Three union activists waited in a Manchester back alley one day last year for a man they knew only as "Alex."

For months, they had been trying to track down Alex, a "jefe" (Spanish for chief or boss) who ran a drywall company that had refused to pay $3,800 in wages to three employees, all illegal immigrants from Mexico.

When Alex finally arrived, he had a check to give the carpenters union organizers -- full payment for three workers. But the check didn't have Alex's name on it, and the union workers balked.

Manny Gines, an organizer with the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, Local 107, in Worcester, Mass., told Alex they would accept cash only.

To the amazement of another union activist meeting in the alley that day, Liz Skidmore of Local 118 in Raymond, Gines left with Alex to go cash the check at a nearby store. Skidmore wondered if she would ever see Gines again.

Soon after, Gines returned with $3,840 in cash -- mostly $100 and $50 bills -- which the union members later turned over to the three workers. To this day, Skidmore doesn't know whether Alex was the jefe's real name.

Gines and Skidmore were among a group of union activists and Latino workers who recently sat down with the New Hampshire Union Leader to talk about the seedy side of the construction industry in New Hampshire, where, they said, illegal immigrants are the preferred source of labor for carpentry and drywall jobs. Construction companies misclassify such workers as independent contractors, the sources said, and pay them in cash at rates sometimes a third of what unionized workers with benefits are paid.

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