Organized Labor : Plan Might Ease Chaos of Laguna’s Hiring Site for Dayworkers

Concerned about the sometimes chaotic conditions at the day laborer hiring lot on Laguna Canyon Road, resident Patrick O’Flanagan is helping the workers get organized.

The day laborers, who now swarm any car that pulls onto the lot, have agreed to rein themselves in by taking numbers when they arrive in the morning and allowing a monitor to call them when it’s their turn to be linked with a prospective worker, said O’Flanagan, who began conducting informal English lessons at the site 10 months ago and has become concerned about the workers’ welfare.

The workers also plan to form a group, the Assn. of Laguna Beach Day Workers, with officers elected by the 60 to 80 workers who gather there each day. Such an organization appears to be a first; officials said they were unaware of similar associations elsewhere in Orange County, although there are other cities with hiring areas.

Members, who must pay dues of $1 per week, will wear photo identification badges O’Flanagan designed on his home computer. Friends who are professional photographers have volunteered to take the pictures, he said. The city’s Police Department has agreed to laminate the cards, which O’Flanagan said would be used by a majority of the workers who regularly seek jobs at the site.

The badges will identify the workers while instilling in them a sense of status and belonging, O’Flanagan said. Membership in the association will not be a requirement to use the lot, which is open to anybody.

“They love the idea of having a badge with their name and picture on it,” said O’Flanagan, a retired investment banker who has also played professional football in Canada and has written for TV and film. “Now they’re not just a bum out there storming a car. They’re a certified dayworker.”

In addition, to boost the odds they will get paid at the end of each day, laborers will have employers sign simple agreements spelling out how much the worker will be paid and when and how, O’Flanagan said.

On Tuesday, O’Flanagan will ask the City Council to “pony up a few bucks” for a three-month pilot program, which he expects will cost $7,500. O’Flanagan said the money would be used to pay the monitors, who will be outfitted in bright orange vests and will tote clipboards charting who’s next in line for a job. Without financial backing, O’Flanagan said he doubted the program would get off the ground because the workers would lose pay if they stayed on the lot to serve as monitors without reimbursement.

If it gets backing from the city, O’Flanagan said the association will apply for government grants to keep the program afloat. He will also ask residents and businesses for financial support.

Although some workers are hesitant about the more controlled approach, most seem willing to give it a try, according to workers at the site Friday morning.

Jorge Hernandez, a Buena Park resident who comes to the lot daily, said there is still some confusion among workers about the association and he predicted it will be difficult for some to accept the take-a-number, first-come, first-served approach after years of coming and going as they please.

“Many people don’t like rules,” he said.

But Hernandez said he believes most workers will cooperate.

Others at the site agreed, saying the more methodical approach will make job hunting less hazardous, since workers won’t be darting across busy Laguna Canyon Road when a car slows on the opposite side of the street.

O’Flanagan said he suggested the workers organize only after many approached him and asked for help. O’Flanagan said some would-be employers say they shy away from the site because they are intimidated by the way the workers engulf any car that pulls onto the lot.

City police, who have already assigned an officer to work as a liaison to the workers, say that besides laminating the identification cards, they will “help in any way we possibly can to make their goal possible.”

“We’ll see if it works,” Deputy Chief Jim Spreine said Friday. “We’re trying to be optimistic about it.”

The day laborers have created some thorny problems in the past.

In 1988, the city provided a bus to transport workers from Coast Highway to the hiring lot in Laguna Canyon. The following year the city spent $9,000 to improve the hiring lot, installing portable toilets and a turnaround driveway.

In 1993, responding to neighbors’ complaints about workers loitering in one area along Coast Highway, the City Council passed a law making it illegal to solicit work anywhere except at the designated hiring lot in the 1700 block of Laguna Canyon Road.

And in April, the City Council voted to approve installation of a pay phone on the lot. Some day laborers now carry business cards with the pay phone’s number on them.