New Hiring Site No Cure-All for Dayworkers

Just beyond the hill with its homes and million-dollar ocean views and down the street from the playhouse known for its ballet and drama, Filiberto Fierros wards off the cold and talks about the promise that brought him here.

“When I left Mexico,” he begins, “I heard there was work here. Some days there is, and other days there isn’t. I’m not complaining, but life here is hard too.”

Like many others gathered around him at the dirt parking lot in Laguna Beach, Fierros knows little about the laws and politics and economic realities of this foreign country. Fierros, a short man with intense, dark eyes and the chapped, hardened hands of a farmer, left his native Cuernavaca, Mexico, 6 months ago with a dream shared by many like him: to work enough to save a few hundred dollars, then go home.

But it hasn’t happened, and as he spends the Christmas season away from his family for the first time in many years, Fierros says he finds himself scraping by in a strange country in which the work is sporadic and the cost of getting by is more expensive than he ever imagined.

But the dream keeps people like Fierros going. They show up on a cold December morning at the Laguna Canyon Road pickup site for day laborers and take the jobs that many others would not.

Of the 40 men gathered there on a recent morning, some carried the work papers required to be legally employed, a result of the recently completed immigration reform and amnesty program. Most did not, however, and few knew the extent to which they were violating the law by working in the United States illegally.

And even fewer, it seemed, fully appreciated the controversy that their presence in Laguna Beach, Costa Mesa, Orange and other cities across Orange County has caused over the past year.

The Laguna Beach pickup site was established by the city less than 2 weeks ago in an attempt to quell complaints about day laborers gathering in other parts of the city and waiting for work. The old pickup site had been in front of a convenience store at the corner of Coast Highway and Viejo Street, but complaints from residents and businessmen prompted the city to seek an alternate location.

“We’ve had some sizable numbers of people up there, in the 70s at one time,” said City Manager Kenneth C. Frank. “People have complained about the workers making it difficult for them to get to the bus stops, or about some of the laborers urinating behind houses or making comments occasionally to people who walk by. Some people fear that there may be increased crime because of them being there, even though this hasn’t been documented.”

After studying other locations, city officials chose the Laguna Canyon Road site and have tried to make the change as easy as possible for the dayworkers.

Flyers in English and Spanish were distributed among the workers, telling them they had to change sites, and a city bus has been allocated to transport them free to the Laguna Canyon Road parking lot in the morning. A portable toilet was brought to the site, and since there are no stores in the area, city officials arranged to have a snack truck stop there.

The day laborers have been impressed by the tolerant approach in Laguna Beach, unlike other areas of the county such as on Chapman Avenue in Orange, where police have conducted sweeps to arrest illegal aliens.

“We haven’t had any problem with la migra here,” said Gerardo Antunez, 18, using the Mexican slang for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. “It’s better here, but some of the people who hire us don’t know that we’re here. But there is a lot of traffic, and other people see us, so that is good.”

Not Checking Status

“We’re not checking to see if these people have documents or don’t have documents,” City Manager Frank said. “All we are saying is, please go here rather than where you have been standing. Eventually we hope to completely replace the thing on Coast Highway.”

Most of the men who gather at the parking lot in the morning come from Santa Ana, where they share small apartments and pool their money to pay the rent and buy food.

Many, like Fierros, come from Morelos or Guerrero, two of the poorest of Mexico’s 31 states. But there were also a few young men from El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Most of the men said they found work two or three times a week, mostly as gardeners or at construction sites. A good salary is $6 an hour, but many of the men said they had worked for much less.

“With the rain and Christmas, this is not a good time of year to look for work,” said Alberto Martinez, 27, a native of Guerrero. “But you can’t stop working, you have to pay the rent, so you keep coming.”

‘Best Place’ to Find Work

Pablo Parrilla, another Guerrero native now living in Costa Mesa, called the Laguna Beach site “the best place to find work in California. The people are nice here, and usually you can find work. A lot of the patrones (bosses) know we’re here, so they’ll stop by in the morning.”

In Costa Mesa, the city confronted a similar problem and established a Job Center in an abandoned gas station at the corner of Placentia Avenue and 17th Street to serve as a sort of clearinghouse for documented dayworkers.

Evelyn Brewer, Job Center manager, said that since opening on Oct. 4 the center has provided more than 1,200 day jobs to the estimated 50 to 60 people who show up daily seeking employment.

The center has become so popular with employers and people needing work, Brewer added, that some men arrive as early as 2 a.m. to be first in line when the center opens 4 hours later. In order to qualify for work, however, the applicant must first prove he is a legal resident and has work papers.

“I think it’s been a success,” Brewer said. “We’ve had employers coming from as far away as San Diego and San Bernardino looking for people. Some of them have earned as much as $10 an hour. They’re out there breaking concrete and doing the really rough work, and they deserve it.”

Problem Remains

While the center has led to a decrease in the number of men at nearby Lions Park looking for day jobs, it has not eliminated the problem. On one recent morning, while 40 men waited at the Job Center for contractors to pick them up, a crowd of about 20 men remained at the park, most of them apparently illegal aliens.

“I’ve only worked once this week, and it seems most of the patrones are going by the Job Center,” said Rolando Nucas, who arrived in the United States 3 months ago from Jutiapa, Guatemala. “I’ll do anything. I can do construction, work in the garden, anything you want.”

Nucas said he left a wife and five children in Guatemala and came to California “because there is no work in my country. I had a little land, with onions and corn and some other vegetables, but it was hardly enough to live off of. I wanted to send some money back, but I can hardly afford the rent.”

Nucas and a friend from his native Jutiapa, Freddie Morales, watched the cars and trucks cruise by on 18th Street and wondered aloud if the next one might bring work.

“I’ll wait a little longer, and if no one comes by, I’ll go home for the day,” Nucas said. “But I’ll come back tomorrow. Maybe next week there will be work.”