A Better Day’s Work

The sight of day laborers congregating at curbs and in parking lots is a familiar one in Southern California. To nearby residents and business owners, the gatherings sometimes are a nuisance.

A number of Orange County cities rightly have tried to make the hiring process more orderly, providing hiring halls or designated areas for job seekers and potential employers. Laguna Beach this month decided to add a worthwhile refinement to the process.

Laguna Beach resident Patrick O’Flanagan has devised a plan to have day laborers act as monitors of the scores of their fellow job seekers who show up daily at the city’s designated hiring area on Laguna Canyon Road.

The monitors would assign numbers to those seeking work. As the numbers are called, individuals would step forward to negotiate with the employers. In addition, there would be simple contracts spelling out how and when the workers get paid.

Two city commissions have recommended that the city allocate $7,500 for the program. That would provide cash for the monitors, who would forgo a day’s work in order to coordinate the job seeking of their colleagues.

The hiring area in a largely industrial and commercial area on Laguna Canyon Road has operated for years. But a number of residents complained that those hoping for work too often moved to areas near their homes to flag down would-be employers. Sometimes yards were used as bathrooms.

Three years ago, the city passed an ordinance barring people from seeking work elsewhere and prohibiting employers from hiring day laborers off the site.

The ordinance improved conditions, but some employers still have complained of intimidation when they used the designated area and found their vehicles swarmed by dozens of job seekers. Their concerns are understandable.

Having workers wait their turn in an orderly fashion would be a benefit. O’Flanagan has also enlisted help from photographers in taking pictures of job seekers to wear on badges, which the Police Department agreed to laminate. That is a good cooperative effort to help those depending on the day laborers and those seeking work.