Workers To Go

“Good morning, sir. Good morning, sir,” yelled the 60 men in unison as the driver of a black pickup pulled up to the Costa Mesa Job Center.

Sitting on metal chairs and bundled up against the morning cold, the men leaned forward and raised their numbers--given out in the order the workers signed up--on blue pieces of paper.

It was 7 a.m., and the contractor needed a handyman for six hours at $10 an hour. But the job required an English speaker; all but a few hands dropped. Just about everyone could say “good morning,” but only a few could carry an English conversation further.

The lucky worker picked--a man in his early 20s--was holding No. 39. The contractor took him to breakfast before heading to the job site.

“I’m doing a construction job in the area and have been stopping here once or twice a week,” said the contractor, who wanted to be identified only as Dave. “This isn’t totally legit, but it’s as legit as it gets. It works out well for me.”

This is the scene most mornings at city-sponsored job centers in North Hollywood, Costa Mesa, Orange and throughout Southern California. Several dozen men huddle, starting before 6 a.m., waiting for an employer to offer them work for the day.

These months of cold and rain are the hardest for workers on street corners and at hiring centers, compared to the booming summer months of constant outdoor work, said Rene Vasquez, coordinator of the Day Labor Program of North Hollywood.

Vasquez said that up to 120 laborers a day use the center during the summer months, about 60% of them likely to get work each day.

A survey by the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission of day-laborer hiring sites found that 97% of the day laborers in Orange and Los Angeles counties are Latino immigrant men. Although they are often stereotyped as menial laborers, a surprising number are skilled electricians, mechanics, masons, roofers and bakers.

The centers are an attempt by the cities to stop workers’ practice of gathering at storefronts and street corners throughout the day waiting to be hired.

Most municipalities have also enacted ordinances prohibiting the solicitation of work in public areas. Orange police enforce the city ordinance aggressively, arresting many workers who are later turned over to the Border Patrol and deported.

However, the commission’s study found the ordinances to be ineffective in taking the laborers off the street. Researchers found that “as long as there are jobs available, the workers will continue to gather.”

According to the survey, which included Southern California and eight states, ordinances are sometimes applied unfairly.

“Police . . . often abuse the law by harassing Latino men into moving away from places where they have legal rights to stand. . . . Law enforcement also misuses the ordinance to break up employment relationships which may be legal. Moreover, abuse of the ordinance is often discriminatory toward minorities,” the report said.

In Moorpark, officials--faced with complaints from residents and business owners about dozens of men hanging out at Spring Road and High Street--are trying to find an equitable solution.

Bob LeMay, the new police chief, said that persuading city officials to build a hiring hall is among his top priorities. Despite numerous complaints, there is little that his officers can do, LeMay said.

“I am looking for some type of creative solution that will be beneficial to both the residents and these individuals [who] are only trying to scratch out a meager living,” he said.

At most centers, although workers are not harassed by police, they do need to prove they are in the country legally. Because many seeking work are undocumented, only a small percentage actually use the facilities.

“The goal was to get people off the streets and out of the parks and give them a place where we can put employer and worker together,” said Glenn Stroud, who supervises Costa Mesa’s job center. “We’ve been successful, but there’s still a lot of people on the street soliciting jobs.”

But at the North Hollywood hiring hall run by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, even illegal immigrants can register. The facility is unlike any other in Southern California.

“We are not the INS. We don’t ask,” said Pablo Alvarado, a lead coordinator for the coalition’s day labor project.

Most mornings, the workers are provided coffee and Mexican sweet bread. When the coalition began running the hall in 1997, it quickly fostered a sense of belonging among the workers.

Workers tend a vegetable garden and have formed a band, soccer team, theater troupe and marathon team. They also perform community service, such as graffiti removal, and can check out books from the hall’s library.

Vasquez, the site coordinator, said that about 80% of the center’s workers are legal.

Robin S. Toma, executive director of the L.A. County Human Relations Commission, said it is foolhardy to restrict hiring halls to legal residents.

“It’s a liability if the goal is to establish a site for a more organized method of job distribution. Inclusive hiring benefits everyone: the community, workers, employers and most of all the police, who have better things to do than enforce ordinances and chase people away from street corners and stores.”

Jose Campa, who works part time at the Orange Job Center, had to chase off three scruffy men one recent morning who were not registered with the center.

“All they want to do is work,” said Campa, a burly retiree from El Paso, Texas. “But the rules say that only registered workers can be here.”

The three men said they had arrived from Veracruz, Mexico, 15 days earlier and had lost all their money--$200 apiece--to the smuggler who brought them. They were penniless, had not worked since they arrived and were living on the street.

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On this particular morning, only about a dozen of the 43 workers who had registered for the day had been hired by the time the center closed at 10 a.m.

The centers aid the workers in other ways. Since city officials keep track of the workers and the contractors who hire them, the workers usually earn more than the $6.25 California minimum wage, and the contractors are less likely to cheat them of their pay. Occasionally, wages are paid in cash with no taxes withheld and no record--other than at the center--that employer and employee met.

“I’ve heard terrible stories from these guys about contractors who work them for three or four days and never pay them,” Campa said. “This usually happens with workers who hang out on the street. We’ve had one or two contractors who have done that, but we know who they are and call them.”

The commission’s report, due for release this week, quoted from a separate study of Los Angeles-area day laborers that found 48% had worked for an employer who never paid them and 52% had been paid less than promised at one time or another.

Benjamen Hernandez, 29, a Mexican immigrant who has been in Los Angeles for 12 years, said he was fired without pay after stopping on a job to rest a twisted ankle. The North Hollywood center is taking up his complaint with the employer.

Before coming to the center eight years ago, Hernandez said, he used to solicit work on a street corner, but police would bother him, and fights over jobs would break out among some workers.

At the North Hollywood center, laborers have rules among themselves for appropriate behavior. Those who are too aggressive or under the influence of drugs or alcohol are expelled.

On the street, “it was a disaster,” said worker Guillermo Fuentes, 47, from El Salvador. “They would fight. [If you got a job,] the next day fights would start.”

Alvarado said the center is trying to develop a network of potential employers for laborers and eventually provide steady work for them.

“We make a list of pending workers and employers can choose who they want,” Alvarado said. “Sometimes they want to see how they look. Sometimes [employers] want to see [workers’] hands.”

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Times staff writer Jenifer Ragland contributed to this report.