Monthly Archives: May 2011

Why doesn’t Napa have a day laborer center?

REBECCA HUVAL | Posted in Napa Valley Register | Posted: Tuesday, here May 3, see 2011 9:30 pm

From dawn until dusk, a group of Napa day laborers waits on a hill beside south Napa’s Home Depot parking lot for someone to hire them to move furniture, build a porch or paint a fence for about $10 an hour.

They sit cross-legged on the ground and crack jokes in the sun. On rainy days, they take shelter inside the nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken, the workers said. That’s where they go to the bathroom, too.

“This is our workplace,” said Juan Carlos, 36, of Napa, originally from El Salvador. “Every day, I clean it up.”

Unlike St. Helena, the city of Napa has no day laborer center. As a result, Napa’s day laborers wait for work outside and accept unaccounted money — which violates California law and also has the potential to get them in trouble with authorities, even if they are documented U.S. citizens.

So the workers, along with some community leaders, are hoping to build a day labor center in Napa.

“We can do something beautiful here,” Carlos said. “It doesn’t have to be big. Something small.”

Local activists said they support the idea.

“It’s good for people in the community, too,” said Lilia Navarro, a member of the Napa County Commission on Aging. “Because if people need someone to help in their garden, they can have help.”

At the day laborer center in St. Helena, the director said more than half of the workers come from Napa. Housed in a trailer on the property of Sutter Home Winery, the Work Connection Ministry of St. Helena Catholic Church sees about 30 workers on average per day.

For 15 years, the ministry has linked workers with jobs and asked that employers sign forms assuring they’ll pay at least $10 an hour.

Though most workers come from the city of Napa, the center is partially funded by the city of St. Helena.

“At least Napa could help us support this place,” said Nora Selina Garcia, director of Work Connection Ministry. “We don’t have enough people to support this place. We need some help.”

Their ministry employs two workers and has two volunteers. Even with a small staff, they’ve been able to place hundreds of seasonal workers in vineyard, construction, gardening and housekeeping jobs.

One of their workers has found fieldwork with the same vineyard for eight years, Garcia said.

“If Napa and Vallejo had another center like this, it would be great,” she said. “This is a small place. Last year, in one day, I had 53 workers. And we just have one restroom, and we have men and women. It’s difficult.”

In the south Napa parking lot, the laborers wait for work on private property owned by the South Napa Market Place. They’ve struck an agreement with businesses there to stay in the north lot across from KFC, said Napa Police Lt. Debbie Peecook.

Occasionally, Home Depot managers have complained to police about the workers loitering on private property, Peecook said. “Most of the day laborers have been really good about that, when we ask them to stand in a certain area, though they occasionally need reminders.”

As for more permanent solutions, Mayor Jill Techel said Napa didn’t have a hiring center for day laborers because no one had ever proposed one.

“In cities that have those centers, 80 percent are run by community groups,” not local government, Techel said.

While there have been complaints regarding laborers gathered at South Napa Market Place, they have been handled by police who have negotiated solutions with the men, the mayor said.

These complaints “haven’t been elevated to a political level,” Techel said.

The workers said they’ve talked with local Pastor Ricardo Bolaños of Ministerios Cosecha, or “Harvest Ministries”, but Bolaños couldn’t be reached for this report.

If built, the center could help the laborers find more jobs and become more accessible and approachable to employers, said Laura Lopez, a local activist and Legal Aid of Napa Valley volunteer.

“It’s not that people are lazy and don’t want to find a job,” Lopez said. “The work ethic is there, but the respect for the workers isn’t.”

Laborers march in Woodside

Demonstrators chanting slogans demand rights for day workers

By Rich Bockmann | Posted on YourNabe.com | Monday, link May 2, 2011 6:48 PM EDT

Supporters of workers’ rights took their message to Roosevelt Avenue Sunday, calling on all workers, and in particular non-unionized day laborers, to organize and stand up for their rights.

About 50 demonstrators marched along the avenue from the Philippine Forum at 40-21 69th St. in Woodside to the Manuel De Dios Unanue Triangle at 83rd Street in Jackson Heights, carrying signs and chanting messages of strength in numbers as they proceeded along the sidewalk.

Roberto Menses, a Queens day laborer and labor organizer with Jornaleros Unidos (Day Workers United) rallied demonstrators earlier in the day at the Philippine Forum, where different Queens pro-labor and immigrant groups meet once a month.

“We’re not ones, we’re not hundreds — we’re millions. Count us well,” they called out during an event organizers said was a prelude to the city’s May Day celebration Sunday, when immigrants’ rights demonstrators will march from Union Square to join a trade union rally at Foley Square.

Two years ago, Menses was at the forefront of a conflict between laborers who gathered at Edward Hart Playground in Woodside and the police from the 115th Precinct, who they contend were harassing them.

He led a series of marches and, according to Gustavo Mejias, a retired teacher who is with the Independent Workers Movement, the harassment of laborers and street vendors has gone down significantly.

“Immigrants’ rights are workers’ rights,” said Daniel Vila, an organizer with the May 1st Coalition, who said he expects to see upwards of 50,000 demonstrators in Manhattan this weekend.

Vila said day laborers in Queens — many of whom but not all are undocumented immigrants — are being taken advantage of by the contractors who hire them.

“They get paid $400 the first week, then $300 the next week,” he said, describing a situation of declining wages that often leads to contractors outright withholding weeks’ worth of wages.

“We have three cases now where guys are owed over $10,000,” Vila said.

Menses said that in areas throughout the borough — Astoria, Jamaica, Flushing? — some 500 or 600 laborers wait for work every day and perhaps 20 or 30 of them will get picked up. Those who do not find work will rely on local charities for food. He said that in New York City every week $20 million worth of wages are stolen from laborers by the contractors who hire them.

He framed the plight of Queens laborers in the context of larger attacks on workers’ rights, and points to recent events in Wisconsin where union workers were stripped of their rights to collective bargaining.

“If that’s happening to the workers that are unionized, imagine what’s happening to the workers that are not unionized, like the day workers,” he said.

He said he also believed that politicians, whether Democrat or Republican, did not really represent those gathered Sunday. He said President Barack Obama had failed to deliver on his campaign promises of immigration reform, and pointed to legislation in Arizona and a similar “copycat” bill waiting to be signed in Georgia that make immigrants “second-class citizens.”

“Our message is to workers and people suffering this crisis. We need to organize and fight back,” Mejias said.

Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.