Case Study: Day Laborers and the Right to Roadside Job Hunting

Case Study: Day Laborers and the Right to Roadside Job Hunting

By Adam Cohen Monday, s Sept. 26, patient 2011 | Source: search 8599,2094846,00.html” target=”_blank”>Time.com

 

Case Study: Day Laborers and the Right to Roadside Job Hunting

Day laborers, like these in Van Nuys, Calif., are facing crackdowns in several U.S. cities. Armando Arorizo / Bloomberg News

Do day laborers have a right to stand along the highway to offer themselves to would-be employers? Communities in states from California to Connecticut have been cracking down on these roadside gatherings. But a powerful federal appeals court this month overturned a ban in Redondo Beach, Calif., on soliciting work from passing cars.

In a 9-2 ruling by the San Francisco–based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the judges in the majority declared that the ban is an unconstitutional restriction on free speech. The dissenting judges defended Redondo Beach’s right to keep order on its streets.

Day-laborer lines have become a familiar sight across the country. Workers, almost all of them men and many of them Mexican immigrants, stand alongside highways and streets hoping to be chosen for construction work or other manual labor. In 1987, Redondo Beach — prodded by complaints about day-laborer lines — made it illegal “to stand on a street or highway and solicit … employment, business or contributions from an occupant of any motor vehicle.” In 2004, the city ramped things up by creating the Day Labor Enforcement Project, in which police posed as potential employers and arrested day laborers who asked for work. As many as 50 cities in California have bans like the one in Redondo Beach, according to a lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. But the question of whether day laborers should be allowed to solicit work on the side of the road is hardly a West Coast–only issue. On New York’s Long Island, there have been crackdowns on day laborers that critics say amount to criminalizing “waving while Latino.” In March, Danbury, Conn., agreed to a $400,000 settlement with day laborers who complained that their 2006 arrests, the result of a police sting, were illegal and constituted racial profiling.

Advocates for day laborers sued Redondo Beach, charging that the law infringed on the free-speech rights of the workers and prospective employers, effectively making it a crime for people to seek work. The appeals court agreed. The law is also so broad, the majority ruling held, that, in certain locations, it could make it a crime for concerned citizens to raise money for a disaster-relief fund, for Girl Scouts to sell cookies outside their school or for children to have a lemonade stand outside their home.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski issued a strongly worded dissent, along with one other judge, that described the ruling striking down Redondo Beach’s law as “folly.” Kozinski argued that day laborers who lined up for work created real problems by littering, vandalizing, harassing women and generally making a nuisance. Municipalities have a right, he wrote, to “se the safety, beauty, tranquility and orderliness of neighborhoods.” In a rhetorical flourish, the chief judge declared that the majority was “demonstrably, egregiously, recklessly wrong.” And in case anyone wasn’t quite sure how he felt about the matter, he added, “If I could dissent twice, I would.”

As entertaining as the dissent is to read, however, the Ninth Circuit got it right on the law. Ordinances like the one in Redondo Beach unconstitutionally restrict people from engaging in free speech in public places. People have a right to stand by the road and offer to work, and people in cars have a right to ask people on the roadside if they want a job. It is core First Amendment expression.

If city officials are concerned about the litter, vandalism and harassment that the dissenters pointed to, they should be sure that they have strong laws against these things, and they should enforce them.

There is, of course, a lot more going on in these battles over day laborers. As the Danbury settlement suggested, race and ethnicity roil below — often barely below — the surface, along with views on immigration policy. Critics of the street-side bans say that if the day laborers lining up for work were U.S.-born whites, the laws either would not exist or would not be enforced.

Day-laborer lines are a Rorschach test. Some people look at them and see foreigners who are making a mess of tidy neighborhoods and threatening public safety. Other observers see the lines as filled with well-meaning people, many of them fathers and husbands, willing to work hard — often for little pay — to be able to food and provide shelter for their families. First Amendment issues aside, which vision people have of the men by the road is likely to explain whether they want the bans to survive or to be struck down.

Cohen, a former TIME writer and former member of the New York Times editorial board, is a lawyer who teaches at Yale Law School. Case Study, his legal column for TIME.com, appears every Monday. You can continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Court overturns day laborer ruling

Court overturns day laborer ruling

Source: EasyReaderNews.com | September 22nd, 2011 by Mark McDermott filed in Redondo Beach

Court overturns day laborer ruling

A six year legal battle that began with the arrests of day laborers along Artesia and Manhattan Beach boulevards added another chapter as the Ninth Circuit "en banc" panel weighed in last week. Photo by Mark McDermott

An eleven-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit federal appeals court last week ruled that a Redondo Beach ordinance aimed at curtailing day laborers soliciting work on city streets was unconstitutional in a vehemently contested 9-2 decision. A strongly worded dissent by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski that begins with the words “This is folly” signaled that the case is a candidate for U.S. Supreme Court review [See majority opinion and dissent].

The Court, site which met in a relatively rare “en banc” gathering to hear the case in March, overturned an earlier decision by a three member Ninth Circuit panel, overruling its own precedent-setting upholding of a 25-year-old ordinance enacted by the city of Phoenix. Redondo’s law ordinance was a word-for-word copy of the Phoenix ordinance.

Judge Milan Smith, the author of the majority opinion, wrote that Redondo’s ordinance went beyond “time, place, and manner of expression” limitations of First Amendment freedom of speech rights the Supreme Court has deemed allowable to protect a government’s interest.

Smith sided with the plaintiff, a national day laborer organization called Comite de Journaleros, in arguing that the ordinance “technically appl[ies] to children selling lemonade on the sidewalk in front of their home, as well as to Girl Scouts selling cookies on the sidewalk outside of their school,” as well as “to a motorist who stops, on a residential street, to inquire whether a neighbor’s teen-age daughter or son would be interested in performing yard work or babysitting.”

“The Ordinance is not narrowly tailored because it regulates significantly more speech than is necessary to achieve the City’s purpose of improving traffic safety and traffic flow at two major Redondo Beach intersections, and the City could have achieved these goals through less restrictive measures, such as the enforcement of existing traffic laws and regulations,” Smith wrote.

Kozinski, who is also an essayist whose work has appeared in the New Yorker and the National Review, vigorously attacked the majority opinion in an unusually entertaining, freewheeling dissent. He took particular aim at what he called the majority opinion’s “parade of horribles” in its challenge that the ordinance was overly broad. “The judicial imagination can always run wild in conjuring how laws can be misapplied, but the Supreme Court instructs us that ‘the mere fact that one can conceive of some impermissible applications of a statute is not sufficient to render it susceptible to an overbreadth challenge,’” Kozinski argued.

“There is no evidence that the city has ever enforced, threatened to enforce or dreamt of enforcing the ordinance against sidewalk food vendors, tyke lemonade moguls, Girl Scout cookie peddlers, high school car washers, disaster relief solicitors or middle-aged men cruising neighborhoods looking to pick up teenage girls from their front yards,” Kozinski wrote.

“The majority is demonstrably, egregiously, recklessly wrong,” Kozinski added. “If I could dissent twice, I would.”

City Attorney Mike Webb likely has a new favorite author in the chief judge. Webb, who has defended the city’s ordinance (enacted by City Council in 1987) since it was first legally attacked in 2004, said the vehemence of the dissent was clearly intended as a signal to the Supreme Court. He said it perfectly articulated everything he thought was in error in the majority’s opinion.

“You just don’t expect this in a dissent,” Webb said. “And it was everything you think, as a lawyer, when you read something that is so wrong but would never dare say – but he’s Chief Judge, so he can say it.”

The city’s anti-solicitation ordinance was enacted by the City Council in 1987 but didn’t draw legal fire until it was enforced in 2004 with police sting operations that led to the arrests of 69 day laborers and a handful of contractors who sought to hire them. The city said it was responding to complaints from residents and businesses near two spots in the city where day laborers congregate to look for work, near the intersections ofArtesia Boulevard. andFelton LaneandManhattan Beach Boulevard near Inglewood Ave.

Webb said he particularly agreed with Kozinski’s assertion that the court’s ruling undercuts city’s ability to govern itself and address public safety problems associated with the day laborer gatherings.

“The bottom line is that city officials, after years of effort, found existing tools inadequate or too expensive to rid the city’s streets of day laborers,” Kozinski wrote. “Appointing themselves as a Super City Council, my colleagues – who need not answer to the voters – decide that they know how to run Redondo Beach better than its elected officials.”

Webb said the only other tool that had proven effective was Immigration and Naturalization Service (I.N.S.) sweeps, which in themselves create public safety hazards because illegal workers often flee into the streets.

“If we don’t get Supreme Court review, we don’t have any effective tools to address this,” Webb said.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which has provided the laborers’ defense, has long argued that the city is in effect trying to kick day laborers out of Redondo Beach. MALDEF president and general counsel Thomas Saenz, who argued the case, called the victory a vindication of First Amendment rights for day laborers that would set a precedent throughout the nation.

“The dozens of similar ordinances throughout the region that purport to prevent day laborers from speaking on sidewalks are now even more plainly violative of the Constitution,” Saenz said in a statement. “Each municipality with such an ordinance should immediately suspend and repeal its law. The longstanding principle that the right of free speech belongs to everyone has been significantly bolstered by this decision.”

MALDEF staff attorney Nicholas Espiritu said the fact that an en banc panel majority of nine judges found the ordinance unconstitutional makes it less likely to be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

“We think the fact that an overwhelming majority of the Ninth Circuit held the statute to be unconstitutional is an indication,” Espiritu said. “…We think the majority got the legal analysis correct, and we don’t feel there is a big controversy here. There isn’t a circuit split. We doubt the Supreme Court would take the case if Redondo Beach sought to petition.”

Pablo Alvarado, Executive Director of National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), said the decision is the culmination of a two-decade long struggle.

“The ordinances were intended to render day laborers invisible, but the struggle against these ordinances has made day laborers more visible, more powerful,” Alvarado said. “For the past two decades, the ordinances have stigmatized day laborers as criminals – now they are civil rights leaders. So this victory is not just for them, it is for every American – a victory achieved by humble people for everyone.”

The city has 90 days to seek review of the ruling.

Day laborer ban struck down

September 21, click 2011 | Source: Associated Press

A divided federal appeals court Friday struck down Redondo Beach’s ban on day laborers who stand on public sidewalks soliciting work from motorists.

Judge Milan D. Smith Jr., writing for the nine-judge majority of the special 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said Redondo Beach’s ordinance violated the workers’ free speech rights and was so broad that it also made it illegal for children to shout “car wash” to passing drivers.

Smith said the ordinance “regulates significantly more speech than is necessary to achieve the city’s purpose of improving traffic safety and traffic flow at two major Redondo Beach intersections, and the city could have achieved these goals through less restrictive measures, such as the enforcement of existing traffic laws.”
City Councilman Matt Kilroy, who represents the council district where day laborers congregate on Manhattan Beach Boulevard, called the court’s ruling “amazing.”

“This is not a day laborer law,” Kilroy said. “This is a public safety law that has to do with soliciting vehicles from the sidewalk from public areas and the traffic hazards it causes.”

Redondo Beach City Attorney Michael Webb said he would consult with the City Council and mayor to decide whether to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case.

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based appeals court originally upheld the ban, but the specially convened panel of 11 judges voted 9-2 to overturn the earlier decision.

Judges Alex Kozinski and Carlos Bea dissented.

“This is folly,” wrote Kozinski, who noted that as many as 75 workers often would congregate at a busy intersection.

“As might be expected when large groups of men gather at a single location, they litter, vandalize, urinate, block the sidewalk, harass females and damage property,” Kozinski wrote. “Cars and trucks stop to negotiate employment and load up laborers, disrupting traffic.”

Kozinski said it was the city’s duty to protect its residents from such nuisances.
“Nothing in the First Amendment prevents government from ensuring that sidewalks are reserved for walking rather than loitering, streets are used as thoroughfares rather than open air hiring halls and bushes serve as adornment rather than latrines,” Kozinski said. “The majority is demonstrably, egregiously, recklessly wrong. If I could dissent twice, I would.”

Redondo Beach officials enacted the ban because they said the workers were interfering with traffic and pedestrians.

Kilroy said residents continue to question, “Why aren’t you doing something about this?”

“It’s something we get a lot of concern about from the citizens of Redondo Beach,” he said. “It still remains a safety concern. It’s not safe to solicit cars that come to a screeching halt in the public right-of-way. That’s really what this ordinance is all about.”

Redondo Beach officials were ordered to suspend enforcing the law in 2004 until a workers’ lawsuit against it was resolved.

Thomas Saenz, a Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund lawyer who represented the workers, said the court’s ruling against Redondo Beach most likely will put an end to similar bans in other western cities, including about 50 in California.

“It calls them all into very serious question,” Saenz said. “Each municipality with such an ordinance should immediately suspend and repeal its law.”

Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said the Redondo Beach ban and the dozens that followed were intended to “to render day laborers invisible.”

“For the past two decades, the ordinances have stigmatized day laborers as criminals — now they are civil rights leaders,” Alvarado said.

The ruling also struck down a Phoenix law prohibiting the political action group ACORN from soliciting donations from motorists stopped at red lights. Redondo Beach based its ban on the Phoenix law.

Kilroy said the city’s ordinance did nothing to stop a motorist from pulling into a private parking lot and entering into a transaction with a day laborer. It addressed only the public street.

Larry Altman contributed to this article.

Arturo Venegas Sets Example for Failed DHS Taskforce. Resignation Makes Former Sacramento Chief Hero in Immigrant Communities

Washington DC.
See Complete Report Here: http://altopolimigra.com/s-comm-shadow-report/
After a firestorm of controversy over the Se Communities deportation program (or “SCOMM”), a committee charged with providing recommendations to the Department of Homeland Security has failed to reach consensus with taskforce members beginning to resign.
Sarahi Uribe of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network praised the first to resign, “”Arturo Venegas is setting the example and leading the way for taskforce members to match the courage of those who stood up at taskforce hearings calling for an end of the program. His resignation today makes him a hero in the immigrant community.”
The Se Communities Task Force was widely viewed as an effort by DHS to dampen growing criticism of the discredited program rather than an earnest attempt to seek input from the program’s detractors. In contrast to the DHS task force, a broad coalition of experts achieved complete consensus in a shadow report recommending the complete termination of SCOMM.
Chris Newman, Legal Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network issued the following statement:
“Rather than sweep SCOMM’s catastrophic flaws under a rug, the administration should end the program. DHS has used unprecedented deception to sell a dangerous program to the American public, and its use of this task force is no different. It is clear DHS set the task force up as a ruse to cover up its colossal failure, but it didn’t work.
“The task force report will only lead to more controversy over SCOMM as questions are raised about why it couldn’t achieve consensus, and as everyone now watches to see whether the White House will finally hold DHS accountable.
“S-Comm is leading to the ‘Arizonification’ of the United States. Immediate suspension pending a genuine review by the Inspector General will be required to regain public trust in DHS. An end to the program will be required to advance the goal of immigration reform.”
Background on Parallel Report:
“The Se Communities program should be ended,” is the central recommendation of a report authored by broad coalition of prominent local and national immigrant rights group and endorsed by over 150 organizations. The report, which features the voices of law enforcement, judges, academics, and directly impacted individuals, chronicles the deception of Immigration and Customs Enforcement uncovered through FOIA litigation, local organizing, and advocacy. The report clearly lays out demonstrable negative impacts SCOMM has had on community safety and civil rights.
For example, Ron Hampton president of Black Law Enforcement in America writes in the report, “Opposition to Se Communities “is rooted in common sense: counties and states across the country rely on the relationships of the communities they serve to combat and solve crime. It is foolish to sever this tie in order to enforce civil immigration law.”
Echoing the concerns of other law enforcement officials and experts, Robert Morgenthau, former New York City District Attorney, wrote in the report, “When immigrants perceive the local police force as merely an arm of the federal immigration authority, they become reluctant to report criminal activity for fear of being turned over to federal officials.”
The report also included the testimony of Joaquin, a resident of Homestead, Florida who was wrongfully arrested and assaulted by police and now faces deportation because of the Se Communities program. He wrote, “I never committed a crime but now I am facing going back to my country. My plans, my dreams, everything was changed.
Background on the Se Communities Task Force:
The task force has been discredited by the immigrant rights movement since its inception. Shortly after its creation 200 organizations, including civil rights groups, labor, faith as well as some law enforcement leaders sent a letter to John Morton, ICE’s director, on July 20th raising concern about the scope of the task force, its lack of transparency, and its inadequate process to review the program in light of the pending Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General audit. Groups urged ICE to immediately suspend the program.
A second letter with over 160 groups was sent to the task force asking them to resign following the August 5th, announcement by ICE that the agency would unilaterally terminate all agreements and impose the program on all cities and states despite objections that the program damages public safety and the decisions of Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts to not participation in the program. (attached) The agency’s shift to make the program an unfunded mandate after two years of operation and over 43 Memorandums of Agreements signed with states (they included termination clauses), defied basic democratic principles and further exposed the agency as rogue and lacking any regard for the “nation’s courts, local and state law-makers, law enforcement, and communities—much less this task force.”
At community hearings held this summer by the task force in Dallas, Los Angeles, Illinois, and Arlington, Virginia the members were met with massive protests, walk outs, acts of civil disobedience, and calls to resign from the “sham” task force and to end the program.
### …

Nationwide Actions Condemn E-Verify Program as Direct Attack on Immigrants, Workers and the Economy

New York, NY: Community leaders, small business owners, and workers are participating in a nationwide day of action to speak out against H.R. 2164, legislation presented by Texas Congressman Lamar Smith, which would make the E-Verify program mandatory for nearly every employer in the United States. This legislation is expected to be taken up by the House Judiciary committee for markup at the end of this week.

Mandatory E-Verify is a jobs killer. It is bad for working people, bad for business and bad for the economy. If Congress mandates the use of E-Verify, forcing every business in the country to screen every employee with an error-ridden Department of Homeland Security computer database, over one million workers will likely lose their jobs. Industries like agriculture that rely on immigrant workers will be devastated, while small businesses will be taxed by having to shoulder the significant costs necessary to implement the computer system.
Anti-immigrant extremist politicians in Washington champion E-Verify and the bill has been a key component of notorious anti-immigrant hate legislation at the state level, like HB 56 in Alabama. While the United States has historically been a nation of immigrants, E-Verify panders to a vocal anti-immigrant minority that has dominated the immigration discussion.
Local actions point out that E-Verify will hurt all businesses and the fragile economy, and will leave workers more vulnerable to abuse on the job by giving unscrupulous employers yet another tool to use against workers who try to stand up for their rights.
“The truth is that E-Verify is a jobs killer and that the system needs to be fixed. We need comprehensive solutions to raise wages for our workers, make sure they work in good conditions, and ensure that everyone is on a level playing field,” said Jaime Contreras, SEIU 32BJ District Chair.
Small business owners are joining local actions because E-Verify will place a significant burden on small businesses, raising their costs even as they are struggling in this economy. Almost every business—no matter how small—will be forced to implement this complicated system. For many small businesses, many of which can’t afford a human resources department, this could be disastrous. The estimated cost to small businesses is $2.6 billion, according to Bloomberg News. More than 770,000 citizen and legal workers will wrongly be marked as ineligible for work due to errors in government databases.
“This E-Verify proposal is bad for small businesses, bad for our workforce, and bad for the country’s bottom line,” said small business owner David Borris. “We need the U.S. Chamber to listen to small business, and withdraw its support for this flawed proposal. Why is the Chamber nibbling around the margins and accepting a piecemeal non-solution that will have a serious negative impact on small businesses?”

Participating localities include: Austin, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Washington DC; and Long Island, New York.
Coordinated by National Day Laborer Organizing Network, National Immigration Law Center, Jobs with Justice, National Employment Law Project and the Service Employees International Union.

Se Communities Scrutiny Expands to FBI

Washington, DC. Yesterday, on the tenth anniversary of September 11th, 70 civil rights, immigrants’ rights, and privacy rights groups sent a letter calling on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the FBI’s role in the controversial Se Communities deportation program (S-Comm) and the Next Generation Identification (NGI) initiative. The letter urged an immediate Inspector General audit of both programs.

Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act litigation by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Cardozo Immigration Justice Clinic revealed that S-Comm is the first step in NGI, an unprecedented, billion dollar initiative to create the world’s largest biometric database. NGI will expand on S-Comm by forcing greater collection and dissemination of personal information between federal agencies, without the consent of the states that provide the information. NGI will also expand the types of information collected to include iris scans, palm prints, and facial recognition scans, along with the traditional fingerprints. Both NGI and S-Comm have their roots in the post-September 11th expansion of domestic surveillance and corresponding weakening of privacy protections.
Chris Newman, Legal Programs Director at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network said: “An unfortunate legacy of 9/11 is the onset of a culture of suspicion that conflated fear of terrorists with fear of immigrants. Secretive and misguided programs like S-Comm contributed to this pernicious fear of newcomers. Ten years after 9/11, there is now a vibrant national discussion about how to preserve security without jettisoning core constitutional values. While many may disagree about how to strike an appropriate balance, we can all agree transparency from the very agencies charged with keeping us safe is absolutely essential. The Department of Justice Office of Inspector General must immediately audit the FBI’s role in S-Comm and the so-called Next Generation Identification Initiative.”
Jessica Karp, Staff Attorney with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network said: “S-Comm has been plagued with problems since it began. ICE is now under investigation for lying to Congress, states, and localities about the program’s scope and the role of state and local partners. Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, and many of the nation’s largest cities have said they want no part of S-Comm. They are concerned that it undermines public safety while encouraging pretextual arrests and racial profiling. An investigation of the FBI’s role in this controversial program is urgently needed. The Inspector General must also investigate the extent to which the problems associated with S-Comm are common to the Next Generation Identification initiative as a whole.”
Letter to DOJ available for download at http://ndlon.org/pdf/dojletterfinal.pdf
Appendix available for download at http://ndlon.org/pdf/dojletterappendix.pdf
More information available at http://uncoverthetruth.org
###…

Task force looks to help day laborers

Task force looks to help day laborers

By Corinne White | Source: The Daily Tar Heel

Task force looks to help day laborers

Susano Soto, left, order and Lee Johnson, right, work for Raleigh’s Blalock Paving company, which hires many of the day laborers who gather in the area.

Day laborers in the area stand on the corner of Jones Ferry Road and Davie Road, rain or shine.

But Board of Alderman candidates — and local labor advocates ­— want to change that.

At a meeting this week organized by Orange County Justice United, community advocates created location and fundraising committees to work toward creating a center for the day laborers.

“While we take the situation further, we’re trying to identify short-term things we can do and long-term things we should do,” said Julio Olmos, community organizing director for El Centro Hispano.

He said the first short-term step is putting Port-A-Johns at the location.

And though the Carrboro Board of Aldermen is not spearheading the project, incumbent and 2011 candidate Dan Coleman said the board — which fellow candidate Lydia Lavelle also sits on — looks to support the initiative.

Since many day laborers are Hispanic, the main location being considered is El Centro Hispano in Carrboro, Coleman said.

“The key point is that El Centro is intimately connected with the Hispanic community that day laborers mostly come from,” he said.

“So they are in a better position than the town to address these issues.”

Olmos said El Centro’s Carrboro leaders have not yet spoken to its landlord about a restriction in the location’s contract that could disallow the project.

Pilar Rocha-Goldberg, the CEO of El Centro, said the organization talked to representatives from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network in June about the pros and cons of day laborer centers.

The ideal center would include English as a second language and vocational classes, child care, and legal services for the workers and their families, Coleman said.

Coleman said there were reportedly issues with wage theft, when workers do their job and employers do not pay.

The center would be necessary to help the day laborers, who might not understand the American legal system, he said.

The task force also discussed day labor relations with community law enforcement, Olmos said.

Olmos said day laborers he spoke with said some people who congregated in the area are there just to “mess around.”

He said day laborers actually looking for work need to have good relationships with police officers to report the others.

Board of Aldermen candidate Michelle Johnson said any solution would have to address the problems from all sides.

“At best we need to have a holistic view, and I think the holistic version would have job skill training and making sure the workers weren’t getting abused,” Johnson said.

There are more than 70 day laborer centers in the country, Coleman said.

“If people locally look at what’s been achieved elsewhere, they’ll find a way to craft what’s best,” he said.

Board of Alderman candidate Braxton Foushee agreed things need to change.

“I just don’t think that what they have now is working.”

Contact the City Editor

at City@dailytarheel.com.

Laborers hold out hope: Jobs aren’t guaranteed at the MLK site,

Laborers hold out hope: Jobs aren’t guaranteed at the MLK site, but workers keep coming

By Jennifer Anderson |Source: The Portland Tribune | Sep 1, 2011

Laborers hold out hope: Jobs aren’t guaranteed at the MLK site, __fg_link_2__  but workers keep coming

CHRISTOPHER ONSTOTT / TRIBUNE PHOTO Labor center site Director Ignacio Paramo has helped create a community offering English classes and soccer tournaments. While many laborers find work at the center, story others go without or return to their old street corners.

Day workers at the city-sponsored day labor center have a message to Portland, three years into the operation: “We’re here to work.”

Every morning, 50 to 100 — sometimes up to 120 — workers gather at the site at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, just south of the Oregon Convention Center.

At 7:30 a.m., they put their names into a lottery, which determines who gets jobs as employers roll in. Some days dozens are hired, other days just a handful. They usually earn between $10 and $11 an hour.

Either way, the workers declare the center a success, saying it is a far better alternative to the chaos that reigned at street corners before the work center opened.

“This place is for work,” says Edmundo Caro, a cook who prepares barbacoa and carne asada tacos for Tacos El Jornalero, the taco truck that opened last week at the site to raise money for the center’s operations. “The people that come here come because there’s an order, more organization” than the street corners, Caro says.

Three years into the venture, it’s hard to declare it a success or failure, however. Consider the numbers:

• While the center has provided workers with a total of 11,131 day jobs during the three years, it’s led to just 25 permanent jobs.

• In January, the slowest month of the year, 14 of 75 workers — 18 percent — were hired on the busiest day, Jan. 29. On the slowest day that month, Jan. 11, just one of 77 workers snagged a job.

• Summer is peak season. June 25, the busiest day, saw 39 of 47 workers (82 percent) hired. A week earlier, on June 18, just 7 of 61 workers (11 percent) were hired.

• The center’s first year of operation was the busiest, with 2,405 workers hired in just six months, June to December 2008. In all of 2009, a total of 3,039 workers were hired. In 2010 that climbed to 3,875. This year, a total of 1,812 workers were hired through June. If that pace continues, 2011 will come in just behind last year’s numbers.

The nonprofit Voz Workers’ Rights Education Project, which runs the site, says success is about more than just numbers —it’s about the community they’ve created.

They have established rules (no drinking, s or fighting), daily procedures (the lottery), education (a range of classes taught by volunteer tutors), recreation (a soccer team), and now food.

Tacos are $1, and all proceeds from the taco truck support the venture. Eventually the taco truck may roam various neighborhoods.

“It’s been a good three years,” says Romeo Sosa, Voz’ executive director. “We created trust in the neighborhood and developed a lot of support from all the different groups,” including the surrounding neighborhoods. Laborers have helped to beautify the area, despite the impermanence of their home.

Streetcorner Advocate for Women on the Day Labor Treadmill

Streetcorner Advocate for Women on the Day Labor Treadmill

Mon, Aug 29, 2011 | By Hoda Emam | Source: TheBrooklynInk.com

Streetcorner Advocate for Women on the Day Labor Treadmill

English classes are held every Wednesday on a street corner in Williamsburg (Photo: Hoda Emam/ The Brooklyn Ink)

As early as sunrise, order Latino women trickle onto the corner of Division Street and Marcy Avenue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, hoping that by evening they will go home with more than the change in their pockets. The women stand next to a steel fence on the corner; the vines dangling from the top offer the only refuge from the sun. On a recent morning, two men in a delivery truck stop at the intersection and yell out, “How much?” Three of the females run to the vehicle and begin to bargain; the women do not agree with the deal and walk back to their steel fence.

Such bargaining is the norm at this intersection. While the women say they have been mistaken for prostitutes, the work they are looking for involves hard labor: shoveling at a construction site, stitching and packing garments in a factory, and mostly cleaning houses. The corner has become both famous and infamous among recently arrived immigrant Hispanic women seeking work. With few English skills, the women have become a target of exploitation by some of their employers.

Ligia Gualpa, 25, hopes to change that. As an international studies undergraduate student at the State University of New York at Cortland, Gualpa studied abroad in Cairo in 2007. During her six months she spent in Egypt, Gualpa worked with the Al Wafa Center, an organization that assisted Sudanese immigrants in Cairo. There, Gualpa says, she learned the meaning and benefits of community organization.

“The Sudanese community were refugees in Cairo, they were treated poorly and deprived of their labor rights,” Gualpa recalls. After six months working at the center, Gualpa and her colleagues were able to almost double the amount of Egyptian dollars the United Nations was offering to each refugee. Soon after, Gualpa decided to return to the United States and implement her newfound interest among her own people.

For two years now, Gualpa, has been a part of the Day Laborers’ Organization Project. Gualpa uses English classes as a way to gain the women’s trust and simultaneously to teach them the importance of being unified.

As the women continue to watch for potential clients, one woman cheerfully points across the street to a petite brunette, in cream-colored workout attire, rushing towards the crowd smiling. After a quick chat and a hug with each woman, Gualpa huddles the ladies together. It’s 11 a.m. on Wednesday and English class is in session.

All of the women are focused on Gualpa, who points to a white piece of paper, while yelling to make sure her voice overpowers the traffic noise at the intersection.  “I charge $15 per hour,” Gualpa says, and the women repeat. She reiterates the phrase three more times; the women’s response grows louder, attracting attention from passersby. Some onlookers shake their heads in dismay, while others look with curiosity.

Benny Berk, a resident of Williamsburg who lives across from the intersection, says the women are a big help to the community because “they clean people’s houses, if they don’t do it, then we would have to do it ourselves.” Most of the women are undocumented, but the city residents and the Police Department apparently turn a blind eye, as the demand for the women is high.

According to the New York Day Laborer survey, conducted in 2003 by Abel Valenzuela of UCLA and Edwin Melendez of New School University, women account for only five percent of the 100,000 day laborers across New York State. And the women’s main gathering location in Williamsburg is growing in popularity. Since the intersection is located in a primarily Hasidic Jewish neighborhood, the women must wear more conservative clothing, especially if they are picked to clean a religious family’s home.

One of the biggest challenges for the women on the corner, according to Gualpa, is the increased competition that has come with women from outside the area.  “The ladies have decided on a minimum salary of $10 per hour,” Gualpa says, “but when new groups of women enter, they are unaware of this, so they bid lower, causing future problems for the current women.”

Streetcorner Advocate for Women on the Day Labor Treadmill

Ligia Gualpa teaches immigrant workers essential English language phrases (Photo: Hoda Emam/ The Brooklyn Ink)

Gualpa says she understands the hardships that the women endure and therefore works passionately to offer help, even though some residents see her as a nuisance. “When I am on the street corner teaching the English class, I have had verbal threats from passersby,” she says. “I have also had people tell me to watch my back and that I am known in the neighborhood, but I have to ignore it and move on.”

Gualpa, who receives a small stipend for her work, along with two volunteers, assists workers who step forward with reports of unfair , primarily being denied pay or cheated on the number of hours. After having the worker document the days and hours she was employed, Gualpa visits the employer’s home or job location.

“Before hiring the worker, the employer could and should ask for the Social Security number,” Gualpa says. “But after the person has already performed labor, whether that person is documented or not, they must be paid.” Gualpa states the labor law and tells the employer that since he or she knowingly hired an illegal immigrant, the boss, too, can be in trouble if reported to the State Department of Labor.

In 2009, for example, an investigation by the Department of Labor led them to one commercial strip in the Bushwick section Brooklyn. More than 60 workers were owed over $350,000 in unpaid wages, the department found. According to the State Department of Labor the investigation resulted in several cases. Over the last decade, many grassroots organizations, like the Day Laborers’ Project, are partnering with the State Department of Labor by assisting in community monitoring of employer conduct.

The Division of Immigrant Policies and Affairs of the State Labor Department addresses the needs, issues, and challenges of immigrants by doing outreach in immigrant communities. “In order to this, we informally partner with organizations that serve these communities to disseminate information effectively,” says Maritere Arce, spokesperson for the New York State Department of Labor.

According to immigration lawyers, since employers who hire immigrant workers know they are afraid to come forward with complaints, wage theft has become rampant among the immigrant neighborhood. “The construction and restaurant industries are among those where wage theft is most prevalent,” Arce says. She adds that the Labor Department does not inquire about a workers’ nationality or legal status in wage theft investigation. Therefore, whether a worker is documented or not, their complaint will receive the same amount of attention.

On an early Thursday morning, Gualpa heads to a clothing factory off Decatur Street in Brooklyn. Three of the women who had been recruited from the Marcy Avenue hiring site have reported missing wages. Gualpa is familiar with this factory and its managers since she has approached them before with unpaid wage claims.

Estela Sanchez, 46, who came to the United States from Mexico eight years ago, said the company owes her $27.11. “To some people this might be little money,” Sanchez explains, “but for me this is a lot.” The company management had told Sanchez that the factory had financial problems and wouldn’t be able to pay her. After repeated attempts, Sanchez says she realized the employer was not taking her seriously, so she met with Gualpa.

“My English is not good, but Ligia’s is,” says Sanchez. “So they will listen to her.”

Evelia Torres, 27, whose job was to cut clothing threads and pack items for shipping, says she is owed wages of $29. However, the largest claim that Gualpa would be questioning the company is for Ilaria Reyes, 40, for $1,034. Reyes says she worked long hours and overtime believing that she would eventually get paid. “I had to come to work,” Reyes says.  “Whatever he would give me is better than standing on the corner and making no money.”

Streetcorner Advocate for Women on the Day Labor Treadmill

Women wait for potential clients seeking day labor (Photo: Hoda Emam/ The Brooklyn Ink)

As Gualpa and the ladies prepare to walk up the factory stairs to meet with the employer, a look of concern sweeps across the women’s faces. While Gualpa seems very calm, Reyes’s hands are trembling. The climb up the stairs and walk through the narrow and aged warehouse hallways seems to put some doubt in the women. They begin to lag behind Gualpa, slowing their pace and speaking softly among themselves. When they all finally enter the office, Gualpa approaches the manager with a smile. Sanchez stands up straight with hands folded across her chest, Torres looks on to the piles of black and khaki clothing laid on rows of tables, as if to appear distracted, but Reyes is flustered, her face a deep red color.

“See, this is the problem,” Sanchez whispers. “Women are scared to confront the bosses.”

After Gualpa patiently explains all the missing wages and dates to the factory manager, she insists on the immediate payment of at least the two smaller debts. The factory director says he will have to check with his accountant before writing any checks. Even though Gualpa does not succeed in getting any of the women paid, she says that she has achieved a broader goal – making the employer aware that there are repercussions to hiring women off the Williamsburg street corner and treating them unfairly.

“I am going to check back with him next week,” Gualpa says. “In the meantime, I will go ahead and submit the cases and run an investigation on the factory.” According to Gualpa, agents will visit the company in question, around two weeks after presenting a complaint to the State Department of Labor.

Gualpa was raised in the Bronx after her family emigrated from Ecuador when she was eight years old. She grew up seeing the neighborhood’s working men and women, including her parents, exploited on a daily basis through low wages and ill . “My family came for a dream,” Gualpa says. “It’s the dream of every American, which is to feed your family, give them a right to a good education and offer them good opportunities.”

Gualpa says she wants to be the agent of change and show immigrants how to obtain the American Dream. She is now cultivating a group to campaign for a portable hiring center at the intersection in Williamsburg. With an annual budget of $150,000, the Day Laborers Organization Project relies entirely on foundation donations and fund-raising. The facility would offer the women relief from the heat and cold as well as a suitable location for employers to approach the domestic workers and agree on a set hourly pay and duration.

Gualpa knows she has a huge hurdle ahead with this campaign, since the hiring center would support undocumented workers. Regardless, Gualpa says she understands how effective a big group can be rather than just one voice. “If I can empower one lady to be a leader within her own community,” she says, “then I have empowered many.”

Centers Help Day Laborers Get a Hand and Get Paid

Centers Help Day Laborers Get a Hand and Get Paid

By KARI LYDERSEN and BRIDGET O’SHEA | Aug 24, 2011 | Source: ChicagoNewsCoop.org

 

Centers Help Day Laborers Get a Hand and Get Paid

Day laborers talk with a potential employer at a gas station at Belmont and Milwaukee avenues at 8 a.m., July 25, 2011. Image Credit: Paul Beaty

Every morning, rain or shine, Miguel used to head for the corner of Belmont and Milwaukee avenues and wait at an informal gathering spot of day laborers near a BP gas station in hopes he would be hired to set tile, pour concrete or lay sod.After the job, sometimes he would be paid as promised but often he was not–a daily risk for the thousands of workers like Miguel who are hired off street corners by contractors or homeowners who need help with construction or landscaping.Today Miguel, 48, still makes a living doing temporary construction work. But instead of braving cold temperatures or stifling heat at a busy intersection, he meets employers at a storefront office of the Albany Park Workers Center at Bryn Mawr and Kimball avenues.

He starts each job with a contract spelling out his pay and working conditions that a lawyer at the center will help him enforce, if necessary.

“Here we have a roof over our head, we have coffee,” said Miguel who moved to Chicago from Mexico 16 years ago. “And a contract is signed so we know we will get paid.” Workers’ last names are withheld in this article because some are undocumented immigrants.

The Albany Park Workers Center is one of about 40 throughout the nation set up in an effort to reform the day labor industry. The center, which opened in 2004, was founded and is run by the Latino Union, a group created in 2000 by immigrant women working at temporary staffing agencies that grew into a larger workers rights and immigrants rights non-profit organization.

Some local business owners and residents oppose the workers centers, arguing they facilitate the hiring of people in the U.S. illegally and encourage illegal immigration. Laborers gathering on street corners also have caused local controversies, with some neighbors complaining they block traffic and sometimes make women passersby feel uncomfortable.

Without a workers center, undocumented laborers can be vulnerable to unscrupulous employers. A 2006 study by the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of California Los Angeles found that two thirds of day laborers surveyed in the Midwest, including Chicago, had not been paid wages due them in the past two months, and 27 percent had been threatened with violence by employers.

Nationally, almost half of the day laborers told researchers they had been denied food or water breaks and the vast majority reported being hurt on the job or left at faraway work sites without transportation home.

The Latino Union set up the storefront office in Albany Park to combat the abuses and convince day laborers at street corners around the city to get jobs through workers centers instead of on their own.

Eric Rodriguez, the Latino Union’s executive director, said most street corners have informal networks and leaders who typically agree on a base wage. At the corner of Milwaukee and Belmont, for example, he said it’s $12 an hour, higher than the $8.25 an hour Illinois minimum wage.

But he said it is difficult to enforce the agreements when someone drives up looking for workers and is surrounded by men jockeying for a job.

At a workers center, there’s little jostling or bargaining for work. The center’s staff doesn’t ask day laborers about their immigration status, although it is widely understood that many are undocumented. Patricio Ordonez, a former day laborer turned Albany Park job coordinator, uses a lottery system to assign men to jobs and then negotiates their contract.

“The current broken immigration laws give predatory employers an advantage,” said Chris Newman, legal director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Mr. Newman said undocumented immigrants are reluctant to speak up if employers abuse them, but workers centers and their lawyers are not.

Mr. Rodriguez often visits other street corners and passes out pamphlets on workers rights and safety. At the Albany Park center, day laborers can take advantage of English language classes and free works on construction skills such as plumbing and other topics. The center also hosts barbecues and soccer tournaments where workers from different street corners compete and then talk about improving working conditions for day laborers.

As it has for other occupations, the poor economy is hurting day laborers, who face increased competition for jobs, Mr. Rodriguez said.

And the anti-immigrant sentiment that often intensifies in hard economic times is evident in legislation being considered in the United States Congress. Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, has introduced a bill that would force workers centers to close or greatly alter their practices. The proposed Legal Workforce Act would mandate that all employers, including workers centers, use the government’s E-Verify electronic system to validate employees’ Social Security numbers.

Most legislative experts don’t expect the bill to become law, as it probably would not pass the Senate.

In assessing the intended impact of the bill, Tyler Moran, policy director for the National Immigration Law Center, said she didn’t think it would accomplish its goal of forcing day laborers to return to their native lands. “For the day laborers who are undocumented,” Ms. Moran said, “it’s not going to send them back home. It’s just going to move them from on-the-books to off-the-books.”

In other words, back to a street corner.