Day Workers Unite to Take on Growing Opposition
Rubén Alberto Carrete     [Photo]

The U.S. day-worker movement has become a phenomenon embracing well over 100,000 members who compete daily for jobs on street corners from sunny California to chilly New England.

Fed by immigrants — an estimated three-quarters of whom are undocumented and 60 percent are Mexican — the development has captured national attention, as well as that of local politicians, police departments, home-improvement buffs, and the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, which helped fund a nationwide study on the growing trend.

Even the Minuteman Project has redirected its protest activities away from the Mexican border to urban day-worker sites.

National Day Laborer Organizing Network coordinator Pablo Alvarado says he expects that the number of labor centers will continue to grow.

NDLON's creation was inspired by an influx of workers from Portland, Ore., to Los Angeles each summer and back north in the winter. In 2001 a dozen day-laborer groups coalesced for the first time in Los Angeles. "The idea was to share experiences and information on how to organize," says the 38-year-old Alvarado. "It made sense for us to start connecting with each other."

NDLON was officially formed, to set three objectives in motion: to advocate for laborers' civil rights, the legalization of undocumented workers, and creation of day-worker centers.

Laborers "are criminalized if they stand in the street and use their language to attract employers. But the local governments don't do enough to offer alternatives for them to congregate," Alvarado says.

To counter anti-solicitation ordinances that have appeared in about 50 municipalities across the country, NDLON has effectively used the courts. It has won all five lawsuits it has contested, Alvarado says, adding that there is still litigation pending with the California cities of Rancho Cucamonga, Glendale and Redondo Beach, as well as Freehold, N.J.

A report released Jan. 23 by the UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty offers the first-ever comprehensive survey on day laborers. "On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States" surveyed 2,660 workers from 20 states and the District of Columbia.

Miguel García of the Ford Foundation, which helped fund the survey, sees potential for the labor centers to evolve into community centers. The report, he says, can raise awareness about transnational community development issues.

Among its findings:

• There are about 117,600 day laborers in the United States, 7% of them U.S.-bor.
• 83% rely on day labor as their only means of income.
• 74% have worked as day laborers for fewer than three years.
• 21% are hired at day-labor centers, 79% at more informal sites
• 19% have been insulted by merchants, 16% by police.

In the two months leading up to the survey, almost half reported having their wages stolen at least once.

Sixty-three day-laborer centers, with as many as five full-time employees, were operating at the time of the study's publication. They generally include restrooms, drinking water, places to sit, telephones, classrooms, outreach to employers, and parking facilities. Typically they have mandatory registration for both employees and employers.

Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund senior vice president John Trasviña says one of their greatest issues now concerns legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last month requiring day laborers to fill out I-9 forms at the centers.

These forms, used prove eligibility to work in the United States, are supposed to be filled out at the place of employment. With this new bill in place, the labor centers will be held responsible for these forms, forcing undocumented laborers to find work elsewhere.

Al Garza, of Huachuca, Ariz., is a 60-year-old retired investigator who serves as executive director of the Minuteman Project.

Garza says the government should stop worrying about big business and corruption in Mexico and start worrying about the working middle class who have to shoulder the burden of illegal immigration. "It's middle-class citizens like myself who are taking the bath, and we're not going to tolerate it anymore," he says.

(Rubén Alberto Carrete is a reporter with Hispanic Link News Service in Washington, D.C. He may be contacted by e-mail at rcarrete@stmarytx.edu)

© 2006 Hispanic Link News Service
02/05/06
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