Haitian construction site managers...

[Opulent1]

I did not intend for my request to get so heated…I just need a road built & my “experience” over the last 4 years is that Haitians will work 7days a week if needed. And this will be a 7 day & long hours project. This is also just 1 facet of the project & Dominicans and others will be hired to complete the overall project. I also need the site manager to speak fluent english.

[BushBaby]

Originally Posted by Opulent1

I did not intend for my request to get so heated…I just need a road built & my “experience” over the last 4 years is that Haitians will work 7days a week if needed. And this will be a 7 day & long hours project. This is also just 1 facet of the project & Dominicans and others will be hired to complete the overall project. I also need the site manager to speak fluent english.

You must forgive PICHARDO Opulent1, sometimes his hatred of Haitians gets the better of his writing capabilities. What he wrote could have been a lot more sensitively written & a lot less abusive. The 'additional considerations' such as US & Mexicans, Cubans, Chinese .............. are a little far fetched even for our friend PICHARDO .

Having seen the way roads are built in this country with the surfaces breaking up within months of being laid, I can well understand why you would be considering an alternative to Dominican Management - unless you are experienced in road building yourself & can control the way that such work is undertaken!!

Good luck with your searching ~ Grahame.

[Collingwood]

Pichardo - have you ever had to experience the misery and nonsense of hiring Dominicans in the construction industry? Maybe you have and you had success or maybe your standards of what is acceptable are slightly lower than mine.
I have renovated some hotels in the DR and constructed more than 100 individual projects across this Island on both sides of the border. In the DR I gave up on hiring Dominicans because they excelled at being late, stealing tools and material, requesting advances on salary, bringing their personal problems to work, arguing about why they don't have to do the tougher tasks (let the Haitiano do that) and they are magical because they Disappear for days just after being paid. WTF is what I said to myself when the Haitian workers turned up on time, worked hard, used initiative and had an excellent attitude. I paid double the minimum salary based on attitude and performance and not on the color of skin or nationality and when it came to analyzing the salary for the Dominican workers it was a case of the attitude and performance being so pathetic I should have been receiving an allowance from the IMF, World Bank or some NGO's for employing nit wits & cretains. So I did what any business person does and adapted to reduce my problems, expenses and improve productivity I hired the best workers that were available. They just happened to be Haitians. WTF?????? So to the original poster - stick to your plan and don't let irrational people like Pichardo effect your project. If you follow Pichardo's line of thinking and hire his mates, Your road will be 15% shorter (theft of material), 50% over budget (inefficiencies and bribes) and headed in the wrong direction because the Foreman will want to pass the road by his girlfriends house. WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BushBaby]

Excellent post Collingwood. Personal experiences always outweigh misinformed, over judgmental & excessively biased posts!

Could any of those Haitian workers you have employed over the years put a bit of a voodoo spell on our friend to make him more tolerant of Haitians in general? It would obviously have to be a VERY POWERFUL potion! ~ Grahame.

[Chip]

Originally Posted by Collingwood

Pichardo - have you ever had to experience the misery and nonsense of hiring Dominicans in the construction industry? Maybe you have and you had success or maybe your standards of what is acceptable are slightly lower than mine.
I have renovated some hotels in the DR and constructed more than 100 individual projects across this Island on both sides of the border. In the DR I gave up on hiring Dominicans because they excelled at being late, stealing tools and material, requesting advances on salary, bringing their personal problems to work, arguing about why they don't have to do the tougher tasks (let the Haitiano do that) and they are magical because they Disappear for days just after being paid. WTF is what I said to myself when the Haitian workers turned up on time, worked hard, used initiative and had an excellent attitude. I paid double the minimum salary based on attitude and performance and not on the color of skin or nationality and when it came to analyzing the salary for the Dominican workers it was a case of the attitude and performance being so pathetic I should have been receiving an allowance from the IMF, World Bank or some NGO's for employing nit wits & cretains. So I did what any business person does and adapted to reduce my problems, expenses and improve productivity I hired the best workers that were available. They just happened to be Haitians. WTF?????? So to the original poster - stick to your plan and don't let irrational people like Pichardo effect your project. If you follow Pichardo's line of thinking and hire his mates, Your road will be 15% shorter (theft of material), 50% over budget (inefficiencies and bribes) and headed in the wrong direction because the Foreman will want to pass the road by his girlfriends house. WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!

The comments about the Dominican workers could be applied to some areas of work in the US, like construction. I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to do a lot of manual labor and all these things I have seen before in the States. However, once I became a professional, it became less. It is common for most menial laborers to have attitudes and work habits such as these, probably even more so in the tourist areas where easy money is to be had.

An example of a good Dominican worker is my maestro friend Angel. He works every day of the week, and does manual labor even though all maestro's won't do that and travels to wherever he needs to go to do the work - even Haiti. Most of the time he ends up sleeping on the floor on a bedmat without power for the duration of the project. I have never seen him complain. He is also honest and was raised like I was; to expect life not to be easy, to work hard and do things the right way. While it may be difficult to find menial laborers with good work ethics, it shouldn't be that difficult to find maestro's in the construction industry like Angel, as they don't have regular jobs and jump at the opportunity to have work when there is little out there. Also, any good maestro will have a pool of laborers, Dominican and Haitian, who will do good work without a lot of fuss.

[Collingwood]

Originally Posted by BushBaby

Excellent post Collingwood. Personal experiences always outweigh misinformed, over judgmental & excessively biased posts!

Could any of those Haitian workers you have employed over the years put a bit of a voodoo spell on our friend to make him more tolerant of Haitians in general? It would obviously have to be a VERY POWERFUL potion! ~ Grahame.

Grahame, interestingly enough I did have one very strange experience on that subject. Now Moderator please bear with me because it is vaguley connected to the Op's original post becasue this is a story about a Haitian Construction Supervisor. Loose connection but please let it play out.

One of my best Haitian construction supervisors went onto to become a contractor for me in Haiti. He split with his wife (being divorced twice I can relater to that). He then became very ill and over a period of 12 months repeatedly visited clinics in and around Port au Prince to ascertain what was wrong with him, Blood tests, MRI's all the tests. Nothing was discovered a picture of perfect health for a 35 year old. However whenever he left the clinics a general malaise would set in. At the end of approx. 12 months he dropped stone Dead!!!!!!!! He said his ex wife had put a voodoo curse on him and he believed it and the curse made his symptoms vanish whenever he visited a clinic or did tests. Wild stuff hey..... a tragic but true story!!!!

As to some Voodoo for our mate Pichardo, I enjoy Pichardo's post's tooooo much to introduce him to that unfortunate chaps ex wife for an exchange of cultural ideas.