ORANGE : Hiring Hall Gets Off to a Slow Start

Anselmo Hernandez won the lottery on Monday, but instead of a million dollars he got a job.

Because he drew a low number, Hernandez, 33, was the first dayworker to be hired through the city’s new hiring hall. To the envy of others waiting for jobs, he drove off in a white El Camino to help swimming pool contractor John Kliese move dirt in Long Beach.

Kliese needs extra workers on an irregular basis, usually for only one or two days a week. He used to drive slowly along Chapman Avenue where day laborers have gathered for years on street corners. But then he read in a newspaper that the city planned to open a hiring hall, and on Monday he showed up to hire some help.

Hernandez was among an estimated 250 workers drawn to the hiring hall by brochures that city employees distributed along Chapman Avenue in recent weeks. And he was one of only six laborers hired: Only four contractors had come to the hall by noon when it closed.

City officials say they will try to attract more employers by posting signs along Chapman Avenue, advertising in newspapers and telephoning local contractors to spread the word about the hall.

The hall, housed in a trailer on McPherson Avenue north of Chapman, was opened after residents and merchants complained that the workers who congregated in the area were lowering property values, discouraging business and causing traffic jams as employers stopped to hire them.

For now, the city is giving dayworkers a chance to find and use the hall. But in late April, police will begin enforcing a pair of day-laborer ordinances passed last September that prohibit workers from soliciting jobs on city streets. Violators could be fined up to $500 and sentenced to jail for up to six months.

“I know this has got to be a step in the right direction,” said Eric Bogart, a sandwich shop owner on Chapman Avenue.

Outside the hiring hall on Monday, several workers said they came to the United States in search of steady work and money.

“Everybody comes to work. When the people go back to Mexico, they tell them there’s a lot of work here,” said Alfredo Jimenez, 19, who came here from Veracruz last year. “The money over there is worthless and the money over here is worth a lot.”

Speaking through an interpreter, Jimenez said it takes him about 10 days of work in Mexico to earn what he can earn in one day in the United States.

Pascual Alvarez said the $80 to $100 he averages for two days’ work each week is more than he made in a week as a full-time truck driver in Mexico City.

But some say that there is a price to working north of the border. Many miss the families they left behind. Once they are here, laborers say, dreams of big money remain elusive because work in Orange County is often hard to find. Some go weeks without working. Others complain that they are not paid for their work.

Many of the dayworkers interviewed Monday said they will try using the center but are worried that immigration officials may show up.

Workers are required to fill out U.S Immigration and Naturalization Service employment forms and provide officials at the hiring hall with some sort of identification. But employers are responsible for verifying the workers’ legal status.

“We’re not working with the INS,” said Mayor Don Smith. “We want this to work.”

The hiring hall is scheduled to operate from 6 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday, and 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturdays. Employers can call ahead to line up workers, requesting those with specialized skills, such as carpentry, plumbing or silk-screening.