Thread: Lounges for laborers?

Article Launched: 08/11/2008 09:11:59 PM PDT


City of L.A.'s ordinance would burden businesses.

The city of Los Angeles has come up with a novel idea on how to solve a difficult social problem: Dump it in the arms of the business community.

Last week, a City Council committee approved a plan to instruct new home-improvement stores on how to deal with potential day-laborer problems. The ordinance's "day laborer operating standards" include setting aside space for laborers to congregate. The plan would apply to home-improvement stores 100,000 square feet or bigger.

These shelters would need to have drinking water, bathrooms, seating and trash containers.

The ordinance, which has yet to be considered by the full City Council, also requires home-improvement stores to work with police on security plans.

A representative of Home Depot last week urged the committee to make the proposal more specific - that is, make government responsible for the costs of operating these day-laborer centers.

The prospect of being hired by customers of large home-improvement stores lures many laborers to the parking lots of such stores. This creates potential traffic safety hazards as well as problems with sanitation, litter and loitering.

We don't have any problem with companies and local governments working together to solve community problems. But the businesses themselves shouldn't be forced to resolve such concerns. Indeed, many of these businesses offer a range of services to their

customers - from landscaping to painting to roofing to installation of products - by workers under contract to the company. One can imagine situations where day laborers reduce opportunities for the stores to sell their own services.
Is it fundamentally fair for a municipal government to force such businesses to bear costs associated with day laborers? We don't think so.

Admittedly, local governments have had a difficult time coming up with solutions to day-laborer problems. Redondo Beach, for one, continues to wage a court battle to enforce an ordinance that bars people from standing on public streets, sidewalks and curbs while soliciting work. That ordinance was an attempt to control traffic and avoid public nuisances.

But a U.S. District Court judge ruled in 2006 that the Redondo law was too broad.

Clearly, local governments need to find ways to deal with problems posed by day laborers. The solutions should be some combination of law enforcement and social services. Now is not the time to add to the burdens of private companies, which already view the cost of doing business in the city of Los Angeles as too high.

http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_10171431


TS77

Related article:

Please see:

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-127361-ordinance.html

Maybe Home Depot or Lowes also ought to be forced to offer immigration services to those poor lovely people who clean our toilets.

While they wait to be picked up by horrible americans who exploit them, Home Depot should also support services they could also benefit from like having access and filling forms for food stamps, health care and education for their kids. That way teh City of LA could expedite all of this and streamline their operations.

ACTION ITEM

L.A. Ordinance would require shelters for day laborers

Please send a note to Lowes, Home Depot, and the L.A. City Council

http://www.capsweb.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=62

Related thread at
http://www.alipac.us/ftopic-126614-0.html

I can't believe that Home Depot and Lowe's would ever consent to any of this. They value their customers too much, and I just bet they will pack up and leave, leaving huge empty buildings behind and enormous dead spaces in LA business. Well, I guess day laborers will then be able to use these huge buildings and it sounds like in LA the need that kind of space of illegals.

TALLSOLDIER77:

THANK YOU FOR POSTING

I guess if the home improvement stores wouldn’t allow the day laborers to loiter on their properties they wouldn’t be faced with the possibility of having to provide shelters for them. In my opinion they are getting just what they deserve by turning a blind eye to what’s going on on their properties. Maybe now that it’s going to cost them some big bucks their tune will change and they will start driving them away.