NDLON in the News

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Aug172011

Closing of Palm Beach County day-labor center leaves workers back on the streets

Closing of Palm Beach County day-labor center leaves workers back on the streets

Closing of Palm Beach County day-labor center leaves workers back on the streets

Day laborers gather outside Caribbean Plants on Okeechobee Boulevard and F Road Wednesday morning. Buena Fe, one of only two day-labor centers in Palm Beach County, closed last month.

Mitra Malek, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer | Source: PalmBeachPost.com

LOXAHATCHEE GROVES — Workers are back at street corners along Okeechobee Boulevard, hoping to trade manual toil for money.

Buena Fe, one of only two day-labor centers in Palm Beach County, closed last month.

The slow economy forced the hand of the church that ran the center, said the Rev. Calvin Lyerla of Acts II Worship Center.

“We just could no longer justify the expense,” Lyerla said.

The 500-member Pentecostal congregation footed the entire $50,000 annual budget to run Buena Fe, which opened in March 2008. The center couldn’t find partners, and county agencies rejected the half-dozen or so grants it sought, Lyerla said.

“They were providing a great service to the town,” Mayor Dave Browning said.

Only 15 to 20 workers came to Buena Fe daily this year, about half the number compared with early days. And only 8 to 10 employers used the center daily for the same period. The center registered a total of 1,065 workers and 87 employers.

For a while, Buena Fe boomed. Plenty of migrant workers, most from Mexico and Guatemala, biked to the double-wide trailer on Okeechobee Boulevard. That kept drivers and workers safe; Okeechobee Boulevard is a quick-moving thoroughfare that doesn’t lend itself to the stop-and-go traffic of employers scouting for laborers.

Now the town is left with its original problem.

“It’s not quite as bad because there’s less work,” Browning said. “At the same time, everybody who doesn’t have a job is out there looking for work. There are eight to 10 guys at the stops. It becomes a safety issue.”

The town council in 2008 approved an ordinance banning workers from hawking manual skills on local street corners. But the law has no traction unless they have some other place to meet.

“Legally, I don’t know that we can prevent people from meeting on the road, even though it’s dangerous,” Browning said.

Loxahatchee Groves Landowners Association President Marge Herzog also is concerned about whether children waiting at bus stops near the corners in pre-dawn hours will be comfortable with a group of men nearby.

“It has been an issue for the young girls, the catcalling, the ‘hey girlie,’” said Herzog, who was vice mayor when opened.

Meanwhile, Caribbean Plants at F Road and Okeechobee Boulevard, has agreed to let workers gather there, which could help, Lyerla said.

Buena Fe’s shuttering follows that of the Lake Worth Resource Center, which closed in December after two years. El Sol in Jupiter is still open, launching in September 2006.

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Authoritative National Report Condemns Se Communities Program

Today, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and others made public an authoritative report condemning the Se Communities deportation program and recommending its termination.
The report includes testimony from former District Attorney of New York Robert Morgenthau, heads of law enforcement, and victims of Se Communities like Isaura in Los Angeles whose 911 call for help resulted in her deportation proceedings.
In contrast to the DHS appointed taskforce which has failed to enlist the voices of affected communities, scholars, or critics on the subject, this report constitutes a real deliberative and representative review of the program.
The report recommends that the Se Communities be terminated, that the current OIG investigation of S-Comm be expanded to all ICE Access programs, that the Department of Justice begin its own investigation into the mysterious role of the FBI in Se Communities, and that states not be compelled to share biometric data with ICE.
The following statement can be attributed to the National Community Advisory Commission
“This report confirms what immigrant communities have long known. The program called Se Communities results in the opposite. Entangling local police in immigration enforcement is not just bad policy as the experts testify. Conscripting local police into immigration enforcement has provoked a massive civil rights crisis our country now faces. The only suitable approach is to end Se Communities.”
The Commission includes: American Friends Service Committee, Project Voice New England, Asian Law Caucus, CASA de Maryland, Center for Constitutional Rights, CENTRO de Igualdad y Derechos, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, Detention Watch Network, Grassroots Leadership, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, National Immigrant Justice Center, National Immigration Law Center, National Immigration Project of the National Lawyer’s Guild, Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Rights Working Group, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, We-Count!
The report is available at http://altopolimigra.com/s-comm-shadow-report/
Background on the Se Communities Program is available at www.uncoverthetruth.org and in a press brief at http://ndlon.org/pdf/scommbrief.pdf…

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Aug52011

Day Laborers Line Up Overnight For Jobs

Day Laborers Line Up Overnight For Jobs

By Kelly Bartnick | Published: August 5, medical 2011 | Source: Keloland.com

Day Laborers Line Up Overnight For Jobs

The walk to work begins well before sunrise for some Sioux Falls laborers. They line up four hours early just to get a chance at a 12-hour shift.

SIOUX FALLS, SD – The walk to work begins well before sunrise for some Sioux Falls laborers. They line up four hours early just to get a chance at a 12-hour shift.

When permanent job leads dry up, day labor is often the only way to make ends meet. But finding the work can mean being competitive and getting in line long before many others are even awake.

For five men in the early morning hours, 26th Street and Cliff Avenue is the most uncertain corner in Sioux Falls.

“The sooner you get here the better your chances are of getting out,” day laborer Dave Beers said.

If you can even get out at all. Dave Beers has been lining up outside Labor Ready every morning for years now, just for a chance at a paycheck.

“It could vary and it depends on the weather too. If it rains, most of the outdoor jobs could be cancelled,” Beers said.

But Beers is lucky; he’s on a repeat list at a packaging company that usually takes up to 13 people each day.

“They start at six, so we have to leave at 4:30, a quarter to five because we gotta be out there before 6 a.m. and it’s a 12-hour shift,” Beers said.

“I generally leave my place at 2 a.m. And I walk down here. It’s about a 30-35 minute walk,” day laborer Rodney Doscher said.

That’s why Rodeney Doscher is first in line. He hopes to get set with Beers Friday morning.

“Not knowing if you’re going to get out is only tough if you’re counting on getting out in that particular day because you might need to get money to get rent covered,” Doscher said.

And that’s something all these workers worry about every day. But they say, lately the work has been steady, even though they can’t get a permanent job.

“I have applications out all over town. You can’t get no calls back. So, the only way I can pay bills is come up here and work,” Beers said.

And compete just for that chance.

“I’ve seen as few as 10 and as many as 40-50 people,” Doscher said.

Workers say opportunities are better during the summer than they are when the snow flies. Since many summer jobs are outside, there’s also competition to be indoors out of the elements, which is another reason why they line up so early.

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ICE Announcement throws discredited deportation program into further disarray and confusion.

DHS Cannot Rule by Decree
In a shocking announcement by ICE late Friday afternoon announcement where the agency announced its attempt to unilaterally nullify years of contracts and agreements with 39 state partners. The agency will inform state officials that participation in the controversial Se Communities program which is currently under investigation by the Office of the Inspector General and which is the subject of intense criticism, is mandatory.
Chris Newman, Legal Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network issued this statement:
“Today’s announcement confirms ICE’s status as a rogue agency. The level of deception involved in S-Comm so far has been alarming , but this moves things to another level. A contract is a contract—but apparently not when it comes to ICE.
A federal judge already found that DHS and ICE went out of their way to mislead the public about Se Communities. Today’s announcement shows that ICE also systematically misled the states, engaging in protracted negotiations–at substantial cost to the American public–for what it now claims are sham contracts.
All the deception in the world can’t hide the fact that the S-Comm is horrible policy. By entangling local police in immigration enforcement, S-Comm is criminalizing immigrants and leading to the Arizonification of the country. Ultimately, the announcement today only puts into further question the legal basis for the program. ICE can no longer be trusted to police itself.”
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Se Communities Courtroom Battle Comes to a Head

New York, NY.
What: Courtroom Arguments in NDLON v. ICE FOIA litigation
Where: Manhattan, Federal District Court.
When: August 11th.
Next Thursday, August 11th, advocates will argue for the release of key documents the agency continues to withhold related to the Se Communities opt-out policies. Upon reviewing certain of the unredacted documents that are the subject of this challenge, Federal District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin concluded in a scathing opinion, “There is ample evidence that ICE and DHS have gone out of their way to mislead the public about Se Communities,” and ordered the agency to release certain documents that could not be withheld simply because they might embarrass DHS and ICE.

In the year and a half since the beginning of the FOIA litigation, the documents that have been released so far shed light on a secretive and over-reaching deportation program. As the dangerous scope and impact of the program has been uncovered, a consensus has grown calling for the program’s termination. Governors in Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts have sought to opt-out of the program.

In an attempt to preempt the embarrassing documents that the court has ordered released and the conclusive results of the OIG investigation to be completed this winter, ICE and DHS have rolled out a series of cosmetic tweaks and a taskforce to “study” the program. These announcements have been widely condemned as insufficient given the civil rights crisis created by the program.

“If what we’ve seen so far tells us anything, it’s that ICE is an agency that cannot be trusted. The court has ordered ICE to release documents that FOIA gives the public a right to access. But the agency continues to stonewall and delay turning them over. The constantly shifting policies and lack of transparency about those policies, truly make it difficult to take what ICE says at face value. ” explained, Bridget Kessler, lawyer for Benjamin Cardozo School of Law.
Chris Newman of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network added,”DHS has far more interest in the politics of SCOMM than it does in developing a lawful policy that actually serves local communities. While DHS has moved at breakneck speed to advance a dubious program with media spin, it’s strategy in this litigation has been characterized by one word: delay. Thankfully, federal courts- and not DHS- will have the last word and will ultimately compel disclosure of information owed to the public and required by federal law.”…

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Home Health Workers Are Sick of Being Shut Out of Labor Law

By Michelle Chen, Colorlines and In These Times | August 3, 2011 | Source: Huffington Post

As walking canes replace running shoes, and the parents who raised us start needing to be cared for themselves, the first dawn of America’s aging boom approaches. But even as the “gray wave” looms on the horizon, the way we treat the workers who care for our elders lags generations behind.

Hundreds of thousands of home care workers remain excluded from the country’s key labor laws. As with many other groups of “excluded workers,” like farm and day laborers, inequities in the law hit immigrants and people of color the hardest. And the stakes are higher in home care industry, in which demand for, and the cost of care, reach unprecedented levels. More people have been moving toward home- and community-based services for the elderly and people with disabilities, as alternative to institutionalization. Evidence indicates caring for people at home is in many cases more cost-effective than conventional nursing homes.

Yet for all the help they provide, home care workers feel a bit neglected these days. Through an arcane provision in federal labor law, Washington has essentially shut home-based health workers from minimum-wage and overtime rules. That means home health aides may be even worse off than regular domestic workers, who are at least technically entitled to federal minimum wage. The Department of Labor has since the 1970s manipulated an exemption for “companion” workers “into a whole exclusion” of some 1.7 million skilled workers, according to a report by the National Employment Law Project:

The result has been to suppress wages for the home care workforce, consigning millions of caregivers — the overwhelming majority of them women, many of them immigrants and women of color — to working poverty. The lack of ordinary overtime coverage has also facilitated excessive hours in small segments of the industry. Long hours are not only grueling for workers but can contribute to worse care for patients, as caregivers working 60 hours or more a week face fatigue and stress in performing what is a demanding job under any circumstances. These substandard working conditions have created very serious employee recruitment and retention problems, generating labor shortages that prevent us from meeting the nation’s rapidly growing need for home care.

The NELP has called on the Department of Labor to revise its regulations to include home care workers under federal wage-and-hour protections. Absent federal protection, only 21 states and the District of Columbia currently provide minimum wage or overtime. Still, the NELP points to those local examples as proof that federal coverage of home care workers is feasible.

The need for regulation has increased as the home health industry assumes a more prominent role in the healthcare system. Medicaid funds support many of the agencies that employ the majority of this workforce. And with the home-health aide workforce expected to surge by about 50 percent from 2008-2018, NELP notes that government oversight has tightened as the sector has boomed, and some states have set up public authorities to administer home care services.

Nonetheless, the workforce is asked to do a lot for very little. Workers carry out not just regular companionship duties but also paramedical services like monitoring vital signs and administering medication. Yet a typical aide can work full-time and still not make enough to live on; the 2009 median hourly wage was just $9.34.

Meanwhile, funding shortfalls and budget theatrics in Washington are driving both parties to attack healthcare for the poor and aging. The latest Republican budget proposal would gut Medicaid through some $100 billion in “savings” over the next decade (directly countering promised expansion of Medicaid under health care reform), plus additional cutbacks in Medicare, which of course provides basic medical coverage for seniors. And adding insult to injury, the budget axe is hovering over their social security checks, too.

Earlier this month, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which has campaigned for the rights of home-based labor across the country, brought the voices of home-based workers to Washington at the Caring Across Generations conference. Ai-jen Poo, executive director of the Alliance, emphasized the connection between quality care and decent work:

Caring for the aging and people with disabilities is one of our most important responsibilities as a nation. That means protecting the vital services we have — Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security — and creating the quality care jobs, training, and family support that we need.

We live in a political climate that constantly devalues critical service sector work, from teaching our kids to keeping the streets clean. Our elders are growing older in the same hostile climate. So we ought to ask ourselves what society collectively owes to the workers with whom we entrust the health and comfort of loved ones. Your grandmother’s home caregiver, who may be just like a family member to her, has a family of her own to take care of when she goes home at night.

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