Thread: Dubious debut for day labor center

newjersey.com

Dubious debut for day labor center

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

By SAMANTHA HENRY
HERALD NEWS

Picture of Mayor and...

Mayor Samuel Rivera, center, offers a toast during an inauguration ceremony for the new Passaic Day Laborers Center on Parker Avenue in Passaic on Tuesday.


PASSAIC -- The opening of a day laborer hiring center on Tuesday is believed to be the first city-supported facility of its kind in New Jersey.

The coming weeks will be crucial in determining whether the experiment will succeed, local officials said.

Mayor Samuel Rivera cut the ribbon and raised a toast to the day laborers Tuesday afternoon, a congratulatory gesture for their months of voluntary work, which had transformed a once-decrepit storefront at 39 Parker Ave. -- across from the Passaic Home Depot -- into a small, bright workers center bearing a sign in Spanish that read: United Day Laborers of Passaic: Solidarity and Justice.

But moments after the mayor departed, disputes erupted among the day laborers over how the center would be organized, how jobs would be assigned and who would be elected to represent the group.

More than 100 day laborers had forgone a day of work to attend the inauguration. They packed into the center to hear how it would be organized, and what the city's new rules would be for congregating by the Home Depot once the center was up and running.

Rivera promised the workers that the city would give them a grace period to get organized, but that after a month or so, police would resume ticketing any workers who loitered in the Home Depot parking lot, as well as any contractors who attempted to make pickups there.

The mayor also said the city would remove parking spaces in front of the center and create a pull-over zone for contractors to pick up day laborers in an orderly fashion. The city planned to issue the day laborers identification cards to protect them against unscrupulous contractors and help keep out day laborers from surrounding towns, Rivera said.

To reassure the workers, many of whom are undocumented immigrants, Rivera said, that the city identification cards would not be used for U.S. immigration purposes.

Rivera said he wanted to set an example for other municipalities in solving the day laborer situation in an amicable way that both respected the needs of the workers and the rights of city residents who objected to them congregating in large groups on public sidewalks.

"They are not going anyplace anytime soon, and I want to give them a hand," Rivera said. "They have been allowed to come to this country, and they have to eat somehow, and support their families. They're here to work, and they are a major work force all across the nation."

Other cities and towns across New Jersey have grappled with the day laborer controversy, and in most cases, local officials have opposed their presence.

In Freehold, city officials refused to allow day laborers a place to gather for years until advocates for the workers sued city officials, and won an out-of-court settlement. The day laborers are now allowed to congregate, but Freehold officials still refuse to allow them an official hiring center.

In Passaic, the city has been seeking a workable solution to the day laborer situation for years. Past agreements allowed them to solicit work in certain locations, but as their ranks quickly swelled into the hundreds in warmer months, complaints from local residents increased, culminating in a ticketing blitz by city police in March 2006.

The accelerated ticketing only galvanized the day laborers to try and organize themselves, and with initial assistance from a local community organization, they negotiated with the city to build the hiring center.

Rivera said the center will not receive any city money, but will be self-supported by the workers, and rented to them by a private landlord for $500 per month. The workers will receive the first six months rent free, in exchange for renovations they did with materials Rivera said he paid for out-of-pocket.

But persuading day laborers to use the center, and determining who will operate it, remain unresolved issues, said Jose Luis Aguilar, one of the day laborers who dedicated months of sweat equity to renovate the center. Aguilar tried appealing to the crowd on Tuesday to give the center a chance to succeed.

"Listen my brothers, we need your help or we won't get this all done, we can't make this happen," he said.

Despite the pleas from Aguilar and others, heated verbal exchanges broke out in the packed room, causing several workers to drift out of the center and back across the street to the Home Depot parking lot, where they resumed their regular posts, hoping to get picked up for a day's pay.

"They can talk all they want, but most of us prefer the system of the streets," said day laborer Jacobo Maceda. "They're making an effort with the center, but how will it work?"

The Mayor must have illegals in his family!

This is old, but it's background for the above story.

Day laborers hustle for work, respect

Sunday, November 19, 2006

By SAMANTHA HENRY
HERALD NEWS




ELIZABETH LARA / HERALD NEWS
Several day laborers gather around an SUV in Passaic for a chance to get work.

Multimedia: Day Laborers of Passaic
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Alexander Carbajal told his son a white lie the morning he left home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

‘Papi will be home tonight,’ he told the 2-year-old clinging to his leg before leaving to meet the smuggler who would take him north.

Journeying to the Mexican border, he joined a trek through the desert behind a guide who navigated by reading distant mountain peaks.

He only realized they had crossed into the United States when he noticed the roofs of the houses were constructed of modern materials.

At a safe-house in Arizona, Carbajal and others were transferred to a van and driven cross-country for days, deprived of food and water, to avoid conspicuous bathroom breaks.

Carbajal says he passed the time in the back of the crowded van thinking of a new name for himself — a name that would give him the anonymity he sought in the United States.

When the van’s doors opened days later, he emerged as Jose Castro, to begin a new chapter of his life as a day laborer in North Jersey.

Just another worker
On an early morning last winter, Castro blended easily into the clusters of men scattered across the parking lot of The Home Depot in Passaic. He had become just another jornalero — day laborer in Spanish — clad in jeans, work boots and a baseball cap; hiring himself out to anyone for a day’s pay.

He watched as the procession of cars and pickup trucks made slow circles through the open-air labor bazaar. Through windows half rolled down, contractors and soccer moms, landscapers and college students, shouted drive-thru orders: “Give me three guys for sheet-rocking, painting, yard cleanup…”



ELIZABETH LARA / HERALD NEWS
Jose Castro, 34, a native of San Pedro Sula, Honduras speaks during a day laborers meeting organized by ACORN.

Castro was one among an estimated 100,000 day laborers who take to the streets of America each day, according to a UCLA study. Some, like Castro, emigrated from Central America, but the majority are from Mexico, the study found.

Castro had some university education. But others barely completed grade school. Some had emigrated from poor rural villages, others from the cities of Latin America where they once held desk jobs or shined shoes.

“A lot of people look down on us. Everyone thinks the day laborers of Home Depot are the lowest class of people in society,” Castro said in Spanish. “But there are many talented people among these men.”

For them, becoming a day laborer was actually a step up. For one thing, they worked daylight hours, unlike the legions of illegals who mopped floors at the big box stores each night, or polished the hood medallions of luxury SUVs at car washes. Day laborers with skills in carpentry or roofing could command $8 to $15 an hour.

“We even talk of starting our own construction company with the skills between us someday,” Castro said. “Dreaming is not prohibited.”

Working toward the center
THE CENTER

Jose Castro joined the ranks of Passaic’s day laborers just as the immigration reform debate was heating up. Standing on street corners in cities and towns across America, day laborers had suddenly become a very visible face in the debate over how to deal with the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. At the same time, immigrants had started asserting their rights in an unprecedented wave of nationwide protests, galvanized by opposition to a House of Representatives bill which proposed to classify them as criminals.

At the local level, tension over immigration often played out in the debate over whether to allow day laborers to establish hiring centers or prohibit them from soliciting work altogether.

In Burbank, Calif., the City Council there ordered the builders of a new Home Depot to construct an adjacent day laborer hiring center. But in Freehold, the Borough Council fought the presence of day laborers for years, refusing to allow them an officially sanctioned muster zone. Just last week, organizations representing day laborers won a settlement of almost $300,000, after suing the municipality in federal court.

But few day laborers in Passaic understood why they were suddenly representing everything from taking jobs from Americans to being security threats. Few Americans seemed to understand them, either.

Castro heard tales from workers picked up and never paid, or dropped off after a job in the middle of nowhere, with no transportation home. “I knew life here wasn’t going to be easy,” he said. “But I never thought I’d find that people look at you as less than human.”

By February, as many as 200 laborers workers were soliciting work in the Home Depot parking lot, and spreading out along nearby Dayton Avenue. Passaic Mayor Samuel Rivera said he was receiving daily calls about workers littering, urinating in public and whistling at women. Police cracked down on day laborers with a ticketing blitz for loitering and blocking sidewalks.

What happened next surprised everyone.

On the morning of March 21, about 50 day laborers, organized by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, marched from the Home Depot to City Hall several blocks away. They held protest signs and chanted, “United Day Laborers of Home Depot will never be defeated!”

Rivera, the city’s first Latino mayor, burst out of City Hall and scolded them for making a scene, but then turned conciliatory and escorted the leaders — including Jose Castro — upstairs to his office. More than an hour later, the day laborers emerged with a promise from the mayor to establish a hiring center.

“I hope we’ll be the first city to come up with an agreement that can benefit everybody,” Rivera said.

Later that evening, laborers packed into a standing-room only meeting. They erupted into cheers when told of the mayor’s promise.

The daily hustle
NEGOTIATIONS

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For Castro, organizing his fellow workers took a back seat to the daily hustle. Money still had to be made and sent home — a third to one-half of his earnings wired to his family each month.

He would wake up at dawn each day and walk to the parking lot, ready when Home Depot opened at 6 a.m. He would watch for the gentle tap of the brake lights that signaled which cars were looking to do business, and elbow for position at the driver’s-side window, hoping to be selected.

The more money he could make, Castro figured, the quicker he could return to his beloved family.

“Do you want to see a picture of my son?” He’d flash the small photo he always carried in the folds of his wallet. “He’s only two years old,” – he’d start to say before catching himself – “I mean, he’s nearly four now; he was just two when I left.”

Although many day laborers followed seasonal cycles — working outdoor construction in summer, then factory work in winter — Castro and a few others stuck it out year-round.

“It’s worth the hassle to be out there waiting for work, although sometimes we get work, sometimes we don’t,” said Jose Luis Aguilar, from Puebla, looking much older than his 35 years. “Sometimes you can earn in two or three days what you would earn in a factory in a week.”

Homeowners and renters were the ones that picked them up the most — the largest single employers of day laborers, according to the UCLA report. Small contractors were a close second, looking for a low-wage work force to keep job costs down.

DAILY HUSTLE

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“It’s almost like what they give us is no more than a tip,” said Paulo Cesar Garcia, a 23-year-old worker, also from Puebla. “I see what they make, $1,000 for painting a house, and they give me $100.”

Javier Jimenez, Garcia’s half-brother, said accusations that illegal immigrants were taking away American jobs and sapping resources made him angry. “I have no benefits here; I have no food stamps, no government help,” Jimenez said. “This country benefits from us, everybody knows Hispanic labor is cheap,” he continued. “What they don’t seem to know is, we don’t come here for the fun of it.”

Permanent strangers
When work was slow, Jose Castro and others preferred the camaraderie of the Home Depot parking lot to the isolation of their living quarters.

“The solitude is the thing that most eats away at you,” said Edgar Salgado, a day laborer supporting his wife and four children in Mexico. “One always tries not to go home to your room. You hang out with friends, killing time, and in that way, you don’t feel the days, nor the years, pass by.”

Earning well below the poverty line, Passaic’s day laborers often live doubled-up in basements, boiler rooms and attics. Some drank, or sought the company of women, but most said the biweekly remittances kept them in line. Any extra money they earned went to improving the lives of their families back home.

“Sometimes, I want to go out on the town,” said Paulo Cesar Garcia. “But then I think: ‘It’s going to cost $200 or $300 dollars, and I start imagining what that money is worth in my country.”

Fits and starts
Negotiations with the city over where to locate the hiring center dragged on through the spring. Finally, the mayor arranged to put it in an abandoned storefront across the street from the Home Depot, and to waive six months’ rent in exchange for the laborers themselves fixing it up.

When construction started on Memorial Day, they attacked the project with such gusto that some even built a ladder from scratch.

But finishing the construction proved difficult with a transient work force. Construction materials, provided by the city, would arrive and sit idle while workers coming off a long day of physical labor were often too exhausted to get much done. Or an enthusiastic group would show up to help out on a Sunday — but there were no materials to work with, and no money to buy it with.

Delays in opening the hiring center had a demoralizing effect on the men, dimming the hopes of those who had once packed organizing meetings.

Castro tried to keep up morale.

“I’ve heard a lot say: ‘This will never work,’” he said. “There is no one that can guarantee if this center will function or not, but we have to try.”

By mid-summer, only the core group of organizers was showing up — and sometimes buying materials out of their own thin pockets to keep the project going.

Many day laborers returned to the parking lot downhearted.

A call from home
While Castro was working in the dusty sunlight of the center’s raw interior one afternoon, he received a telephone call from home.

FAR FROM HOME

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His son in Honduras had fallen ill, and they didn’t know what was wrong with him.

In the weeks that followed, Castro took on extra jobs, hoping to send more money home — for doctors and second opinions.

He would speak by telephone with his terrified wife in San Pedro Sula late into the night.

By July, Castro reappeared to help at the center, happy to report that his son had recovered.

But just as his routine was returning to normal, his wife phoned him again, this time hysterical, to say their son had slipped into a coma.

The boy’s illness had been previously misdiagnosed, she told him. The doctors now said it was meningitis, and it was too late to save his life.

Castro ran from the Home Depot and tried to buy a one-way airline ticket home. The travel agent turned him down: he had no passport or visa.

He rushed to the Honduran Consulate in Manhattan, where, after pleading in tears, he was issued an emergency travel document.

Back in Passaic, Castro borrowed money from a friend and bought a plane ticket.

His wife begged him not to make the journey — who would earn money to support his extended family?

“I need to see my son,” he insisted. “Nothing will keep me from going.”

He went back to his room to pack his few belongings, nearly all of them things he had been saving to give his son: a stuffed space monster and a miniature paint roller for the little boy, who loved to imitate his father.

Then his wife called back.

“Your son is dead,” she said.

The final phone call knocked the wind out of his body, he recalls.

When his friends heard the news, they found him outside the Dunkin‘ Donuts, clutching the railing.

“My only son, my only child,” he whispered over and over in Spanish.

Jorge Muñoz, a day laborer and one of the work center’s main organizers, touched Castro’s shoulder. He broke down in sobs.

“If only I had never come here,” Castro said. “If only I had stayed and taken care of him, none of this would have happened.”

“You cannot think like that,” Muñoz told him. “It’s the sacrifice we all make.”

Muñoz and the others took Castro to a nearby restaurant to let him sit down and collect his thoughts.

A man drifted from table to table, selling white plastic rosary beads.

Muñoz bought a rosary, leaned across the table, and placed it around Castro’s neck.

Out on the sidewalk, Castro said goodbye, and urged his friends to continue the struggle for the work center.

“I always thought about this center so much, and the main thing I’d think was: ‘I hope my son never needs a place like this.’”

Journey's end
Two months later, Alexander Carbajal answered the telephone in Honduras.

He recounted how, on the morning he had arrived in Honduras, he had gone straight to the funeral home to see his son. Staring at the boy in his coffin, he was shocked by how much he had grown during his absence.

When a small glass window on the coffin cracked and had to be replaced, Castro said he took advantage of the moment to touch his son’s face one last time, and place the plastic rosary Muñoz had given him around the boy’s neck.

Then he buried him — Junior Alexander Carbajal — a few weeks shy of his fourth birthday.

Castro said he now visits the boy’s grave every two days. With no money for a headstone, he decorated it with colorful pinwheels and plastic birds and butterflies.

Back in his old neighborhood, he’d become a minor celebrity for having made the journey to the United States, he said.

All the men asked him how they, too, could get to New Jersey.

Reach Samantha Henry at 973-569-7172 or henrys@northjersey.com.

They won't use it, just like Lakewood, NJ. Building a $30,000 site for day laborers and it stands empty. I think this is ridiculous catering to law breakers!!!!

This is just nuts!

Make it a BUS STOP express to Mexico

Are there American citizens fighting having their tax dollars go for day laborers' buildings?

Take to the streets!!!

Clearly Mayor Rivera"s interests are anything but obeying laws.
It sure takes alot of gumption to have a "ribbon cutting and a toast", to celebrate the aiding and abetting of illegal immigrants. This mayor needs to go!

New hiring facility seeing little use by day laborers
Tuesday, March 6, 2007

By SAMANTHA HENRY
HERALD NEWS


PASSAIC -- It has been two months since the first city-supported day laborer hiring center in New Jersey opened here, but workers have been using it for little else than warming up on cold days.

Mayor Samuel Rivera said Monday he planned to address the lack of usage of the center before the weather turned warmer and drew larger crowds of day laborers to The Home Depot in search of work.

"I'm going to do something before the summer, to try and get contractors to come to 139 Parker," Rivera said, citing the address of the work center. "It's better for everyone."

Rivera had promised to give the day laborers a one-month grace period, starting with the center's opening in January, before he started issuing tickets to day laborers soliciting work outside the center. But Monday he said he was not planning a crackdown but instead would start warning contractors that they would be ticketed if they didn't start using the center. Rivera said that if contractors started using the center, the day laborers would likely follow.

"I will make parking for the contractors and get the contractors to come," he said, speaking of a plan to designate a row of spaces in front of the center to create a pick-up zone. "Before the construction season really begins, around April, I will instruct the police to give warnings to the contractors."

Rivera also expressed frustration over what he said was a lack of continuous representation among the day laborers, who have been struggling to choose a full-time organizer from among their ranks.

Fabian Gallindo, a day laborer who has been in charge of the center since its opening, said he had been frustrated in his attempts to get a meeting with the mayor.

He also said it was difficult to persuade his fellow day laborers to use the center without incentives.

"People are losing confidence in the center," Gallindo said in Spanish.

"They don't see it functioning, and they don't see the police cracking down on them, so they don't take the situation seriously. They were worried about the threat by the mayor to start ticketing, but since that never happened -- now, they don't take the city seriously, either."

Gallindo said it had been a struggle to cover the $500 a month rent for the center, a once-decrepit storefront that a group of day laborers renovated in exchange for six months free rent. With few dues-paying workers using the space, Gallindo said March's rent had been covered by a donation from a local community group.

Day laborer hiring centers have been a flashpoint in the debate over the growing ranks of mostly undocumented workers throughout the state.

In Passaic, Rivera said he was committed to solving the problem to both the day laborers' and contractors' satisfaction.

But community activist and outspoken Rivera critic Jeffrey Dye, who runs his own hiring center called the North Jersey Local Residents Workforce, said not all residents saw the center as a good solution.

"We are taxpaying citizens in the city of Passaic, who have been living here all our lives, and we can't get assistance from the city," he said. "While someone who is not a citizen or a resident can get assistance."

Anastasio Mitzi, a day laborer from Mexico, said this winter had been a brutally slow season for pickup jobs.

"The whole time I've been here, I've never seen a contractor come by the center," he said in Spanish. "If we're hardly getting any work being outside, we'll get even less by being inside the center."

http://link.toolbot.com/northjersey.com/67935

Look at this!

He also said it was difficult to persuade his fellow day laborers to use the center without incentives.

I'm shooting flames!

My half-assed state of NJ!

{mod edit self}

Being a legal citizen in Jersey these days probably makes you a minority! At least thats how I feel most of the time. I can remember one of my Aunts saying "Doesn't anyone see"? "They're going to take over without even dropping a bomb" That was thirty five years ago!