Bobby Gregory is in a dirty business. You see it on his shoes. His blue denim company shirt and pants are pressed and clean, but the shoes are beat up and dusty from walking the grounds. Gregory is the third-generation owner of New Jersey Galvanizing. What began with his grandfather, an Irish immigrant, making ice buckets in 1902 on Pacific Street, Down Neck, is now one of the largest steel-coating businesses left in New Jersey.
The Newark business expanded with each generation and is now off Haynes Avenue, hidden under the concrete bridge to Routes 1&9, in New Jersey's industrial corridor. Next door is overflow parking for Newark Airport. Lunch comes in a truck -- same time, same stuff every day. Gregory's office of mismatched chairs and family pictures is attached to the doorless hangar where the work is done.Galvanization is dirty work. It is all steel and chemicals; caustic soda, sulfuric acid, molten zinc. The steel comes in dirty and leaves coated and clean, ready to absorb the elements for most of the next century. Galvanized steel is all around us, from old-fashioned screen doors to the steel posts that hold up signs on our highways.
Here is what is not dirty about Gregory's business.
"See these guys working here?" he said. "We've got guys who been here 30, 40 years. I've got 50 people working here from 14 countries, They're all Teamsters, and they're paid the kind of wage where they can buy a home and save to send their kids to college."
Michael Cubero, the shop steward for Teamsters Local 560, confirmed all that. He and guys like Ralph Smith, dipping steel for 40 years now. Nelson Hernandez, in for 30. Cubero himself, on board for 29. Or David Smith, who had a massive stroke 17 years ago but wanted to keep working, so Gregory gave him light duty.
There were times when Bobby Gregory considered "opening up a post office box in Bermuda" to take advantage of tax shelters, especially when new environmental regulations forced him to find expensive solutions for chemical waste.
"We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to neutralize our effluents. Now we recycle all our acid, and sell the residual zinc and iron to the fertilizing business."
Also, the global economy doomed many of his industrial customers. "IKG, Borden Grating, Clark Door, all gone," Gregory said. "So we've had to expand our customer base geographically and market galvanizing as a better solution than paint for public projects, like bridges."
So Gregory stays, determined to be an American company, paying American workers fair wages and paying his fair share of taxes.
"I don't buy the argument that you can't have a well-compensated labor work force in this country," he said. "People who work hard should be fairly compensated. I could move the company to China and pay people 22 cents an hour and have them working in bare feet, pumping acid out the back door. But I'm not about that.
"Don't get me wrong. We're trying to make a profit here, and I think reducing corporate taxes is a valid argument. And while I don't agree with Joe Biden when he says, 'It's patriotic to pay taxes,' I do believe it is unpatriotic to evade taxes. To create all these loopholes to cheat the system is wrong."
The United States has the second-highest corporate tax rate in the world but essentially allows American companies to create subsidiaries in international tax havens like the Cayman Islands. These same tax laws make it hard for American companies with foreign-registered subsidiaries to bring profits back into America, so they reinvest overseas.
The Government Accountability Office says 83 of the nation's 100 largest companies have such subsidiaries. Bailout recipients Citigroup and Morgan Stanley lead the way with more than 150, and Bank of America is not far behind. Last summer, a GAO report on the Cayman Islands showed 18,857 registered companies shared one address, a small office building called the Ugland House. More than half were fully or partly owned American companies. And guess who had the most "post office box" subsidiaries there? Bailout recipients Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America.
Nobody's bailing out Bobby Gregory, not that he's asking. But there is one point Bobby Gregory makes that should be listened to as the government tries to rein in corporate tax loopholes.
"All these guys who run these companies, they all still live here. This is a country that has a great educational system, and great health care. We have great public space in our national parks, and good roads and infrastructure. To be here, and take advantage of all that, and not pay your fair share for it ...."