MIGRATION-US: Building a House
for Day Labourers
By Peter Costantini
SEATTLE, Washington (IPS) - Twenty-five centuries ago, ancient
Athenians set aside part of their agora, the central public plaza,
as a place where people seeking temporary work and others seeking
workers could meet.
In the United States of the early 21st Century, the venue has
shifted to building-supply and garden stores. But the men waiting
along the curb and the trucks pulling up have come for the same
purpose.
In many cities, however, the agora has evolved: jornaleros, as day
labourers are known in Spanish, and local citizens have combined
forces to organise structured markets for day labour. There, the
problems sometimes found on the corners - traffic slowdowns, litter,
lack of security for work-seekers and employers - can be ameliorated
through better processes and protections.
These workers' centres bring a measure of order and fairness to the
freewheeling, sharp-elbowed markets on the corners.
They are limited in what they can do, however, because most workers
in the informal economy are immigrants without official status. This
makes it harder for them to apply to formal employers or agencies,
or join labour unions. And workers centres' reach remains
restricted: a 2006 study estimated that their share of the national
day labour market was roughly 20 percent, while 80 percent sought
work on the corners.
Most of these organisations grew up during the economic boom of the
nineties and first half of this decade, when the residential
construction market was overheated. Now they are scrambling to adapt
to a wrenching economy-wide bust. An increasing number of workers,
native citizens along with documented and undocumented immigrants,
are turning to the informal labour market after losing regular jobs.
Day labourers' organisations generally don't get involved directly
in employment. They simply arrange a safe place for workers and
employers to meet, help workers set minimum wages and rules, verify
skills and reliability of workers, and help resolve complaints of
both workers and employers.
Part hiring hall, part workers' cooperative, part non-profit service
centre, workers' centres combine several modes of organising to
build supportive communities of casual workers.
They are not trade unions, but they perform some functions of
unions: enforcing base wages, providing job training, and defending
workers' rights. Jornaleros rely on them for job dispatches, much
like a union hiring hall, and participate in decision-making within
them. Official labour unions are exploring ways to cooperate with
them.
They are not charities, but most are non-profit and don't charge
workers or employers. Some draw parts of their budgets from
charities and foundations.
They are not government agencies. While some receive funding from
local governments, they may also have conflicting relationships with
some authorities.
Workers' centres are a hybrid, one that has proven hardy and
productive in over 60 cities across the U.S. The first opened at
least 18 years ago in Los Angeles.
In Seattle, the Pacific Northwest home to Boeing and Microsoft, CASA
Latina has served day labourers for 15 years.
On a major thoroughfare just north of downtown, a trailer and a
weathered one-story building open onto a gravel courtyard bounded by
a chain-link fence. In the pre-dawn darkness, about 100 people
gather, mostly young to middle-aged men with a few women, bundled up
against a biting wind off of Elliott Bay.
At six, the daily job raffle begins when CASA Latina staff and
volunteers in the trailer fill out raffle tickets from lists of
registered workers on a computer.
A solid, no-nonsense woman stands in the centre of the milling crowd
making things happen. Guadalupe Adams is coordinator of the Workers'
Centre.
"They fight hard to make a living - very honest, very hard-working,"
she says in Spanish. "They come here to get ahead. And many of them
have been able to build their little house back home."
Around seven, a staff member brings out a big plastic jar holding
the raffle tickets. Adams begins pulling out one ticket at a time
and calling out the name written on it, which someone marks down on
a numbered list. The winner comes forward and claims the ticket
stub. Later, as jobs come in, workers will be dispatched in order of
their numbers.
Only about 25 tickets are chosen. Later, around ten o'clock, one
worker says that only three jobs have been dispatched so far today,
which is typical lately.
It's gotten hard for many jornaleros to pay for housing and food,
much less send home remittances to the family in Mexico or Central
America, says Pedro Jiménez, Day Workers' Centre organiser.
More day workers are ending up on the street or in homeless
shelters, he observes. Many have to go to food banks for basic
groceries.
Two years ago, you could work two or three days a week, says Juan Us
Tiquiram, a soft-spoken, weathered man who worked in construction in
Guatemala. "Now I haven't seen any work for a week and a half. I've
never seen it this bad. The beginning of the month comes and you've
got to pay the rent and the phone, but you can't. If you're not a
hard worker, you leave."
Still, Us appreciates CASA Latina: "They dispatch jobs according to
the list. It's very orderly."
Dispatches by CASA Latina are down by about 70 percent from a year
ago, according to CASA Latina programme director Araceli Hernandez.
In October they were already down 50 percent. "Things are very bad
here," she says, "but in Los Angeles the numbers are even more
drastic. What's had a big impact is the number of people who have
lost permanent jobs."
Of the majority of workers who don't get a job through the raffle on
a given day, some go to corners outside home-improvement stores to
look for work. Along the street outside the Workers' Centre as well,
jornaleros continue waiting for employers well into the afternoon.
Later in the morning, a crew of about 20 volunteers wearing orange
vests assembles to distribute flyers in a residential neighborhood.
They hope to generate more jobs by letting homeowners know their
services are available.
For those who didn't get sent out today, the leafleting represents
something positive they can do for the future.
Jiménez, who was a union organiser in Mexico, leads a half-hour
training in Spanish for his team on distributing flyers: "We're all
in the same boat. Today you're going to hand out flyers, next week
it will be others' turn. It's like a chain." Deftly fielding
questions like a daytime talk-show host, he asks for situations they
have encountered - a dog in the yard, a hostile homeowner - and
prompts participants to explain how to handle it.
"We have to make a commitment to work for our community," he
preaches, "to put on these vests and make them sweaty for our common
benefit. Who built this place? Others who came before us. So now
we're going to build for tomorrow, so others who come after us will
have more opportunities."
Some homeowners have come to hire day workers in response, according
to a gray-haired man whose business card identifies him as "Faustino
Morales, Day Worker, CASA Latina Day Workers' Centre".
CASA Latina also organises volunteer work crews to clean up
surrounding parks, Morales said, which helps improve relations with
neighbors and lets people see that jornaleros are contributing to
their community.
With the deepening recession in the U.S., and even worse conditions
back in Mexico and Central America, a few workers are taking a new
tack: they are heading north to look for work in Canada, about 110
miles away. A few have been arrested at the border, according to a
local radio news show. But some report finding work and feel they
are treated with more respect by employers there.
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