Cheat labor: Do companies hire, shortchange illegal immigrants to cut costs?

Second in a three-part series.

SALT LAKE CITY — "Eduardo," an illegal immigrant construction worker, was desperate.

It was May 2008 and he had not been paid in six months. He says he was owed $26,000 for drywall installation, and had finally quit TJ Enterprises & Acoustical after months of promises that he would be paid "soon." He had been evicted from an apartment. His car was repossessed. His wife and two children in Mexico were nearly penniless.

So Eduardo went to talk with TJ Enterprises' owner Terry Gurule. "We agreed on what I was owed, and I was told to come back the next day and I would be paid," Eduardo says.

"When I came back, he (Gurule) pulled a gun out (from a shoulder holster) and showed it to me. He said it was his toy, and he laid it on the table," Eduardo says. He says Gurule then offered to pay him $1,500 instead of $26,000 — if he would sign a paper saying that is all he was owed, and that he had no idea why the carpenter's union had placed a mechanic's lien for him for that larger amount.

"I looked at the gun, and figured I better sign," Eduardo says in Spanish.

The Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters union says that is an example of how some companies cut costs unfairly to underbid others by hiring illegal immigrants, not paying them and threatening them — figuring they are too afraid of deportation, or are too unsophisticated, to do anything.

Jeffery Price, Gurule's attorney, denies that either Gurule or his company ever did anything illegal. He says the union is using lies to wage a "corporate campaign of terrorism" against TJ Enterprises because "it has emerged as a successful contractor in the marketplace and it is nonunion" and pays workers less than union scale.

More than their share

Regardless whom one believes, Utah Labor Commission data show that Hispanics file about three times more claims for unpaid wages than their expected share — concerning news for that ethnic group on this Labor Day weekend.

People with Hispanic surnames file about 33 percent of all unpaid wage claims with the commission, according to Deseret News analysis of state data obtained through an open records request.

Meanwhile, only 11.5 percent of Utahns are Hispanic, according to Census Bureau estimates.