ORANGE : City OKs Center for Hiring Dayworkers

The City Council on Tuesday approved the opening of a hiring hall for day laborers who now search for work each morning along East Chapman Avenue.

The council allocated $95,000 for grading, paving, landscaping, supplies and other start-up costs, including salaries for two new employees through the end of the fiscal year. City staff members estimate that the center will cost about $6,000 a month to operate.

The city will take possession of property at McPherson Road and Chapman Avenue today or Thursday and open the center there March 26, said Karen Nobrega, senior assistant to the city manager. The center will operate out of a trailer on the property, which the city is purchasing through eminent domain from the Southern Pacific railroad for $260,000, Nobrega said.

Four weeks after the center opens, the city will begin enforcing two day-laborer ordinances passed last September. The laws prohibit day laborers from soliciting work on city streets and in parking lots, with maximum penalties of a $500 fine and a six-month jail sentence.

The measures are intended to clear streets of the prospective laborers, mostly young Latino men seeking temporary work.

“The main thrust of this is to help protect the people in East Orange,” Mayor Don E. Smith said. The mayor said he gets calls from people who complain of losing business along Chapman Avenue because of the day laborers who wait there to be hired.

The center is scheduled to operate from 6 a.m. to noon, Monday through Friday, and 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturdays.

City officials said the center will only be open to legal residents or those who are eligible for amnesty under immigration reform programs. Smith said that city employees will check workers’ documentation but that the city will not assume liability for the workers’ status.

Workers will participate in a lottery-type drawing to determine the order in which jobs are handed out. Employers will be able to either call the center to list a job opening or come in person.

Although the primary role of the center will be to match workers with employers, city officials say they also plan to use it to refer workers to other community services, such as English classes.