SH City Council approves new contract to manage day laborer shelter at SH Home Depot
August 5th, 2011


Jose A. Hernandez stands near the day laborer shelter at the Home Depot Center on Cherry Avenue in Signal Hill on Aug. 2. The SH City Council voted to allow the City to enter into a contract with Hernandez who will now manage the shelter at the Home Depot Center on Cherry Avenue.

CJ Dablo
Staff Writer

On a hot Tuesday afternoon at the Signal Hill Home Depot on Cherry Avenue, Jose A. Hernandez shook a jumbo 5-gallon water bottle, rattling the dozens of numbered ping pong balls inside of it. The 50-year-old man grinned as he demonstrated his makeshift lottery-style system that assigns day laborers to jobs. As Hernandez explained, the laborers register for a number at the shelter he manages at the Home Depot’s parking lot. When a customer shows up to hire the next available person among the crowd of workers at the shelter, one lucky person is chosen through the lottery.

Hernandez explained that in the past workers used to swarm potential customers in the parking lot and sometimes physically fought over customers who needed help with a construction or moving job.
The shelter has benches and a canopy shade. Two big signs posted near the benches– written in both Spanish and English– emphasize the shelter’s rules. There are two portable toilets and a water cooler for the workers.

Hernandez said he helps negotiate the rate for a job, keeps records of the workers, and even works with the City’s police department to report problems. Hernandez compared his work to the job of a human resources department.

Hernandez began working there just a couple of months after the shelter opened in July 2007, and served with Centro Shalom, the nonprofit organization that previously held the contract to oversee day laborers at Home Depot. Following Monday’s City Council meeting approving an action to allow Signal Hill to enter into a contract with Hernandez, making him the daily manager of the shelter.

Hernandez, who also works in the custodial department at California State University, Long Beach and serves as a steward of a union that represents custodial workers and gardeners, emphasized the trust he has built with the estimated 100 workers who come to that shelter every week.

“It was important for me to be here,â€