Day Laborers See No Light at End of Tunnel

Eric Reyes, a veteran job-seeker, is almost wistful about the old days on the corner: when he could afford to spurn sub-minimum-wage offers, when the mad dashes toward motorists offering employment were not quite so desperate, when the fortunate could even hope to find chamba (work) generating paychecks for weeks.

“Now, most of us wait for hours and go home without anything,” laments the street-smart Mexico City native, yet another morning wasted competing with men who don thick safety belts to brace themselves for the back-breaking menial jobs.

Economic hard times are battering Los Angeles’ curbside hiring bazaars and the waves of new immigrants that have forever altered the region’s socioeconomic dynamic. The recession-spurred austerity of homeowners and other mainstays of day labor--construction, landscaping, light industry and small business--have driven down already depressed salaries and intensified the fierce competition inherent in the vibrant corner subculture.

“There’s fewer jobs out there and more guys looking,” said Anne Kamsvaag, an attorney who until recently monitored employment issues for the Coalition of Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles.

Each day, thousands of day laborers gravitate to the inner-city intersections, suburban thoroughfares and rural turnouts where work is contracted. They represent the bottom rung of the immigrant employment ladder, generally those lacking job contacts. The tantalizing lure: a prospect of earning as much in an hour as one could earn in a day back home.

Los Angeles has about three dozen unofficial drive-by hiring sites, not including hardware stores and other makeshift spots. Many job-seekers commute long distances to outlying hiring zones, although suburban opposition, police scrutiny and fear of la migra (immigration authorities) leave others wary of venturing too far.

“It’s bad enough that people chase us, insult us and call us criminals, while the cops and la migra harass us,” said an exasperated Juan Duglas, a Guatemalan father of five who is among the many would-be laborers gathered at the bustling intersection of La Brea Avenue and Pico Boulevard, across the street from a former mini-mall torched during last year’s riots. “Now there’s not even any work. My children back in my country are suffering from hunger.”

Scoring jobs on the streets was never easy, even during the robust years of the 1980s, when cheap and plentiful immigrant labor helped fuel a regional economic boom. Finding work has long demanded a singular mix of determination, instinct and luck. And patience. But the recession, exacerbated recently by rains that have disrupted employment, has spawned a sense of raw desperation evident in the ever-more intense swarming around motorists seeking services.

“Five dollars! Five dollars!” young men implore as they clench the windows and door handles of a white van that has paused at the corner of Pico and Main Street, its occupants offering a paltry $4 hourly wage for an unloading task.

The hiring zone here is a gritty, graffiti-splattered square block favored by recent arrivals, many illegal immigrants. Shady corner bosses bully newcomers. Missions provide meals and a place to crash. Nearby, grimy brick edifices house textile lofts where immigrant women toil for wages earned by the piece. Storefronts catering to a wholesale clientele do a bustling trade in trendy athletic wear and T-shirts, particularly those with African-American motifs.

“The cost of living keeps rising, and we keep earning less,” said Nevio Gomez, whose irregular wages, coupled with his wife’s $180-a-week ironing job, barely cover the $450 monthly rent and allow the pair to provide for their 10-year-old son.

He and others, sharing their thoughts on a recent morning, view their predicaments with deep ambivalence: Their low-wage toil provides a living, but their sweat also sustains a wider prosperity that largely excludes them. Yet many outsiders continue to view the job solicitors with suspicion. “Where would this city be without us?” Gomez asks, gesturing toward the looming towers of downtown, gleaming sentinels of affluence.

On a given day, laborers say, perhaps 1 in 5 may find part-time employment, usually for $4.25 per hour, the legal minimum. The once-palpable possibility of garnering long-term work is ever more chimerical. More and more prevalent are the cheats: Unscrupulous bosses, themselves often immigrants, who offer sub-minimum wages, pay less than promised, or abandon their charges without paychecks, often in distant locales.

“The patrones (bosses) know they can get people cheaper now,” said Rogelio Pena, a slim young man in a Raiders cap who arrived without papers from Mexico seven years ago, eventually acquired legal status and at one point earned $14 an hour in construction. “I’d say there’s 80% less work than when I first arrived,” added Pena, among perhaps 100 men gathered at a city-run site in a sun-scorched lot beneath a grid of high-tension wires in industrial North Hollywood.

Like many, Pena studied a profession--bookkeeping--in his homeland, but economic realities forced him to abandon school. In fact, the seemingly ragtag street-side assemblages include, along with unskilled laborers and former field hands, a mix that defies stereotypes. Plumbers, bricklayers, masons and other craftsmen are joined by a sprinkling of former doctors, lawyers, teachers and other professionals--the latter a testament to the last decade’s economic pummeling of Latin American middle classes. Many tote English-language study books and speak hopefully of putting their children through college.

Edgardo Garcia, a philosophical sort, was a teacher, nurse and community organizer in Guatemala. Fears for his safety prompted him to leave, he said, and now he spends his mornings at La Brea and Pico. Garcia jots down his experiences back in his cramped downtown apartment, which he shares with three immigrants from Mexico and another from El Salvador.

“The truth is, I’ve learned a lot about humanity here on the streets,” the lightly bearded Garcia said. He beckons forlornly toward a slowing pickup, another day passing without earning anything to help care for his four children in Central America. “One has to adapt oneself to the circumstances. We survive as best we can.”

Nearby, a cluster of African-American men--throwbacks to an earlier era of street hiring--wait stoically alongside Latino immigrants.

“When I first started coming here, you could choose your job,” said Leroy Fikes, a lanky Mississippi native and three-decade veteran of the corner, who hands out business cards (“Handyman”) and sports a Las Vegas cap. “People trusted you then,” he added. “Now it’s every man for himself and God for us all.”

U.S. citizens, though, remain the odd exception on the dispirited corners.

“California is finished,” concluded a fed-up Angel Hernandez, a chunky, opinionated downtown regular on Pico who views the job scarcity fatalistically, a portent that signals the demise of the promise that drew so many to Southern California.

“You know where we Latinos are going next?” Hernandez confided to a visitor. “Canada. There’s lot of work there, and no one bothers us. Canada.”