Working Out a Solution : Store Tries a New Approach to End Day-Laborer Problems

They congregate every morning outside Grossman’s, a large building supply store on Mission Boulevard, hoping to find a day’s work at $5 an hour, or whatever.

Most are Latinos who have been out of work for a long time. Many have families to feed. They begin trickling in at 6 a.m. Two hours later, there are 50 or 60 men in the parking lot seeking jobs from anyone who looks like a hiring contractor.

There is desperation in their manner as the men rush toward a vehicle. Sometimes, they jump in the back of a pickup truck before they find out whether there is a job. Complicating matters is the fact that some do not speak English.

It’s an unnerving experience for drivers who find themselves besieged by day laborers while on a simple errand to the hardware store.

“Anyone who stops gets jumped. It’s intimidating,” said Grossman’s manager, Michele Case.

The store and its customers tried to solve the problem by calling the police. But after two months and 55 arrests, they realized that approach was not working.

So, Grossman’s and the Police Department, in cooperation with the Pomona Valley Latino Chamber of Commerce and a local church, are trying a new tack.

The store has assigned an area of the parking lot to the day laborers and put a canopy over some benches. It plans to notify contractors that the laborers are available for work.

The store hopes this plan will work better than did police intervention. At first, officers warned the laborers that they were trespassing and subject to arrest. When the problem persisted, police began issuing citations.

Raul Palacios, 21, who has not been able to find a regular job for a year, was one of those cited. He does not believe that his aggressive search for employment is a criminal act.

“I tore the ticket up because it was unfair,” he said.

Citations did not discourage the throng from gathering, so police began making arrests, handcuffing some of the job-seekers and carting them off to jail.

Jesus Martinez, 36, who has a pregnant wife and a 14-month-old daughter to support, said he was arrested. After posting $250 bail, he was back outside Grossman’s looking for work the next week, willing to risk another arrest for a long-shot chance at one payday.

The chamber sees the parking lot area as a temporary solution. The group has an ambitious plan for a hiring hall so the men can seek work in a more orderly way.

Francisco Espinosa, executive vice president of the chamber, said the group hopes to establish a hiring office in the commercial center that adjoins Grossman’s, where construction jobs can be solicited and the men’s skills matched to available work.

For the time being, Pomona Police Chief Lloyd Wood said he hopes that the laborers will confine themselves to the designated area.

Wood said police had to intervene because store customers were being harassed and women were being subjected to lewd remarks. He hopes that further arrests will be unnecessary.

The chief said he would prefer to focus his officers’ attention on “crime and criminals.”

“I’m not interested in this, . . . “ he said. “I don’t view it as a police problem; it’s a social problem.”

Some of the day laborers said they have been mistreated by police and employers.

One man said a police officer called them dogs. Another showed scrapes on his wrist that he attributed to handcuffs. Others said they have been tricked into working without pay.

Eusebio Quinlantan, 50, said he worked 12 hours for a man who promised to pick him up for another job the next day but who never returned and never paid him.

Fabian Nunez, a Latino activist and local businessman, said he surveyed the group that had gathered at the site one day last week and found that only a few were undocumented. Undocumented workers, he said, avoid gathering places that could become targets of immigration raids by federal authorities.

Police Sgt. Larry Zambrano said immigration status is not a police concern. As a matter of policy, police will not call immigration authorities, even if they know that some laborers are here illegally, he said.

Although Nunez said a number of laborers have claimed that they were harassed and abused by police, Zambrano said no one has filed a complaint with police.

Nunez, who has been critical of the Police Department’s treatment of immigrants in the past, said the department deserves praise for its willingness to work with the Latino chamber and Grossman’s to find a solution to a difficult problem.

Nunez said the men who are seeking work are not troublemakers.

“Clearly these people are a productive group,” he said. “They are not standing in the unemployment line. They are not selling drugs on the corner. These are people who are out here to work to feed their families.”