PLATFORM : Toiling Over the Problem of Day Laborers : Location just one problem with city’s plan to place a hiring site on Balboa Place.

The city should be discouraging this type of congregating for employment, not underwriting it.

It is scab labor, below minimum wage. It raises questions of liability: Where is the liability if a worker gets hurt, or protection for the employer if a worker attacks him? How many centers will it take to handle all the people in the city that are doing this and will in the future?

This is begging on the streets for work. It is not Los Angeles, and it is not the United States. We are overrun with a decaying way of life in Los Angeles, and our elected officials have allowed it.

If our government is not willing to enact and enforce a law against loitering, such as we used to have, then at least it should give some prior thought to proper locations for these centers.

Presently, the men assemble across the street from a residential neighborhood where they often park. There are no public toilets, which leads to using streets and residential properties for this purpose. Traffic is blocked when employers stop to pick the men up. If not working, they wait along Roscoe and Balboa Place, both of which are strewn with trash.

The city wants to turn part of its maintenance yard behind the Home Depot, near where the men gather, into an official day labor site with city staff. But the officials have moved too fast, without determining how to protect the surrounding neighborhoods.

Would the amenities being planned, like portable toilets, really solve all the problems?

Will the men really stay at the center? If successful, the program will draw more workers and more employers, perhaps offsetting any gains.

The city already has some of these “official” sites, set up with federal grants. I have been to the one in North Hollywood, on Sherman Way near Lankershim Boulevard. It is in an industrial area, far from homes, and seems to work well. I saw just a few day workers hanging around on the perimeter of the site.

Balboa Place is too close to houses. A better location would be on Woodley Avenue, between Saticoy Street and Roscoe Boulevard. That’s an industrial area with no homes nearby.

We also need to make sure the men would actually go there. An ordinance such as those in Orange and Laguna Beach, which prohibit job solicitation on parking lots and public rights of way, could accomplish that.

If the city must sanction this way of hiring workers, it should at least do some thoughtful study beforehand.