NDLON's CONSTITUENCY
NDLON’s constituency is composed of three primary groups:
1) Day laborers
2) Day laborer organizers  
3) Community organizations that work with day laborers. 

First, despite their high visibility in communities across the US, day laborers are largely misunderstood.  Myths, stereotypes, and misperceptions continue to influence the debate and the public’s view on day laborers.   Only until recently, has the general public been offered access to empirical data on the profile of day laborers through the publication of the first National Day Labor Survey . Our second level of constituency is composed of the dozens of female and male day laborer organizers.  NDLON’s role for this group is to develop and recreate organizer leadership in order to strengthen organizing and educative efforts within the movement.   Finally, NDLON also seeks to serve its 36 member organizations through technical assistance, capacity building, and exchanges through local, regional and national gatherings.  The following sections give a more in-depth snapshot of NDLON’s primary constituents.
 

DAY LABORERS

Day laborers are low-wage workers whose employment is established on a temporary basis. According to the National Day Labor Survey (NDLS), it is estimated that on any given day, approximately 117,600 day laborers are either looking for jobs or working as temporary laborers. Most often, day laborers connect to employers through the use of informal hiring sites such as public street corners or open space lots close to gas stations, convenience stores, and home improvement businesses. However, formal hiring sites or worker centers also exist and are being established as community institutions that seek to address public concerns that arise from the day labor practice.
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DAY LABORER ORGANIZERS
Day labor organizers are a rare breed. Often underpaid and overworked, these organizers come from diverse backgrounds and span at least three generations. Some organizers come with a long and rich history of community organizing (in their home countries), and others are current or recent University students who bring their passion for social justice. Many of the organizers have been pulled up from the ranks through leadership development programs that focused on identifying and mentoring day laborer leaders. In their work, they accept the difficult challenge to walk with day laborers in their daily struggle and attempt to organize by facilitating the workers’ own leadership capacities. Until recently, there has never existed a roadmap on how to organize day laborers, but together, organizers today are building their collective understanding and strategizing to build a strong and vibrant movement.
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DAY LABORER ORGANIZATIONS

Currently, NDLON is comprised of 36 community based organizations. NDLON’s member organizations vary in size, capacity, funding, and stages of a nonprofit’s lifecycle. Although several member organizations have been established for over 25 years, a good number of day laborer organizations are recent developments (see chart 3). The annual budgets and funding of member organizations range from $15,000 to $4 million. Volunteers run some of the smallest member organizations while the largest employs over 50 staff. Some organizations were created to specifically deal with day laborer issues while others run programs that serve broader segments of the immigrant community. Despite these differences and scales of capacity, NDLON organizations collaborate together to share and build upon their collective wealth.

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