is transitory and does not require much training or knowledge of English.

Garrett said federal law holds employers responsible for verifying legal status. The contract between the drywall companies and the union is a civil contract and does not relieve employers of their responsibility, he said.

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 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 Border Patrol said the investigation began in December when agents in Temecula arrested a suspected illegal immigrant and found payroll stubs from five drywall companies in Riverside and Orange counties.