Refurbished Veterans Club Now to Serve as Hiring Hall : Employment: First privately run and privately financed hiring hall in the county is set to open on Oct. 21 to aid migrant farm workers and others get jobs.

The old Veterans of Foreign Wars Club, where many a Valley Center vet used to party hearty, will have a new coat of paint and a new mission when it reopens Oct. 21 as a hiring hall for migrant farm workers and others.

The bright yellow building with an enclosed patio shaded by an ancient oak will serve the purpose perfectly, attorney Michael Lennie said.

Lennie is the driving force behind the first privately run and privately financed hiring hall in the county, the Valley Center Jobs Center Inc.

Erwin Jones, then president of the local Rotary Club, came up with the idea nearly three years ago at a Rotary Club retreat, Lennie said, “and I followed him as president and followed up on the idea. We talked to other clubs--the Lions, the Optimists, the Kiwanis, the Chamber of Commerce, the Ministerial Fellowship and the North County Interfaith Council--and these seven groups formed the coalition to start this out.”

Getting the groups together brought community backing and was very helpful in getting an $18,000 grant from the county, Lennie said.

He also has had inquiries from other cities seeking a combined effort in attempts to gain county funds. Encinitas faces loss of its city funding for its hiring hall at year’s end, and Carlsbad’s program is also seeking funds, he said.

Several other North County communities, including Fallbrook and Poway, are planning similar jobs programs, “and they feel that it might be helpful if we all went into this (fund search) together.”

The Valley Center hiring hall’s only paid employee, Sylvester Lopez, who will begin work Monday, is seeking volunteers to help him. He also is looking for a few essentials to complete the center’s furnishings: a mop and bucket, a vacuum cleaner, a water cooler, a coffee maker and a Ping-Pong table for the patio.

Lopez will begin by informing migrant workers about the new hiring hall and by seeking donations from within and without the Valley Center community. The goal is to raise at least $31,000--the amount organizers estimate as the hall’s yearly expenses.

Lennie said the task of fund-raising was made easier recently when the state granted the Valley Center Jobs Center tax-exempt status, allowing donors to write off their contributions on their state and federal tax returns.

“We’ll go around and put up colorful posters in Spanish, announcing the opening, and we’ll get the word out at Spanish Masses at the church and through other organizations,” Lennie said.

He expects most of the job seekers to be Latinos, many of them homeless and most of them agricultural workers, because Valley Center is an agricultural community. But he said the center will be open to anyone who needs it, including older people trying to get back into the job market.

A San Diego State University sociology department study showed that there are as many as 4,000 homeless migrant workers in the greater Valley Center area.

Lopez, a Los Angeles native who worked in the Imperial Valley fields as a youth, “seems the perfect person for this job,” Lennie said. Lopez, after 22 years in the Marine Corps, went back to college, and last year earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration.

“From working in the fields myself, I understand the workers’ problems and also the community’s problems,” Lopez explained. “Now that I am retired and have another income, I can pick and chose what job I want. And I think that this is a fine opportunity.”

Lopez spent Friday at the Carlsbad hiring hall, getting “on-the-job training” from staffers there.

“I’m really impressed with what I see here,” Lopez said of his Carlsbad hiring hall visit, “and I’m sure it will work in Valley Center. I’ve been going around to the different clubs there, and I’m encouraged. People seem to care.”

Employers will benefit from the program because the job center will qualify its applicants as legal workers, filling out necessary immigration forms and “taking the responsibility for seeing that the non-residents have the necessary papers,” Lennie said.

“The process can be a hassle and costly for employers who face hefty fines for hiring undocumented workers.”

Lennie, who now heads the consortium that will operate the Valley Center Job Center, stressed that the group plans to learn from the mistakes of other San Diego County migrant worker programs in Encinitas and Carlsbad, and to seek both government grants and corporate contributions to expand the project to include English classes, job training, health care and counseling.

Lennie said the jobs center depends on volunteers and donations. Without one or the other, it will fail.

“My aim in all this is to aid the people on the bottom rung of the jobs ladder, to help them to climb it,” Lennie said.

“I won’t say that others aren’t getting behind this because they view it as a way to get the migrant workers off the streets,” where they congregate every morning to await job offers, Lennie said, “but I think that there is much more we can do for these workers than they can do on their own.”

Migrant workers congregate along Valley Center Road, he said, especially at its intersection with Cole Grade Road, 2 miles or so from the Job Center site at Sunset and Valley Center roads.

The two men estimate they will be able to place about 20 or so workers a day when the center opens. A onetime, $3-per-worker fee will be charged to employers. Hiring hall supporters say the fee is low enough to discourage employers from hiring day laborers off the streets while at the same time helping to defray hiring hall costs.

“We’ll be doing this as long as the community supports us,” Lennie said. “We hope we can keep it going for a long, long time.”