Day Laborers Praise Voiding of Law

For Raul Ovidio Paez and fellow day laborers gathered Friday outside a building supply store on West Slauson Avenue, the issue seemed obvious: Why should police chase down job-seekers when there is serious crime to respond to?

“We’re just looking for jobs; we’re not committing any crimes,” Paez, a 30-year-old native of El Salvador, said as he and others waited for chamba (work) from passing motorists outside the HomeBase store in Ladera Heights.

He spoke one day after a federal judge in Los Angeles struck down as unconstitutional a Los Angeles County law that barred people from seeking work from drivers on unincorporated county streets.

U.S. District Judge George H. King found the law too broad, vague and in violation of the 1st and 14th amendments.

The county ban did not apply to streets in Los Angeles and other municipalities, though lawyers in the case say a dozen or so small cities in Southern California have enacted similar restrictions.

The ruling could prompt new challenges of those city laws, said Thomas A. Saenz, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

The 1994 county ordinance was an important victory to those opposed to the sometimes boisterous presence of about 20,000 mainly Latino day laborers on urban streets and country roads in Southern California. The workers have become a contentious part of the region’s landscape in the past two decades as a wave of immigrants--many of them low-skilled natives of Mexico and Central America--have transformed the region’s social and economic face.

Homeowners from San Diego to Oxnard have complained that day laborers harass motorists, drink alcohol and are a general nuisance. The workers and their defenders have acknowledged some rowdiness and misbehavior, but argued that the allegations are exaggerated. Most are simply seeking an honest day’s wage.

Civil rights activists called the judge’s decision to place a permanent ban on enforcement of the county law a milestone in their effort to protect the job-seekers’ right to solicit employment. Echoing the longtime contention of critics, the judge noted that authorities can always enforce laws against jaywalking, littering, public urination and other offenses.

In recent years, lawmakers in Los Angeles and in some other areas have set up hiring sites where the workers can gather. Some of the sites offer work sign-up sheets, portable restrooms and rest areas. Still, many job-seekers gravitate to well-known corners, streets and parking lots outside hardware and home supply stores.

The Ladera Heights site where about two dozen job-seekers gathered Friday morning was a lightning rod of neighborhood opposition. Vociferous complaints from the mostly middle-class enclave just east of the San Diego Freeway and south of Baldwin Hills provided the impetus for passage of the 1994 law.

The county law made it a misdemeanor to solicit work from passing motorists. Although no precise records were kept, lawyers for the laborers said there were few prosecutions.

Workers outside the HomeBase say enforcement has been minimal. The men say they informally enforce their own code of behavior.

“We don’t tolerate drinking or making too much noise or other problems here,” said the muscular Paez, who has trolled for jobs at the site for nine years, starting the day after his arrival from El Salvador. “This is about people working.”

Like Paez, most of the group appeared to be regulars, who attempt to abide by informal rules such as not accepting work for less than $10 an hour--thus not undercutting their colleagues.

“They’re doing the right thing by leaving us alone,” said Marvin Johnson, 42, one of a handful of African American day laborers who sought jobs outside the mall along with the larger contingent of Latino regulars. “We’re just out here looking for a job.”

Indeed, neighborhood complaints have diminished and the atmosphere has improved markedly, said Glenda Wina, spokeswoman for Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who sponsored the now-blocked law in response to an “avalanche of complaints,” the spokeswoman said.

“The idea here was not to bust people, not to try and keep people from finding work, but to have it done in an orderly manner,” Wina said. “The situation really does seem to have resolved itself.”