uncertain existence
Day-to-day struggle
The housing bust and a tight economy have taken a heavy toll on day laborers

By Russell Working

Tribune reporter

April 19, 2009

Alfonso Aguilar waits in a crowd of about 40 men strung out across an access road from the parking lot of the Cicero Home Depot.

They are dressed for construction work, in paint-spattered jeans and old jackets. A van pulls up, and the men swarm around, gesturing at themselves. Pick me! Pick me!

But the driver needs only two workers, and Aguilar doesn't make the cut.

It's been like this since the economy crashed last year. Where they once landed work almost every day, men like Aguilar now go a week or two with nothing to show but $30 to $40 for a half-day's work.

Hard times have hit the once-thriving day-labor market at 2803 S. Cicero Ave., three other major Chicago-area sites and a handful of smaller ones where men trade their work for cash, no questions asked.

Like Aguilar, 48, many survive in homeless shelters and on food donated by churches. Yet the men still line up along the curb every day, hoping someone buying a pickup-load of sheet rock or 2-by-4s at Home Depot will cross the parking lot and beckon for workers.

The men—most of them illegal immigrants—cling to an uncertain life at the convergence of powerful currents in contemporary American experience. They are buffeted by recession, unemployment, homelessness, collapsed housing starts and the ever-present threat of Immigration enforcement.

A neat man who shaves daily and carries a change of clothing in his bag, Aguilar used to wire his family in Mexico $120 a week, enough for them to get by. Lately he has sent nothing because he spends what little he earns.

For the past two months, he hasn't been able to talk to his wife because she couldn't pay the phone bill. Yet he has no intention of giving up and heading to his home near Mexico City.

"I stay because Mexico is harder than this," he said.

The situation in Cicero has deteriorated since last summer, said David Lozano, a Chicago-born worker. When there is work, employers often seek out Lozano because of his native English skills, and they tell him to pick his own crew. Recently, he says, a desperate worker who wasn't chosen slugged him in the jaw.

"The individuals, you can see the fear in their eyes, because they don't know where they're going to live," Lozano said. "A lot of guys out at the Home Depot, they're risking deportation. There's 10 guys sleeping in a one-bedroom apartment, and they're all out here at Home Depot.

"I have guys come up to me and say, 'When you go out to work, please choose me, because I'm eating out of a Dumpster right now.'"

About 1,000 workers hire themselves out daily at four major day-labor sites across the Chicago area, with another 1,000 seeking jobs at smaller sites that have sprung up recently, said Eric Rodriguez, executive director of the Latino Union of Chicago. Their numbers are predominantly Latino, but there are also Eastern Europeans, Koreans and some Mongolians.

"A good week used to be three days' work," Rodriguez said. "Now with the economic crisis, they're lucky to get hired once a month."

The union, which seeks to organize day laborers, has seen an increase in American citizens on the day-labor sites, he said. The organization has gotten workers to set a minimum wage of $10 an hour to keep employers from taking advantage of them.

But others say day laborers are primarily illegals who compete for work with Americans—especially 18- to 29-year-olds with only a high school diploma. Day laborers have made the construction industry adapt its employment practices, said Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that describes itself as "pro-immigrant, low-Immigration."

"When you've got a whole bunch of people queued up who work relatively cheaply, [bosses think,] 'Well, to hell with that, I'll just work them when I need them, and when I don't, I'll just lay them off,' " Camarota said. " 'I don't have to worry about keeping as many people with me and satisfied.' "

Aguilar left home and came to Chicago in 2004. He was working two jobs to support his wife, Alma Leticia, and four sons, now ages 9 to 21. (He also has a 28-year-old daughter from a previous marriage.) His wife washes clothes and cleans houses for others, but the expenses were piling up: food, clothing, school uniforms.

"Honey, I gotta go," he recalls telling her. "I can get money for my kids."

She replied, "Come back. Come back, or take me. Take the youngest, and take me. Bring us with you, and after you get work, we bring the other guys to live with us."

But Aguilar came alone. For a time he had an apartment, but when he ran out of money, he hit the streets, where he lived for 2½ years, sleeping under a bridge. He and other immigrants dragged in mattresses, and in the winter, large groups of men huddled together for warmth, wrapped in jackets and blankets.

"Living under a bridge is the most bad, man," he said. "Sometimes you can't stay asleep, you sitting with your eyes open all night, because you think, maybe somebody come and look for trouble. We have this on your mind. Maybe gangs coming and shoot, shoot, shoot your body."

Several times, Aguilar and his friends returned from scrounging for work and found someone had set fire to their blankets and clothes.

"And you gotta go get someplace else to live," he said.

For the past two months, he has been staying at a men's shelter affiliated with the Great Hope Family Center near Cermak Road and California Avenue in Chicago.

The shelter is closed during the day, but in the evenings a swarm of men shows up for a plate of chow (served only after they shower) and a mattress. Their numbers include some scarlet-faced derelicts with booze on their breath, but most, like Aguilar, are immigrants who formerly found regular work.

"When I come first time here, I get—not happy, but I feel good," Aguilar said, "because it's warm, and you get some dinner."

When he has money, he takes the bus between the shelter and Home Depot, 3 miles away. Otherwise, he walks there and back.

The life is not easy, far from his family. When work dries up, most workers will move to another day labor site nearby, and if that fails, to another city, said Rodriguez of the Latino Union. Only as a last resort will they return to their native country.

Aguilar knows his family is counting on him, even if his younger boys haven't always understood why he is gone.

"My sons, they miss me in person," he said. "They need me, they need me."

The streets have tempered the dreams that brought him here—the plans of getting a nice apartment, a TV, a couch. He stays because he still has hope. Maybe the jobs will pick up when the weather improves.

rworking@tribune.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... 9361.story