Hiring Center for Day Laborers OKd : Malibu: A private group hopes a center at Zuma Beach will stop complaints about day laborers congregating along Pacific Coast Highway.

In an effort to reduce complaints that too many day laborers are congregating along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, a private nonprofit group has been given the go-ahead from county officials to open a hiring center for the workers at Zuma Beach.

“We think (the hiring center) provides a benefit to the workers, and at the same time addresses the concerns of some in the business community,” said Capt. Don Mauro, who oversees the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Malibu station.

The hiring center, modeled after a center set up last October by the city of Los Angeles at Harbor Regional Park, is scheduled to open May 5 at a one-acre site owned by the county near the entrance to Zuma Beach.

It will be operated largely by volunteers from the Malibu Coalition for the Homeless and the Dayworker. The newly formed group is headed by Honey Coatsworth, founder and director of the Artifac Tree, a nonprofit thrift shop in Malibu involved in charitable causes.

“My own view is that a solid effort to help these people is long overdue, and we’re pleased to be a part of it,” Coatsworth said.

An estimated 100 to 150 day laborers, many of whom are from Mexico and Central America, commute to Malibu from Los Angeles each day hoping to find jobs clearing brush or helping at construction sites.

Many of the workers come on Southern California Rapid Transit District buses, getting off at one of several gathering spots, from Las Flores Road near the east end of the seaside community to Trancas Canyon Road on the west. The Zuma Beach site is also served by RTD buses.

Some merchants who have pushed for the hiring center say privately that the plan may offer the best chance to reduce problems they say have resulted from laborers congregating in front of their businesses, which they say has driven away customers.

“No one wants to talk about the visual blight aspect of it for fear of being considered insensitive, but we’re definitely looking for some relief,” said one business owner, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

Jerry Alexander, who owns Alexander’s Trancas Market, where laborers frequently gather looking for work, called the Zuma Beach plan promising, saying that it “offers the opportunity to help people in ways they’re not currently being helped.”

Modeled on the Harbor City center set up in Los Angeles, the Malibu center will provide day laborers with breakfast, English instruction and access to public restrooms. It will operate from 6 a.m. until noon every day but Sunday.

Employers seeking workers there will be asked to register, and a minimum wage of $5 an hour will be asked, although not required, Coatsworth said.

Employers who hire undocumented immigrants can be fined under the 1986 federal Immigration Reform and Control Act. But, as with the Harbor City center, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service agents have agreed to stay away from the Zuma Beach site if it helps alleviate congestion along Pacific Coast Highway.

The idea for the center came about several months ago after merchants complained that too many day laborers loitering near their businesses were intimidating customers and hurting business.

The Artifac Tree agreed to coordinate the effort and set aside $10,000 for the project. One of the volunteers at the shop donated another $10,000.

For several months, volunteers from the Artifac Tree have been providing hot meals three mornings a week at the four primary sites along Pacific Coast Highway where day laborers congregate.

“We feel like we’ve won the trust of a lot of these people, and for several weeks now we’ve been telling them to spread the word about the Zuma Beach center,” volunteer Connie Fox said.

Mauro said that once the Zuma Beach center is open, deputies will step up patrols at sites along the highway where the laborers currently gather, encouraging them and would-be employers to use the hiring center.

“I would not use the term crackdown, but if (the hiring center) is to be successful, there will have to be a law enforcement component at the old locations,” he said.

“The new center will be a good thing,” said laborer Jose Ibarra, who said he commutes from near downtown Los Angeles to a spot near Pacific Coast Highway and Trancas Canyon Road each morning.

However, others interviewed there and at two other Malibu locations where the men frequently congregate were not so sure.

“If everybody goes there, then there may be even less work for us than there is now,” said a worker, who said he often is able to find work only one or two days a week. “For myself, I will have to wait and see.”