Day laborers join forces for higher wages

July 16, 2006

BY MIRIAM JORDAN





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 last 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,'' said 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 Alvarado, a former illegal 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,'' said Alvarado, 38, who co-founded the network in 2002.

Fighting back



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

Gathering 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, 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 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,'' said Yanira Merino, the union's immigration coordinator. ''They can less easily manipulate organized workers.''

'Desperate for new members'



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 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,'' said Ana Avendano, associate general counsel of the AFL-CIO.

Sources familiar with discussions between the federation and 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 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.

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,'' said 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.''

Wall Street Journal