http://www.stamfordadvocate.com

Study provides snapshot of day laborers: Stamford mirrors national trends
By Vesna Jaksic
Staff Writer

February 3, 2006

STAMFORD -- Leonel Perez stood on South State Street with other day laborers, eyeing approaching vans and pickup trucks in hopes of being hired by a contractor.

"I don't want to be here," said Perez, 27, who grew up in El Salvador. "But I need to get work."

That was in the fall, and Perez has not returned to the day laborer pickup site. He has found more stable jobs, including one last month for an electrician in Westchester County, N.Y.

"Only when I have the necessity of paying rent I go there," the Stamford man said. "I go when I can't find work."

Three-quarters of the nation's day laborers have been day laborers for less than three years, suggesting many get other jobs, according to a new study. The nationwide report is the first of its kind and provides a snapshot of day laborers, who are mostly immigrants.

City Rep. Philip Berns, D-16, an immigration attorney, said many of the national findings are reflected in Stamford. But Berns said Stamford has much more mobility in its day labor force, meaning workers move into other jobs quicker than the nationwide study suggests.

"Our experience is that 90 percent of them are here less than four months," he said. "Every three and four months there is a new wave of day laborers . . . The guy who is cutting your lawn four years ago was a day laborer. The guy who is building your stone wall was a day laborer. The guy who is building your pool or framing an extension to your house used to be a day laborer."

Every morning, up to several hundred day laborers go to the East Side in search of employment in construction, painting, landscaping and other fields.

Berns has worked with the East Side Partnership, a group of neighborhood residents and businesses, to place portable toilets in the day laborer pickup zone and hire a part-time outreach worker to let laborers know about medical care, English classes and other services.

"There is a huge turnover in workers on the East Side," said Carmen Domonkos, a Stamford Partnership employee. "They travel from town to town and state to state to follow the work. Many go to Florida in the winter to work on the fruit and vegetable farms."

The study, "On the corner: Day labor in the United States," estimates that 117,600 people daily work or look for work in day labor on street corners, work sites and in front of businesses. The West has the most day laborers, at 42 percent of the nation's total, followed by the East at 23 percent.

"Day labor really is a nationwide phenomenon," said Nik Theodore, professor of urban planning and director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois in Chicago and one of the study's four authors. "We often used to think of it as a big-city phenomenon or a port-of-entry phenomenon. But we found day laborers in every region of the country."

Last month, Stamford was one of a number of cities where anti-immigration groups, including Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control, scheduled protests. Farmingville, N.Y., has had violent clashes.

Some communities, such as Mount Kisco, N.Y., in Westchester County, have opened centers where workers can learn English and computer skills while waiting for work.

The study found that day laborers earned a median monthly salary of $700 in June and July 2004. Forty-nine percent of laborers were hired by homeowners and 43 percent by construction contractors.

Many workers reported a range of abuses. For example, 44 percent said they were denied food or breaks on the job; 49 percent said they were not paid for work; 27 percent said they were abandoned at their jobs.

The work carried other dangers. One-fifth of all laborers reported work-related injuries and an average of 20 days working in pain.

"The level of abuse is striking," said Edwin Melendez, professor of urban policy and management at New School University in New York City and a study author. "The level of injuries and health risks that they take is also alarming . . . We know it's a very risky situation for them to be on the corners."

The survey found three-quarters of the workers are in the country illegally. In the United States, most come from Mexico, but not in Stamford.

According to surveys of about 100 Stamford workers conducted by the outreach worker from August through October, about 55 percent came from Guatemala, 12 percent came from Ecuador, 11 percent from Honduras and 10 percent from Mexico. Almost all were Stamford residents and their average age was 28, Berns said.

Many laborers interviewed in recent months said they did not have the immigration papers needed for other jobs.

"If they had papers, they would work at a McDonald's, wash cars, do whatever," Jonathan Montenegro, 23, said among fellow laborers this fall. "All they are doing is trying to find some work."

Thanks to word of mouth, their numbers have grown. Manuel Arbulu, a Peruvian who at 73 is one of the city's oldest day laborers, said he has noticed a lot more competition in the last year.

"When I first came here, there were maybe 80," he said in late November. "Now, maybe 200."

The number of day laborers may fluctuate, but immigrants will keep coming if there is work, said Lisa Mercurio, director of the Fairfield County Information Exchange, part of the Business Council of Fairfield County in Stamford.

"It has always been an issue of supply and demand," Mercurio said.

The nationwide study was based on interviews with 2,660 workers in July and August 2004 at 264 worker sites in 20 states and the District of Colombia. None of the sites was in Connecticut. Several foundations paid for the study, which was released last month.

The study found that more than a third of day laborers are married and almost two-thirds have children. Nearly a third of the children are American citizens. More than half attend church regularly.

Oscar Paredes, a regional spokesman for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a Los Angeles advocacy group, said he hopes the study shatters stereotypes that day laborers are drug addicts, terrorists or criminals.

"Most workers have family here and wives," said Paredes, who works with New York City's day laborers as executive director of the Latin American Workers Project, a nonprofit community organization. "They come to stay in the United States, and they try to earn a living in this country because they have difficult situations in their native countries.