Thread: Day Laborers lining up on Mass. streets

Laborers lining up on Mass. streets
Worker markets spread to East
By Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | August 4, 2007
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articl ... ts/?page=1


SOMERVILLE -- The middle-aged man in the USA baseball cap had lingered at Foss Park for hours, hunting for a day's work.

Suddenly a contractor zoomed up in a pickup truck. The laborer, an immigrant from Brazil named Luiz, elbowed past workers half his age and thrust a business card at the driver. Then he frantically waved a certificate saying he was a trained drywaller.

"Look, " Luiz said, leaning into the window. "I have experience."

The driver pointed to another man, who hopped in the truck, and they sped off. Dejected, Luiz retreated to the sidewalk to wait for the next truck.

"I worry," said Luiz, 47, who is the country illegally and would not give his last name. "I'm waiting, or I can't pay my rent."

The day-labor stand at the busy corner of Broadway and McGrath O'Brien Highway has transformed in the past five years into an open-air market for hustling work. Such stands, which sprang up three decades ago mainly on the West Coast have spread east in recent years, sparking controversy in towns large and small. Day laborers are typically the newest immigrants who compete on street corners and near home improvement stores for odd jobs, paid in cash.

Although the number of day laborers in Massachusetts is unclear, here and nationwide they are the public face of the incendiary debate over immigration. Some residents where they line up for work often complain about crowds at the stands and call them a magnet for illegal immigrants, while advocates for the workers counter that the laborers are exploited by bosses and often injured on the job.

Researchers and area residents say day laborers started appearing in the state, mainly in eastern Massachusetts, around the late 1990s during a construction boom. Complaints soon followed.

Last year, Boston police cleared day laborers from South Bay Center because of complaints that they were trespassing on private property, but now they are back, living in tents nearby. In Framingham, immigration-control activists posted employers' license plates on a website, but complain that little has been done.

In Somerville, Alderman William Roche said he has pushed for parking restrictions and better enforcement in recent years but that the number of day laborers at state-owned Foss Park soared from 30 people four years ago to about 100 now. Residents complain to him weekly about garbage or crowds, he said.

Roche said he doesn't want the workers deported, but he wants the stand to relocate.

"I get a lot of calls from constituents of mine telling me that it's just not a good image that Somerville is projecting by having 100 day laborers showing up every morning," he said. "I agree with them."

But from the workers' perspective, Foss Park is a choice spot, seconds from the Expressway and the Home Depot in Assembly Square. Mayor Joseph Curtatone said he does not think the workers should be relocated because they are in a public park and are not violating city ordinances.

"Those who stand in Foss Park aren't hurting anybody," Curtatone said.

One day this week, the workers began gathering in Foss Park at dawn, under a damp curtain of fog. Dressed in paint-spattered clothes and dust-covered boots, about 50 immigrants from Brazil, Central America, and Russia mingled at picnic tables or under trees with a few unemployed Americans. Some had attended college; others only finished third grade.

When the trucks arrived, the scene turned into a carnival. Men raced to the vehicles in small groups, while others hung back, unable to get through. A couple in a U-Haul hired workers to help them move out of their home for $10 an hour, or $60 each. Others left to clean hotel rooms. Several workers clambered into a landscaping truck.

Workers said they know the contractors want cheap labor. But before accepting jobs, the workers lobbied for the highest possible wage, preferring $15 to $20 an hour. They scorned offers of $6 an hour, lower than the state's minimum wage.

A gray truck pulled in, hunting for house cleaners for $8 an hour. Roger, 38, a reed-thin civil engineer here illegally from Brazil, waved his arms no.

"Eight dollars?" Roger yelled in stellar English -- a key but rare skill among the laborers -- into the open truck door. "No way. I'm a carpenter. Cleaning is too cheap for me."

But a couple of men agreed to the price, eager to work.

Guilliano Verna, 21, an American college student from Cambridge, said the immigrants taught him to ask for $12 or $15 an hour, instead of $10. He said he was recently fired from an $8-an-hour job at a supermarket for missing work. He said he was the only black employee, and felt uncomfortable there.

Now he can earn $900 a week instead of $190.

"I love it," Verna said.

Nationally, about 117,600 day laborers hit the streets on any given day, according to a national day labor study released last year by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, the New School in New York, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. The study, the first comprehensive survey on the issue, found that most day laborers are men and 75 percent of the workers are illegal immigrants. They were primarily hired by homeowners or renters and construction contractors.

Day laborers in the study experienced wild swings in their pay, from $500 a month to $1,400 a month in 2004 because they are not consistently employed. Typically, they earned less than $15,000 a year.

Exploitation is common. Almost half of the laborers in the study had been robbed of their wages. Four in 10 were denied water and food breaks, and one in five were injured on the job.

At Foss Park, stories of rip-offs abound. Roger said a contractor, also a Brazilian immigrant, owed him more than $1,000. An 18-year-old immigrant from El Salvador, who declined to give his name, said a boss owed him $800.

Many illegal workers feared deportation if they complained. Instead, when deadbeat bosses drive up, they shout, "He doesn't pay."

But Luis Mendoza, an illegal immigrant from Nicaragua, said he hired a lawyer to collect $3,500 in wages. The boss offered $14 an hour to paint two houses in record time then never paid.

"I'm not afraid" of getting deported, said Mendoza, who supports three children in Nicaragua. "If they send me home I'm going to get to see my kids."

The attorney general's office said all workers, even those here illegally, are entitled to wages if they work. The office does not question workers' legal status if they complain.

Union officials and immigration-control activists have called on state and federal officials to crack down on unscrupulous employers. In February, Governor Deval Patrick said state contractors who hire immigrants here illegally will lose their contracts and face fines.

Tim Sullivan, a spokesman for the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, said the day-labor stands may have contributed to a spike in injuries among immigrant laborers. He said cash-only jobs deprive the state of millions in tax revenue and workers of health coverage and other benefits.

"It continues to feed an underground economy where everybody has to play by these race-to-the-bottom rules," Sullivan said. "It's really not good for anybody except for people who are worried about their bottom line."

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say anyone in the country illegally could be deported, but they do not conduct random sweeps and their priorities are national security and public safety.

But at Foss Park and elsewhere, the laws of supply and demand trump such concerns.

Jose , 30, a contractor, hired a worker for $14 an hour. Running late on two home-remodeling jobs, he needed experienced workers who wouldn't hold him to union rules, such as generous breaks and unemployment benefits when the job ended.

"I want to finish the job," said Jose, a legal immigrant from El Salvador who declined to give his last name. "I need these guys and they need me."

My 89 yr. old cousin recently moved back here from Florida.

She said when she left, elderly women who were driving and had to stop at "stop signs", were assailed by Hatians wanting either a job or a hand out.

Of course this terrified the women.

Why don't towns see this as a threat to their own citizens?

Jose , 30, a contractor, hired a worker for $14 an hour. Running late on two home-remodeling jobs, he needed experienced workers who wouldn't hold him to union rules, such as generous breaks and unemployment benefits when the job ended.

That’s the Kind of info the Unions in construction trades need to have contractors like that arrested and jailed fined and removed in this country ...
Guys like him crying about being behind, so he goes out and hires any body
Great news

Contractors like this are going to be SOL fast.

I like to see the people send this guys info to the proper authorities...
its as easy as one too three. If he’s not in the country on bad paper

But from the workers' perspective, Foss Park is a choice spot, seconds from the Expressway and the Home Depot in Assembly Square. Mayor Joseph Curtatone said he does not think the workers should be relocated because they are in a public park and are not violating city ordinances.

"Those who stand in Foss Park aren't hurting anybody," Curtatone said.

One is led to suspect that Foss Park is intended to serve as a place for recreation for the citizens of Somerville. Undoubtedly, the upkeep of Foss Park is paid for by the taxes of the citizens of Somerville. Now just exactly how can the local residents use this park if mobs of illegal day laborers are hanging out from dawn til dusk each day? Can a young mother take a couple of toddlers there to play without being subject to leers and inappropriate comments? Could a family have a picnic there, assuming they could get the illegals to vacate one of the picinic tables? In short, thanks to this spineless coward of a mayor, this public park has probably been rendered totally unusable.

I think they need to put these day labor sites just outside of the polling place.

Dixie

Originally Posted by Dixie

I think they need to put these day labor sites just outside of the polling place.

Dixie

Or on the Mayor's front lawn.

"living in tents"

Doesn't Mass. have some sort of ordinance against this type of living.

Third World is here.