Thread: Closing of employment center makes day laborers anxious

http://www.insidebayarea.com/dailyrevie ... ci_3900884

Article Last Updated: 06/05/2006 02:43:35 AM PDT

Closing of employment center makes day laborers anxious
Physical facility in Redwood City to be replaced by 'virtual' one
By Nicole Neroulias and Michael Manekin, STAFF WRITERS


REDWOOD CITY — At the county's Day Worker Center, Rogelio Valencia is banging out an anxious tune on a beat-up piano.
By 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, a dozen other workers have walked out the door. But now it is nearly 9 a.m., and no potential "patrones" are calling.

Valencia, 47, plays and waits.

A gardener by trade, he has walked into the converted restaurant at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Middlefield Road nearly every day since the pilot program opened last spring.

Like thousands of illegal immigrants in San Mateo County, Valencia wakes up every day looking for work. For nearly 10 years, before the center opened, he was one of the guys crowding street corners and parking lots, waiting for trucks to slow down.

Has he heard that the Day Worker Center is closing at the end of the month?

Valencia stops playing, surprised.

The center, he explains in Spanish, is a good idea. It protects workers — from the cold, from the rain — and helps them find jobs. He doesn't know what he will do without it.

Then, one of the center's outreach workers shouts that Valencia has a job.

He is out the door in less than two minutes. Off to work.

The Board of Supervisors, directed by members of the sheriff's department, the Human Services Agency and the business community, has opted not to renew El Concilio of San Mateo County's contract to run the center. The small building with limited parking has not made enough of a difference, they concluded, noting the hundreds of laborers still loitering outside.

Next month, the Berkeley-based Multicultural Institute will start a $238,000 two-year contract — below the $160,000 paid to El Concilio for last year and the $150,000 annual fee the city of San Mateo pays the nonprofit Samaritan House to run a center near the Caltrain tracks.

Instead of a physical center to draw in day laborers, its Day Laborer Program will deploy two full-time staffers to the streets and bring in employers through a new telephone number and its Web site, http://www.mionline.org. Although workers like Valencia would prefer a roof over their heads, this type of program has more success attracting employers, said the Rev. Rigoberto Caloca-Rivas, executive director.

"Employers have already e-mailed us asking for electricians, carpenters, plumbers and gardeners," he said. "There's more anonymity that way instead of going into a center and giving out information."

Father Rigo, as he is called, said his Day Laborer Program calls and sends workers direct to the employment sites, bypassing the streets. The county supervisors have also voted to make it a crime for waiting workers to block traffic or trespass onto private property.

"That alleviates the concern that some of our merchants had about people loitering in streets and parking lots," said Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson, who represents south county.

Jacobs Gibson said she was not involved in the review and recommendation process, but approved of the "innovative approach" pitched by the Multicultural Institute.

Brian C. Lee, county deputy director of public works, serves on the Day Worker Center Task Force, which began monitoring El Concilio's program after the county's plans for a center on a vacant Middlefield Road lot fell through. The task force did not review the proposals, either, but agreed that new tactics were needed and would require more than a year to take effect.

The Multicultural Institute has had four years to make a difference in Berkeley, where the city and area merchants pay the agency to keep day workers from obstructing traffic and bothering residents.

Berkeley Councilwoman Linda Maio said the institute began by talking to workers

and discovering that many were being extorted and underpaid. After educating the workers on their rights, staff began the process of matching their skills with jobs. The program has helped the city communicate that workers cannot spread into residential neighborhoods, but Maio estimates the hundreds of workers have only about a 10 to 20 percent employment rate — below El Concilio's 20 to 30 percent success rate, and the 21 percent estimated by Samaritan House for 100 to 140 who use San Mateo's three-year-old Worker Resource Center.

Like the San Mateo County officials, Maio would prefer to have a successful physical headquarters for the program, if one could be found close enough to the lumberyard where Berkeley's laborers congregate.


Father Rigo believes a physical building is helpful for education programs and health referrals, but not for job placement. He said he has based his opinion on reports from his own experiences and reports from dozens of centers all over the country.

In contrast, El Concilio's policy has always been that a day worker program should have a physical structure as well as a worker and employer outreach component, but the nonprofit will take the county's rejection as an opportunity to get its building refurbished for broader community use, said Gloria Flores-Garcia, associate director.

Flores-Garcia and Father Rigo have begun working on a transitional plan, with the Multicultural Institute staff beginning to approach workers on the street and Day Worker Center staff preparing fliers to inform them about the center's pending closure.


But Valencia and his son, Jose, haven't heard the news officially yet.

Like his father, Jose comes nearly every morning. Here, he says proudly, he has found "patrones" who seek him out for construction and painting jobs.

And then there are the extras.

"Here they teach me how to read and write," Jose says, in Spanish. "They give me coffee, bread, plantains, apples, oranges. It's support. I feel good here in the center — alive — here with my companeros."

The 22-year-old walked across the Mexican border two years ago to reunite with his father. And like his dad, he wears his wavy black hair long, bound in a ponytail and tucked beneath a baseball cap.

On Thursday, 19 workers came to the center seeking jobs, but only five found what they were looking for, as movers in Redwood City. The rest spent the morning engrossed in the Mexico-Holland soccer match on the small color TV in the corner, before some headed out to the free lunch served at St. Anthony's Padua Dining Room a few blocks away.

Jose wants to go back to Mexico; he is only here, he says, because of "problemas economicos." At the center he has been studying online to take the Mexican high school equivalency test and has been trying to learn English.

His father doesn't know what he'll do for work until the center closes. Jose, on the other hand, has a pretty clear idea.

He says, "I won't have any choice but to look for work in the street. I know it's illegal, but it's more illegal to steal."


Staff writer Michael Manekin can be reached at (650) 348-4337 or mmanekin@sanmateocountytimes.com.

"Employers have already e-mailed us asking for electricians, carpenters, plumbers and gardeners," he said. "There's more anonymity that way instead of going into a center and giving out information."

I guess they don't want to be caught breaking the law!!! I'm so glad they are able to get around it!!!!(J.K.)

Jose wants to go back to Mexico; he is only here, he says, because of "problemas economicos." At the center he has been studying online to take the Mexican high school equivalency test and has been trying to learn English.

Nobody is holding you back, we want you to go home also Jose. He's here because of economic problems in Mexico? What about the economic problems he and his compadres are causing here in the U.S.?

He says, "I won't have any choice but to look for work in the street. I know it's illegal, but it's more illegal to steal."

Yet again, he does not mind breaking our laws!!! The alternative to not having work is not stealing. What kind of mantality do these people have. I guess where they come from you steal if you do not have a job

"There's more anonymity that way instead of going into a center and giving out information."

This is a good example of how non-punishment, of non-profit and faith based organizations undermine law enforcement. These sanctuary policies and agencies have to be punished as well. They are working the system and going through loop holes. We need laws that offer a blanket enforcement, to protect us from these kinds of enablers.

Dixie

Just obey and enforce the laws on the books. Against the employers, also.

Dixie, have we said that before?

Hey they ought to be glad the day labor center is closed. Give them more time to drink and commit crime and collect free services