Santa Clarita Rejects Ban on Day Laborers Seeking Work

The Santa Clarita City Council, at the urging of immigrant-rights groups, declined Tuesday night to approve an ordinance that would have made it a misdemeanor for day laborers to solicit work on city streets or sidewalks.

Instead, the council agreed to develop what Councilman Carl Boyer III called a “humane solution” to the traffic problem caused by scores of men who gather each morning along San Fernando Road in Newhall to find a day’s work.

Boyer and other council members suggested that a building might be designated as a hiring hall where workers could gather in an orderly fashion. Members of the Coalition for Humane Immigrants Rights of Los Angeles offered to help the city address the problem.

The proposed ordinance was prompted by complaints from motorists and merchants about laborers who dash out into traffic to attract the attention of potential employers, often contractors working in the area’s burgeoning construction industry.

The council members said that their main concern was traffic safety and that they did not want to enforce immigration laws or hinder the laborers from finding work.

American Tradition

“These people are practicing one of America’s traditions of hustling for a job,” Councilman Dennis Koontz said.

Only one city in Los Angeles County, Redondo Beach, has an ordinance similar to the one rejected by the Santa Clarita City Council.

Other cities in the county have developed other ways to control day laborers.

Last year, the Glendale City Council allowed a religious organization to establish a gathering site for workers as an alternative to adopting a ban similar to that considered by Santa Clarita. That program was developed with the cooperation of some of the same immigrant-rights groups that appeared before the council Tuesday.

In Los Angeles, City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores last year proposed a ban on day laborers soliciting work, but later endorsed a $90,000 pilot program to establish seven gathering sites for workers. That program was approved in February, and the first site is scheduled to open in the Harbor area next month.