Day laborers. You see them on street corners and near businesses throughout the city.
But while the workers are looking for an opportunity to earn some money, businesses and neighbors in areas where they gather have concerns about safety and other issues.
In Malibu, aside from the Labor Exchange, which is a safe place designated to help laborers assemble and find work, workers also congregate in the Heathercliff and Trancas areas near two banks, leaving some customers feeling ill at ease.
As a result of these concerns, ordinances were created to try to ban solicitation of work in certain situations.
Agoura Hills was the first city in the nation to enact an ordinance that banned labor solicitation in 1991. Other cities, including Malibu and L.A. County, followed suit.
The ordinances are similar: It is prohibited to solicit work or money from a moving vehicle in any public street, highway, sidewalk or driveway and it is also prohibited to do the same while the occupant of a vehicle. Also, it is prohibited to solicit work or money from a location within a commercial parking area without the permission of the property owner.
But after the county enacted the ordinance, it was challenged in federal court two and a half years ago on grounds that a day laborer’s right to announce their availability for work is protected under the First Amendment. It took almost a year and a half for the judge to make a decision and declare it unconstitutional.
This decision had an impact in other places, like Agoura and Malibu, because L.A. County sheriff’s deputies stopped enforcing the ordinances in surrounding cities even if the ordinance still existed, until a ruling about the constitutionality of laws banning laborers from looking for work is cleared.
Residents’ concerns
Jim Castro, L.A. County Sheriff’s special assignment deputy, said people often express their concerns to him when they see him on the field.
“Sometimes day laborers interfere with local businesses and pedestrian traffic,” he said.
But “arresting them and citing them is not our goal. We go out of our way not to cite them,” he added.
As an option, Castro encourages laborers to go to the Malibu Labor Exchange.
Castro said the number of day laborers can go up to 20 or 40 in any given location when he is not around, but when he patrols the areas where they gather it goes down to five or 10.
The special assignment deputy splits his time between Agoura and Malibu, dedicating 20 hours to each city.
“Another complaint I get a lot of,” said Castro, ” is cat calls to women.”
Yet, Castro said this problem may be due to sociocultural differences; while some women may consider these calls complimentary in some cultures, others do not as they may feel threatened by this behavior.
Otherwise, Castro concurred that the laborers “come out here for the same reasons that a lot of us live here and work here–the totality, better jobs and better pay.”
Oscar Mondragon, director of the Malibu Labor Exchange, said: “These rules (city ordinances) have been set from a safety point of view.”
If a driver wants to approach workers he has to stop in a safe place to do so, but if an employer wants to solicit a worker from his or her car, that is prohibited, said Mondragon of the Malibu ordinance.
As he spoke about workers who gather in other areas in an attempt to get work, Mondragon explained that the exchange does go to these areas but “we have no way to force them here.”
Competition and an already set base of clients discourage the workers from going to the Labor Exchange, he said.
The workers’ perspective
“From our perspective working is not a crime, it’s a fundamental human right,” said Pablo Alvorado of the Coalition for Humane Immigrants’ Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), an organization that fought against the L.A. County ordinance.
In an effort to form a national strategy that will improve working conditions for day laborers and prevent the creation of ordinances forbidding their presence, a conference took place at Cal State Northridge recently.
“Our local government should focus on providing more opportunities rather than dedicating resources on law enforcement,” said Alvorado. “A dialogue needs to take place between enforcement authorities and the workers themselves.”
“We don’t believe that the day laborer issue is a problem; it’s a social phenomenon,” he said.
In the meantime, the enforcement of illegal activities while allowing laborers to solicit work can be a balancing act for law officials.
“Sheriff Lee Baca has ordered his deputies in L.A. County to stop the enforcement of any ordinance banning labor solicitation,” said Alvorado. “That doesn’t mean that they (the deputies) can’t go to a corner and see what is happening with day laborers.
“If they see illegal activities like drinking and urinating, they may intervene,” he explained.