A Job to Do in Laguna Beach

The hiring site for day laborers on Laguna Canyon Road is only one mile, yet worlds away, from the quintessential Southern California beach scene that unfurls at the end of the highway.

The well-to-do come in a continuous stream to Laguna Beach, attracted by the seemingly rustic seaside community with its tony restaurants and people-friendly beaches.

On the flip side of the economic coin, dozens of men in grubby clothes and frayed baseball caps gather just up the canyon on a narrow patch of dirt that serves as an employment center. They too are attracted to the city. Every morning, they join the city’s swelling ranks of mostly Mexican immigrant workers who keep the local lawns trimmed, the houses painted and the homes clean for $8 to $10 an hour.

The gaping cultural divide between these two worlds has at times tested the city’s reputation as a progressive and liberal island within conservative Orange County. But David Peck is hopeful.

“After the revolution, everyone will live in Laguna Beach,” joked the chairman of the Cross-Cultural Task Force, a nonprofit organization that has worked more than a decade to ease relations between Latinos and whites in town.

The group, which began as a city commission in 1987 to address issues brought on by the growing number of immigrant day workers, has evolved into a small cadre of volunteers with a practical approach to race relations: provide services to the disenfranchised so they can be brought into the fold of the community.

Five years ago, they set up an English as a second language school for immigrant mothers, enticing them with free child care. The project, called La Playa Center, began with a handful of students in the back of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. Now, more than 80 registered students, both men and women, take three levels of English courses, plus a computer class offered once a week.

“Being able to speak the language makes me feel more comfortable,” said Carmen Aguilar, a 52-year-old housemaid and native of Mexico who has been taking lessons for four years. “It is very important to communicate in English, or people will see you as dumb.”

Last year, the task force, with help from the Police Department, set up the day laborer hiring center after a decade of controversy.

For years city officials had sought to restrict the laborers to the Laguna Canyon site as residents deluged them with complaints about loitering job seekers in different parts of town. But without any employment services, the ordinances proved ineffective as desperate laborers risked being ticketed and continued to disperse in search of employers, or swarmed the few who drove by the site.

With grant money and donations, the task force built a small trailer office on the site last year and staffed it with two bilingual women graduates of the La Playa Center. The women serve as translators and keep files on the 800 registered workers and track the employers. About 80 laborers come every morning and are hired on a lottery system. City and police officials say the system has reduced complaints drastically.

“I just want to work,” said Cesare Perez, 19, as he waited to be hired one recent morning. “It is more orderly and the police don’t hassle us here.”

The formal system also provides recourse for the workers if they are cheated, Peck said.

“Before we set up this site, the guys were at the mercy of free enterprise,” said Peck, a 62-year-old semiretired English literature professor. “This one guy owed the worker $800 on a moving job [recently] and didn’t pay. I just called him and threatened to call the police. The guy showed up the next day with a check.”

From helping newcomers acquire language skills to providing information on how to get health care and other services in the city, the Cross-Cultural Task Force focuses on practical solutions that it hopes eventually will ease community tensions.

“In the beginning, we were just attacking issues without much information,” said Alice Graves, 69, the only remaining member of the original commission. “But with time, we have gotten much better about meeting needs.”

Laguna Beach long has been a Southern California bastion of progressive thinking and liberal ideals. But the day laborer issue and racial tensions involving the small but growing Latino community of nearly 2,000 have presented some challenges. Last year, a group of suspected white supremacists circulated fliers advertising grocery delivery services for elderly and disabled “white people.”

Six years ago, relations between white and Latino students at the city’s high school were strained by reports of fights and racial epithets. And at the height of the day laborer site discussions, some residents complained it would serve as a magnet for more unwelcome workers.

“I don’t know if it has been a rough road, necessarily,” Councilman Paul Freeman said. “We continue to be proud of our image. In any community from time to time, you are going to have tensions. There have only been a handful of incidents, but because it is Laguna Beach, and we have a liberal reputation, it got a little more notice.”

Still, others fear that the city, with its growing affluence, is becoming more exclusive and closed to outsiders.

“I marched during the civil rights movement and I used to sell beads, so you can guess my political leanings,” said Analee Dixon, 69, one of the task force’s 20 volunteers and an ESL teacher. “The whole atmosphere of Laguna is changing, and obviously I don’t care for it.”

Lilia Salazar, one of Dixon’s students, agreed that the atmosphere can be forbidding.

“People are generous and nice as long as you are serving them,” said Salazar, 24, a nanny in between jobs. “But as soon as you try to climb another step up, they kind of reject you. . . . At restaurants, they see you and think you don’t have money to pay so they seat everyone else first. . . . You try to avoid places if you see you are going to get hurt.”

Peck and Graves acknowledge that there are those who will never welcome diversity in Laguna Beach. After the hiring site was built last year, the sign that marks the modest spot as a “Day Laborer Hiring Area” and “Trabajadores Area Para Empleo” was burned and stoned by vandals, Peck said.

But he also points out that his group couldn’t exist without the commitment of local volunteers, the generous donations of sympathetic residents and the support of the City Council, which recently gave the group a $40,000 grant.

“These people are here to stay,” Graves said. “We should welcome them and help them adapt.”