BREA : Job Center Connects Work With Jobless

For eight years, Mike Madriaga worked for a trucking company in the San Fernando Valley. Two years ago, he was laid off and has been out of a steady job since.

“I tried employment agencies. . . . Not much luck there,” said Madriaga, 59, of Brea. “I checked newspaper ads, sent in applications, nothing has come back yet. I tried the state employment office, there was nothing there for me. . . . Now, I’m here.”

Wearing a heavy jacket, a green scarf around his neck and a radio headset to while away the time, Madriaga and more than 100 day laborers were at the Brea Job Center on Thursday waiting for potential employers to come by and hire them.

Madriaga had been at the Job Center since 6 a.m., when it opened at its new location on Cypress Avenue. But four hours later, there were no offers yet.

“There have been days that I get work, but lately, it has been slow,” said Madriaga, at one time a construction worker in Phoenix.

The Job Center was not originally intended for people like Madriaga. It was established two years ago in what city officials described as a “humane” way to deal with the problem of day laborers, mostly immigrants, milling around street corners waiting for potential employers to pick them up.

But because of the lingering recession, workers who have been laid off somewhere else, including women, are now using the job center to look for whatever job is available.

A Job Center staffer said an average of 14 women come to the center each day, seeking such jobs as baby-sitters, housecleaners or to do janitorial work.

Since March, the center has been open exclusively to Brea residents, said Job Center manager Alex Moreno. However, those who have been coming to the center before March have been allowed to come back. On average, 115 workers arrive at the center each day, Moreno said.

One Job Center regular, Rodolfo Maciado, 30, of Garden Grove, used to work with a company installing pools. Last year, it went bankrupt and like Madriaga, he could not find other work.

Since coming to the Job Center, Maciado said, he gets three to four hours of work a day. Sometimes, he works five days a week, earning $40 per day, mostly as a gardener or landscaper.

An immigrant from Mexico, Maciado said he used to hang out on street corners in Santa Ana, Westminster and Orange before the Brea Job Center opened its doors. He got his full-time job with the swimming pool company through the Job Center.

“This center has helped me a lot,” Maciado said.

City Manager Frank Benest said the city spends $40,000 a year for the operation of the job center, which is staffed by two part-time employees and five volunteers. He said the center also provides English classes, job training and teaches survival skills.

The benefits far outweigh the cost, Benest said. “There are no day workers hanging around on street corners,” he said. “It is not the perfect solution, but it deals with the program in a progressive and humane way. We pride ourselves in doing it the right way.”

Moreno said there are plans to expand the center’s program to include classes in plumbing, food serving, gardening and construction labor, if enough money is raised for Regional Occupational Program instructors.

In two years, the Job Center has earned three awards, including a Helen Puttman Award from the League of California cities.

The key to the Job Center’s success is, “we treat these people as a segment of the community. We do not play and try to get their trust. We send them to work, nothing else. This is not a personal relationship--it’s a working relationship,” he said.