In Search of a Day’s Work--and Fair Play : Volunteers hit the streets in a bid to protect the rights of illegal aliens, who say they are often cheated and underpaid in a desperate effort to earn a living.

The more than 200 men who gather daily at Olympic Boulevard and Mariposa Avenue in Koreatown to look for work are desperate men who claim they are often cheated by employers or paid as little as $20 a day for painting, gardening, pouring concrete and other manual labor.

Nancy Cervantes and Eduardo Gonzalez of the Central American Refugee Center went to the street corner on a cold recent morning to offer the workers hope.

“None of you should think that just because you’re illegal there’s nothing you can do when they cheat you. That’s not true,” Gonzalez said in Spanish to 40 or so men gathered around him.

The talk was one of the opening shots of an “adopt-a-corner” campaign launched this month by a dozen immigrant rights and church organizations. Under the program, the Legal Aid Foundation, the Coalition for Humane Immigrants’ Rights of Los Angeles and other groups are sending volunteers to a dozen Los Angeles street corners.

Gonzalez told the men they should ask for at least the hourly minimum wage-- $4.25--and explained to them the protections of the Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. He urged the laborers not to cooperate with the Immigration and Naturalization Service if they are arrested. “When you tell them what country you’re from, it’s evidence they can use against you,” he said.

The advocacy groups in the campaign say the number of men looking for work on Southern California street corners has increased dramatically since last year, when provisions of the new immigration law that penalize employers who hire illegal immigrants took effect.

Immigration officials say they receive complaints every day from Southern California residents and police agencies about the laborers. In July, the INS announced it would raid sites where the laborers gather and impound the vehicles of employers who repeatedly hire them.

Last week, the INS raided a Santa Ana site and arrested 104 people, INS spokesman Joe Flanders said. “We intend to keep it up,” he said.

Todd Howland of El Rescate, a refugee support agency, said the campaign was started because of the effect of the new law and the raids on illegal immigrant workers.

“These are individuals, human beings who have been forced out on the street to find work,” Howland said. “We felt we had to do something to keep this last avenue open.”

In Koreatown, as in other places where the workers gather, merchants and local residents say the men might be disadvantaged, but they are also a nuisance. Each morning the laborers block traffic, chase away business and leave trash in the streets, the merchants say.

The scene at Olympic and Mariposa is often chaotic. When one prospective employer stopped his pickup truck, workers tried to force the door open and climb into the cab. Intimidated, the man drove off without hiring anyone.

“When they come in, they make a crowd around the customers,” said Kim Myung, owner of the Uptown Nursery, where workers gather around the entrance. “Lady customers don’t come in here because they’re scared.”

Howland said the best way to address these complaints may be to set up organized hiring sites where day laborers can gather without bothering anyone.

Belief in Organization

“We have to convince (the laborers) that organizing is the way to go,” he said. “It’s difficult because we’re coming to the area as strangers.”

Rene Mejia, 39, a Salvadoran immigrant and resident of Silver Lake, volunteered to help organize his fellow workers at Olympic and Mariposa. He said most of the laborers would prefer a pickup site on a vacant lot or some other place away from the streets.

“They just want to be able to look for work--even badly paid work--without having to worry about la migra ,” he said, using the Spanish slang for the INS.

“The majority have families and children to support,” Mejia added. “When you think about it, it’s practically a crime that they’re arrested because they’re looking for work.”

After Cervantes and Gonzalez finished their talk at the site, they were peppered with questions. One of the workers said he had not been paid for a day’s work, while another man, from Peru, showed burn scars he said were caused on a roofing job. Cervantes gave the men leaflets listing half a dozen agencies where they can receive free legal advice.

In September, El Rescate and other groups worked with Glendale officials to establish a pickup site in an industrial area of south Glendale after residents and merchants complained about the workers gathering at a downtown street corner.

City Manager David Ramsay said the new site has been a success. “There’s not the large congregations on the (downtown) corner that we had in the past,” he said. “We’ve had lots of help from the advocacy groups and business people got involved. It was a unique team and it worked well.”

The success of the Glendale site led the City Council in December to postpone for one year action on a proposed ordinance that would have made it illegal to solicit work on street corners.

Workers now contribute money to pay for a portable toilet at the site, a preschool operated by the Catholic Youth Organization. Jose Luis Trejo, 22, one of about 40 workers who stood waiting for work at the preschool Saturday, said he takes an hourlong bus ride to Glendale from his Pico-Union home, bypassing other pickup sites on Pico Boulevard.

“On Pico, people are willing to work for as little as $3 an hour,” Trejo said. “Here it’s more organized.” Trejo said that the laborers at the Glendale site rarely accept work for less that $5 an hour.

The going wage is much lower at the Olympic Boulevard corner in Koreatown where the groups have only begun to organize the workers.

Substandard Pay Offers

“The bosses come and contract us for $20 or $30 a day,” said Felipe Chavez, 41. “Some of us ask for $5 an hour, but the bosses say ‘Forget it.’ ”

Attorney Fran Bernstein of the Legal Aid Foundation, which has “adopted” a much-frequented pickup site on Sawtelle Boulevard in West Los Angeles, said the workers should note the names of their employers, along with the license number of an employer’s vehicle. Aliens are protected by state and federal labor laws, she said.

INS spokesman Flanders countered bluntly, however, that illegal immigrants are not protected by the law. “They have no work rights,” he said. “The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 makes it unlawful to hire anyone who is not authorized to work in this country.”

According to a federal appeals court decision handed down in June, illegal alien workers are protected by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. In effect, while it is illegal to hire laborers without work permits, the workers are protected by federal labor laws when they are employed.

For many involved in the adopt-a-corner campaign, the question of the laborers’ right to work is not only a legal but also a moral question.

“We’re doing this in the context of the dignity of human beings,” said Father Gregory Boyle, pastor of the Dolores Mission, who offered the downtown church as an alternative hiring site for illegal immigrants in August. “Somehow, these employers must see these workers as being worth less. Otherwise they would pay them at least the minimum wage.”