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Day laborers in Southern California stand on street corners and in
parking lots waiting for work. Day Laborers generally congregate in groups in the vicinity of prospective employers, usually near building supply stores, paint
stores, or U-Haul rentals, or other businesses or places where customers commonly have a need for manual or skilled labor. Unorganized day laborers face being chased off
by police, raided by the INS, forced to work for below minimum wages, and abused by employers. Unorganized day laborers typically experience very low levels
of work (reportedly an average of only 10% a day get work), and are often cheated out of their wages altogether.
Unorganized day laborers are the source of complaints from residents, motorists, and
business operators, who may view their habits as contributing to a sense of public disorder. Consequently, local governments traditionally view the informal
solicitation of work by day laborers as a law-enforcement problem or a social problem. This perception is mostly due to the day laborers' habit of swarming around
potential employers who stop in traffic to hire them, but also due to exaggerated stereotypes of day laborers (including that day laborers spend their time on the
"corners" drinking, selling drugs, and committing other crimes). Ironically, by the definition of the day laborers themselves, men who may be found among
them that do these things are not day laborers, but rather, are drinkers, drug dealers and criminals!
Although "swarming" sometimes frightens people, the practice actually originates with the employers,
who motion to the day laborers from inside their vehicles, and then usually choose the first day laborer who arrives at the vehicle (or the first to open the door and jump
into the vehicle). Day laborers explain that those who do not run will not get work. Our research revealed that the only time that the first day laborer to
arrive is not chosen is when another day laborer is able to bargain down the wage to win the job (one reason day laborers often earn less than the minimum), or when the
employer chooses to seek a worker with specific skills, which is rare.
Attempts by local governments to control what they view as a serious
public nuisance problem have been varied, with mixed results. Approaches have ranged from routine enforcement by police to combat day laborers, to setting up
"social service agency model" day laborer centers which cater to a variety of their "needs." The former approach has generally
proven ineffective as a long-term solution, and the latter has often proven expensive, with its own set of potential problems. Between these ends of the spectrum
of solutions, a variety of different approaches have been attempted. The Day Labor Research Institute has conducted a comparative review of many of these
approaches. An article on this research, entitled Addressing Day Labor - Comparative Solutions
, is available online here at DayLabor.org. A recent trend in Southern California suggests day laborers themselves may help cities find the best
solution.
The Day Labor Research Institute undertook a two year study of day
laborers in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. Part of this study was a survey of 100% of day laborers applying to five day laborer centers, and 100% of day laborers
present on the day of the survey on several large, unorganized day laborer sites. The results give us the first non-anecdotal glimpse at day laborers.
The average age of day laborers surveyed is 32.8 years old.
95% have never participated in any organization or political movement before. Several survey questions had significant results that may explain why these men have
chosen to look for work in the streets. 85% of day laborers answer that they do not speak English (or that they speak "very little"). Only 13% own a
vehicle, and 80% do not have tools (although many of these are skilled in plumbing, carpentry, bricklaying, etc.) 50% of respondents had either no formal
education, or studied only as far as grade school (of those who attended grade school, many did not study beyond second grade). 40% reported having no income at
all, and another 32% reported earning a monthly income of $600 or less.
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