Hardware Chain Adds a Depot for Hiring Laborers
Hardware giant Home Depot is preparing to test a program here that has little to do with tools or paint, but if successful could grease the wheels for the chain’s massive expansion in California.
Addressing concerns about the day laborers who have become fixtures at many of its parking lots, the home improvement chain has teamed up with a fast-growing temporary worker agency to run a hiring center at its new Woodland Hills store, which is expected to open next month.
Tacoma, Wash.-based Labor Ready, which has 300 branch offices nationwide specializing in low-skilled and semiskilled day labor, will use a 3,000-square-foot building erected in the new Home Depot parking lot as a dispatch office to connect workers with potential employers. A similar program has been operating since September from a trailer anchored at a Home Depot in Monrovia.
“We don’t feel it’s a Home Depot problem,” Daniel Hatch, senior counsel for Home Depot’s Western division, said of the day laborer issue. “But we recognize we’re associated with it.”
Although it remains to be seen how many laborers and customers will participate, Home Depot’s agreement with Labor Ready marks the most innovative attempt by a private company to tackle the very public problem of unemployed men waiting for work on sidewalks and street corners.
Home Depot, which last week announced statewide expansion plans, has a big stake in trying to solve the problem because the day laborer issue has repeatedly been raised when the company has proposed new stores in Southern California.
Politicians and residents from Anaheim to Van Nuys have voiced concerns over the years that the opening of a Home Depot in their neighborhoods would attract groups of day laborers, some of whom allegedly have caused problems ranging from drinking and urinating in public to harassing motorists and women.
By teaming up with Labor Ready, which posted total sales of $298.6 million for the 11 months ending Nov. 21 and plans to open 130 new offices next year, Home Depot officials hope to solve an image problem while providing laborers with an alternative way of looking for work. Those who choose to sign on with Labor Ready would not only receive basic equipment such as boots, back braces, hard hats and goggles, but would be paid on a daily basis and have taxes and workers’ compensation insurance withheld from their checks.
The partnership also will provide Home Depot customers--ranging from homeowners to professional contractors--a place to easily and legally hire help because Labor Ready employs only workers who are citizens or have legal immigration status. Customers could either call a Labor Ready office in advance or stop by in person to request workers ready to dig, paint, sweep, lift or clean.
Home Depot already has used Labor Ready workers throughout the country to help build and stock its stores. Establishing both businesses at the same location is a natural extension, said Dennis Diamond, executive vice president of Labor Ready’s Western division.
“Now, in one stop, customers can get supplies, equipment and labor,” Diamond said.
Earlier this month, Home Depot announced plans to spend about $850 million over the next three years on 61 new stores in California. Whether Labor Ready opens offices at every new site, however, will depend on the needs of the community, Hatch said.
At the Warner Center site in Woodland Hills, Home Depot officials hope that the Labor Ready office, coupled with greater police enforcement of anti-loitering laws and employer education of the benefits of hiring legal, insured workers, will stave off problems.
The proposed partnership, however, is being met with skepticism by residents like Gordon Murley, president of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization.
“Labor Ready is fine,” Murley said. “We just don’t think you’re going to find that many people who are going to be willing to pay the extra amount [to hire a Labor Ready worker], but I would like it to prove us wrong.”
Although prices vary depending on the job skill required, Diamond estimated that Labor Ready will charge Southern California customers about $9.50 an hour for a manual laborer, with the worker making roughly minimum wage, or a little more than $5 an hour. Day laborer advocates contend that workers can bargain wages for themselves ranging from minimum wage up to $7 an hour or more.
The Home Depot and Labor Ready partnership set to begin next month in Warner Center is already working in Monrovia, where Labor Ready has been operating at the Home Depot that opened on Mountain Avenue in September. Between 30 and 50 workers a day are dispatched from the office, Diamond said.
The site was created in response to day laborer problems at a now-closed Home Depot on Huntington Drive in Monrovia. The situation caused so many traffic problems that the Monrovia City Council approved an ordinance in July making it illegal for workers to approach motorists to solicit work, and vice versa.
So far, the arrangement between Home Depot and Labor Ready seems to be working well, said Monrovia Police Capt. Roger Johnson.
But according to Pablo Alvarado, who coordinates the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles’ day laborer project, only one of the original day laborers has used the site, which he contends has attracted a different group of workers.
“The rest of the day laborers who were in Monrovia moved to another area where they created another corner,” he said.
