Plenty of Americans enjoy working with their hands, I'm one of them. However, he hired Mexicans for years because they were cheaper and didn't crab about safety stuff.

American workers either had to open their own companies in competition with him or choose another line of work. Most did the latter.

His insistence on hiring the cheapest workers he could possibly find while flouting the laws cut his economic throat.

Or you could tell him to blame the Republicans in the state lege, since ejecting all the Mexicans was their bright idea.

He did not "hire Mexicans for years"
He did not insist on hiring the cheapest workers, he has a family business of sons and grandsons.
nor have I known him to "flout laws".

He told me what folks are saying in his area of work and I shared it here.

Jump to conclusions much?

I've heard the same things here from contractors who hired Mexicans for years and now crab that the worsening economy here and the improving economy in Mexico have them all going home.

That they can't find workers now is their own fault.

I didn't realize your friend was a paragon among men. Sorry.

Plenty of people want to work with their hands. They just want to be paid well for the job.

Americans...at higher wages.

I.e. cheap. Pay a decent salary for the job and you can have all the workers you want.

The worst back-breaking stinking job I ever had....And most of the bosses want to pay you next to nothing.

I'll come down there and roof for $20 an hour and $50 a day per diem

ETA: OT at time and a half over 8 in a say and double time over 80 in a week

beating down the doors locally for that kind of wage, but somehow I suspect he isn't willing to pay much.

That's like the lunatics that think they can hire an experienced DBA, Systems Analyst with programming skills in anything and everything for $10/hr. It's not going to happen.

I posted an actual skilled worker's wage, not many want to pay it anymore. I've been doing remodel work lately and $20 an hour plus per diem is what I base my bids on. I wind up eating it ever so often but most of the time I hit pretty close to the mark when I divide the finished job pay by the hours I worked.

$12 p/hr or the even worse piece work for a difficult, dangerous, seasonal work. Risking your life doing back breaking labor for just enough money to live in poverty, what's not to love?

... in the newer Immigration Bill. And going to make it harder for me to get a new job after the one I had just a few days ago just ended.

They just don't want to pay us for the work we do to live in this economy!

You aren't going to find programmers and analysts for $10/hr, and if you do, the quality of their work isn't going to be even worth that much!

If you don't pay workers well, you will constantly have a revolving door because people will only work for you while they are desperate.

Make sure you tell EVERYONE what you do and what you're looking for. You never know where a job lead may come from.

I'd recommend putting it in your signature here, for example.

We have hired a guy for other jobs who has just started, within the last year, his own contracting business. He is licensed. We've been talking to him about a roof but his inexperience is showing when it comes to some things. I can go with him or pay another roofer, that I don't have any relationship with but got his name from Angie's' List. He has more experience but is significantly more expensive.

We would like to help the young man get some business but not to our own detriment, but we also want to maintain a relationship because he is great to call for all kinds of small and large jobs. He has done roofing, so he's not a complete novice, just a novice at business.

We're struggling with the choice so I let the younger guy know I need his proof of insurance and a contract with the scope of work, terms, etc.

How does one go about picking a roofer? Is it just a crapshoot?

Especially ones he had done five or six years ago.

Maybe even ask what sorts of roofing - flat, sloped, mopped tar, tiled, underlayment, shingles, repairs, eaves, actual roof construction/re-roofing structural work or just repairs and roof "life extension" work (as in, throwing up another layer of shingles)? Can he re-slope a roof if need be? Does he know about insulation, mold/dry-rot abatement and cold zones/warm zones? Will you be putting solar or skylights up and require additional roof support - that needs to be addressed?

Ask him how he does his venting, or how he puts on the rain-gutters. If you get freezes and heavy rains, ask him how to mitigate ice-damming during the winter
(I watch a lot of Mike Holmes...)

Angie's List is an okay start, but you need to "interview" your roofers, because that roof is supposed to be there for 20 - 25 years - and you might want to change features on it...

Haele

The gutters are good. Our main problem is wind which is why we want to go with the SureNail technology architectural shingles. The wind comes down off the mountain to the front of our house and the three tabs lift up and break. The roof has 3/4" plywood, no skylights, no major changes.

All the other work he's done for us has been good. We are checking out some other houses he roofed. I have no qualms about his work ethic, it's more his business acumen that has caused some confusion.

We had looked at an upgraded designer color shingle and he recommended a hip and ridge cap which with the wind situation isn't the best idea according to the second roofer. I found out the reason he recommended it, is there is no 3 tab that matches the shingles for the roof ridge and he's not confident in his ability to match it well, so he recommended the hip and ridge cap he knew would match.

was consider a local guy I have known now for 8 years, and have heard good things about.
He has been who we called when the old roof developed leaks from time to time, he was reasonable in price, prompt in showing up, and little by little I got to know him better.
We also buy organic beef from him.
The thing is, down here in the South, developing relationships and taking time to know people is VERY important.

So, replace roof time, last week.
Neighbor lady had to have hers replaced, so I got her roofer to come over and give us a written estimate, he gave a very detailed one.
He lives in a town 40 miles away.
Great, now I have a comparison, and could have gotten 2-3 more if I wanted, from other people.

Then I asked our local guy for an estimate.
Sure enough he was $1,000 higher.
But also used better quality shingles, lived 15 miles away so he could be right over if there was a problem,
and after 8 years of knowing him, I knew he would be prompt in coming over and fixing anything for me.
So we dickered, and he dropped down to 500.00 over the first bid.
Plus he had just finished putting on a roof for my insurance agent, who knows him, and for the agent's momma, who I know, and ......you get the picture.

So I chose him.
He did the job in a day and a half, I kept an eye on how they guys were performing, they worked hard and steady and cleaned up afterwards.

In your case, I would consider the young guy whom you know, but make sure you have a contract with lots of details. As for his inexperience, you could talk him into a reasonable and fair price for being his guinea pig.
1/2 the total price is labor, the rest is mostly shingles.
Get in writing what he will do in case of any problems after the installation.
And you might as well ask 2-3 other people to come over and give you written estimates, get a feel for how they come across, and have something to compare.

Oh..be aware the shingles ( if using asphalt, which are now really made of fiberglass) they need a day after installation of hot weather to set properly. So the trick is getting 2 days of good roofing weather in a row.

I'm waiting to hear back about his insurance and a contract. We are also going to check out a few references. We have already discussed the weather conditions, so we are on the same page with that.

His price is $700 less than the other bid, with a little over half being for supplies.

insured or bonded. Gotta to go with someone else.

means "people don't want to work for the peanuts we pay." Roofing is hard manual labor. You aren't going to get dependable, decently skilled people if you are unwilling to pay them.

Desperate people will work for peanuts briefly, but the second they can find something else, they won't stay. "The Mexicans are all gone" means that there is plenty of opportunity for people to find a job that either pays better or has better working conditions.

He pays shit and wonders why nobody's taking him up on it.

when you are only willing to pay your workers barely enough to live and want to keep the lion's share of the profit for yourself.

As was the case in Houston, some of Iowa’s construction labor shortage is due to fracking operations. In the northern half of the state, construction companies have lost workers to fracking operations in the North Dakota oil fields.

In fact, the paper cites an estimate from Master Builders of Iowa which forecasts a shortage of about 2,730 workers each year for the next seven years

“It’s hard to find skilled workers who want to do construction today,” Mike Espeset, president of Story Construction in Ames, told the paper. “It’s harder than it was, and I think it’s going to get a lot, lot worse.”

The main cause is the same as it is elsewhere in the U.S. During the recession, many construction workers retired and many more left the industry for more stable jobs and aren’t coming back.

http://www.equipmentworld.com/facing-9-billion-in-demand-iowa-contractors-feel-impact-of-skilled-labor-shortage/

I know that we lost population in the county and the town since 2008, I know that real estate sales are pretty flat, having watched the same houses sit empty since 2008.

People moved to somewhere, I am hoping they found jobs where ever they landed.

My Uncle Pete owned his own roofing company. He said that it was hard to get craftspeople who weren't afraid of heights to work for him. Frankly, you couldn't pay me enough to climb up on a ladder onto a two-story house and work on a slanted roof. IMHO, if you wanna get up onto a tall building and put on shingles, you are welcome to any pay that you can get.

Altho, when I was younger, I actually did help roof a cabin, with cedar shingles, and it did not bother me then.

Things certainly do change as one gets older.
I got nauseated watching the Spiderman movie!

The people that use the recession as an excuse to increase profit and destroy jobs have been hard at work trying to convince America that we are experiencing a dearth of qualified workers. The same partisan agents that destroyed American labor rights and rolled-back child-labor laws are complaining that America's workers should have to compete with 3rd world country insourcing to make a living. Large medical providers are attempting to destroy the American nursing proffession by shipping in "nurses" from 3rd world countries and housing them in dorm-type situations, while paying them less than minimum wage to provide inadequet care for our family and friends with medical needs and increasing the incidents and severity of the damage they cause when mistakes are made. The criminally wealthy in America have achieved near total control over our once great country. Now they claim it is the fault of all those little people that want to work an honest day's work for an honest day's pay!
Hasnt this always been the point of contention between hard working American citizens and treasonous, criminally wealthy, vultures that would sell their fellow americans into slavery for an opportunity to increase dividend "earnings" and steal what's left of America's public infrastructure as rewards for supporting right wing partisan politicians and their claims that American workers are the worst in the world.
America has no shortage of highly skilled labor- we have a shortage of people that are willing to do an honest day's work, for little or no pay. The criminally wealthy hates the uppity attitude of American workers and their labor rights. And they have no problem with destroying the country that created those rights.
The Teabaggers work alongside the criminally wealthy in the hopes of destroying American cohesion and true patriotism. These bullshit stories about labor shortages keep cropping up in right wing rags and blogs because the right wing intends to introduce legislation that makes union activity illegal, but opens the country's borders to anyone willing to be paid sub-poverty level wages.
Remember, It's just money to them and they have plenty of it. If they can use money to get away with unfair and inhuman working conditions while destroying any future American labor rights, why not? Probably considered a good investment return when you can get away with stealing labor, destroying poor families and gutting human rights- think of the profit margins that will result for the criminally wealthy when ALEC guest worker legislation bcomes the law of the land! No one believes that the criminally wealthy will experience a jolt of sudden patriotism that will stop them from destroying America.