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Organizer Hopes That
For Day Laborers, a New Day
Is Coming Very Soon

By MIRIAM JORDAN
July 14, 2006; Page A9

AGOURA HILLS, Calif. -- The driver of a black Honda thought he would quickly enlist some guys to load furniture and boxes onto a truck -- until he heard the men wanted $15 an hour. "What? You don't even have papers," the driver told a clutch of Latino day laborers clustered around his car earlier this week. But they stood firm.

"We do hard jobs other people won't do," Luis Cap, a Guatemalan, told the man behind the wheel. "If you want to save money, that's OK. You will have to find other workers." The Honda drove off, the odd jobs unfilled.

Three months ago, about 120 immigrants who solicit work along a sun-drenched road in this town outside Los Angeles decided among themselves to only accept work for a minimum hourly wage of $15 -- about $2.50 higher than the previous, informal rate. "What they have here is the essence of a union," says Pablo Alvarado, national coordinator of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, who supervised the workers' roadside vote.

Day laborers, who are often regarded as the face of illegal immigration and the so-called informal economy, are organizing themselves. Steering this initiative is Mr. Alvarado, a former undocumented immigrant determined to prepare this diffuse underground work force for a role in the political debate over immigration. "Organizing immigrants and other low-wage workers can improve conditions for all workers," says Mr. Alvarado, 38 years old, who co-founded the Network in 2002.

About 117,600 day laborers in the U.S., most of them from Mexico and Central America, seek work on any given day, according to a study released this January by researchers from UCLA, the University of Illinois and New School University in New York. The national study also found that three-quarters of day laborers are illegal immigrants.

Congregating at hundreds of sites across the country, day laborers sometimes form the backbone of local residential construction, and also work in landscaping, food service and at odd jobs. But they have recently become the target of anti-illegal immigrant groups, like the volunteer border patrol Minutemen, and town ordinances seeking to eject them.

Partly to fight back, Mr. Alvarado and his team of organizers at 30 affiliated groups -- which include day-laborer centers, immigrant-advocacy organizations and church-based groups -- are striving to integrate the immigrant workers into the broader labor movement.

Last month, the Laborers' International Union of North America, which represents construction workers, announced it would collaborate with Mr. Alvarado's network to create hiring sites, lobby for immigration reform and protect day laborers' rights. To be sure, day laborers could bolster the 700,000-member union's presence in residential building. "Employers abuse immigrant workers because of their status and bring down wages for everyone," says Yanira Merino, the union's immigration coordinator. "They can less easily manipulate organized workers."

The powerful AFL-CIO is also courting day laborers. A few weeks ago, a delegation of senior federation officials flew to Los Angeles to meet with Mr. Alvarado and his team of organizers. They made the one-hour road trip from downtown to Agoura Hills for a close look at the impact of the network's organizing efforts.

"Through Pablo, we have a whole new cadre of worker advocates," says Ana Avendaño, associate general counsel of the AFL-CIO.

Sources familiar with discussions between the federation and Mr. Alvarado's network say they are on the verge of a historic agreement to put day-laborer representatives in several cities at the table alongside local AFL-CIO bosses as they shape strategies on a variety of worker-related issues. The day-laborer representatives would be there to participate in votes at the local level; some of the representatives would most likely be undocumented workers.

Of course, not everyone endorses the idea of allowing undocumented day laborers to hook up with the mainstream labor movement. "They're so desperate for new members that they're selling out to the aliens," says John Keeley, a spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, a think tank that favors more restrictive immigration policies.Adds Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform: "[Organized labor] is desperately trying to reclaim some relevance."

For their part, some day laborers are wary of linking up with unions because of negative perceptions about organized labor from their home countries.

Mr. Alvarado, a native of El Salvador, worked in factories, construction and gardening after sneaking across the border from Mexico into the U.S. 16 years ago. He became a legal permanent resident of the U.S. after marrying a U.S. citizen in 1997. He and his wife have two children.

He honed his skills as an organizer in the 1990s, first as a volunteer filing wage claims for day laborers and then as a staffer of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, an advocacy group.

In towns trying to ban day laborers from soliciting jobs in the streets, Mr. Alvarado has helped the workers file lawsuits based on their First Amendment right to freedom of expression.

The first such lawsuit -- filed in 1998 against a Los Angeles county ordinance -- enabled the Agoura Hills laborers to remain at their location. Until the day laborers won that case in 2000, they were pursued by law-enforcement officers who used helicopters and patrol cars to hound them, and then arrested, jailed and fined them.

Aware of the negative image day laborers have in many areas, Mr. Alvarado encourages them to show good citizenry. In Agoura Hills, the workers -- who gather in several groups along a hilly road -- have bought trash cans and set rules of conduct. In one spot, they have chained the can to a big Oak tree that provides them with shade. The last day laborer to leave the site each afternoon takes the garbage. Card-playing, drinking and drugs are prohibited. "If you don't abide by the rules, you leave this spot," says Jorge Santos, one of the laborers. The rules, and the $15-an-hour minimum wage, are enforced by peer pressure.

Thanks to organizing efforts, thousands of day laborers participated in immigration marches that took place earlier this year. "Not a single worker showed up here on May 1," boasts Mr. Cap, the Guatemalan immigrant in Agoura Hills.

Mr. Alvarado and his staff have also been holding teach-ins to ensure that the day laborers stay abreast of the bills and the debate over the issue of immigration. On a recent Saturday in Los Angeles, about 70 men gave up a day's work for a U.S. civics lesson. In Spanish, Mr. Alvarado engaged the group of men with paint-splattered trousers and sawdust under their nails in a discussion about the branches of government, the two main political parties and immigration legislation. A similar four-hour lesson took place in several U.S. cities.

"They need to understand their place and role in this debate," said Mr. Alvarado.

Write to Miriam Jordan at miriam.jordan@wsj.com