Division of Labor : Sweeps at Curbside Hiring Site Give Black, Latino Workers Common Ground

Maybe it’s only a language problem, but the two groups of men who gather each morning on the corner of 83rd Street and Vermont Avenue don’t talk much to each other.

The men are painters and day laborers, about 50 in all, half of them black and the rest Spanish-speaking Latino immigrants. On Thursday, as on most days, Latinos and blacks stood in separate groups, each claiming its own piece of sidewalk as the men waited for potential employers.

Most of the workers said that race was not the only difference between the two groups of men at the informal hiring site, which is next to a small paint store parking lot.

“The Spanish people are out there and they’re willing to go for less and less money,” said Rodney Sloan, 36, glancing across the street at the group of Latino workers. “There’s two totally different cultures. That’s where the problem starts.”

Informal Hiring Sites

The parking lot is only one of several dozen informal day-laborer hiring sites on streets throughout the city. At nearly all of the sites, the vast majority of the laborers are immigrants from Mexico and Central America. The 83rd Street hiring site, however, is ethnically mixed, split evenly between blacks and Latinos.

Most of the black workers are journeymen painters who have found temporary employment at the site for decades. A few have their own small subcontracting firms and stand on the street corner only when business slows. Typically, the black painters say they will only accept wages of $80 to $125 per day.

Many of the Latinos are, by contrast, illegal immigrants who say that besides painting, they will try just about any kind of work, including roofing, gardening and construction. For them, $40 is an acceptable daily wage.

“I’ve done everything,” said Raul Marquez, a 29-year-old immigrant who said he works to support a wife and children he left behind in Mexico. “I’ve worked in garment factories, I’ve sold paletas (frozen juice bars), everything.”

Asked why Latinos at the site will accept lower pay, a worker from El Salvador answered: “Of course we earn less. We have less experience.”

Despite their differences, both black and Latino workers said that when police began attempts to chase them away from the hiring site this summer, they began to recognize they share a common plight.

Sgt. Don Watkins of the Los Angeles Police Department’s 77th Street Division said police began the sweeps in response to complaints from residents of the neighborhood.

‘It’s an Ongoing Thing’

Officers tell the men that they are loitering and order them to leave, Watkins said. “It’s an ongoing thing. . . . When it gets too much out of hand we sweep them out. But they’re back the next day.”

Workers said they believe that the complaints are a result of an increasing number of men gathering at the hiring site. City officials and workers agree that the size of the group has nearly doubled in the last three to four months.

Tony Smith, a 33-year-old painter and father of three, said he considered the police sweeps an injustice.

“All of a sudden, one day the police came up and said, ‘You’ve got to leave,’ ” Smith said. “I don’t think we’re doing anything wrong.”

Smith’s friend, Melvin Honeywood, 32, added: “I don’t care what nobody says. I have a family to support. No one can run us off this corner.”

Half a block away from Honeywood and Smith on the same sidewalk, a group of Latino workers expressed the same sentiments in Spanish.

“We come here because we have kids to feed, the rent to pay and insurance payments,” said Arturo Marroquin, a 43-year-old Salvadoran immigrant and father of four.

The police sweeps and neighborhood complaints led to a meeting last Friday that brought blacks and Latino workers together for the first time. The workers met with a representative of Councilman Robert Farrell’s office, Jose Angel Ponce.

“Ethnicity is not an issue,” Ponce concluded after the meeting. “Even though all the raza (Latinos) stay on one side of the street and the blacks on the other, they respect each other.”

Also present at the meeting was Nancy Cervantes, the coordinator of a city program to establish hiring sites for day laborers. Cervantes acted as interpreter between the two groups. She said the men discussed several solutions to their problem, including a proposal that they create their own informal hiring hall at a nearby social service center.

Another meeting between the workers and city officials is planned for Oct. 13, but Cervantes said future progress might be difficult because of the language barrier.

“I think if people could talk to each other, there could be a lot of breakthroughs,” she said.

Hope for Solution

Although the two groups were still not talking much Thursday, both black and Latino workers said separately they hope they can work out a solution.

“We all have families. . . . We shouldn’t be fighting with each other,” said Raul Marquez.

Sloan said he would like to see the two groups agree on an established minimum wage. “There might be some bad feelings, but if we had an arrangement where a guy could make a decent wage, it would be all right,” he said.