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First
National Study of Day Laborers
Exposes Abuse, Injuries
They attend church, raise children and participate in community activities
and institutions. Yet, when America's day laborers go to work, they
have
experiences that would shock any other upstanding community member:
police harassment, violence at the hands of employers, withheld wages
and conditions so dangerous that is not unusual for them to be sidelined
for more than a month with work-related injuries or to work for weeks
on end in pain.
This is the vivid portrait painted by the first nationwide study of
America's 117,600 day laborers. Orchestrated by social scientists
from UCLA, the University of Illinois at Chicago and New York's New
School University, "On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States"
presents findings from a survey of 264 hiring sites in 143 municipalities
in 20 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
"The goal was to document a population that, though quite visible
on the corners of U.S. cities, is poorly understood by the public
and by policy makers," said Nik Theodore, an assistant professor
in the Urban Planning and Policy Program at the University of Illinois,
Chicago, and one of the study's three lead authors. "We hope
to inform policy debates so that decision-makers can devise thoughtful
and effective strategies for resolving many of the problems that day
laborers face."
Three years in the making, the report includes the first-ever national
count of U.S. day laborers, little-known characteristics of these
workers' backgrounds and troubling aspects of their working conditions
across five U.S. regions: the West, Midwest, Southwest, South and
East.
"Day labor has been thrust into the public consciousness, but
we're concerned that the debate has gone on without an understanding
of what gives rise to the phenomenon or what the many downsides are
to work in this field," said Abel Valenzuela, a UCLA social scientist
and study co author.
Among the findings:
Once contained to ports-of-entry cities along the East and West coasts,
day labor is now a nationwide phenomenon, spilling into small and
rural towns throughout America, including the South and Midwest. Day
labor may be widespread, but the total count of these workers is actually
one tenth to one-20th the size bandied about by anti-immigration forces.
Wage theft is the most common abuse suffered by day laborers, with
nearly half of all workers having been denied payment in the two months
prior to the survey.
Just over three-quarters of day laborers are undocumented immigrants,
meaning that the share of American citizens working in day labor is
much higher than commonly supposed and that day laborers account for
only a small fraction of the estimated 7- to 11-million undocumented
immigrants in America today.
Valenzuela, Theodore and New School economist Edwin Meléndez
directed teams of surveyors during July and August 2004 as they interviewed
2,660 randomly selected day laborers at 264 hiring sites across the
nation.
Interviewers asked about the workers' educational backgrounds, family
lives, occupational histories and experiences as day laborers, including
injuries sustained on the job and the nature and frequency of abuse
at the hands of employers, merchants, police and security guards.
Using statistical methods pioneered by researchers of another shifting
and hard-to-quantify American population the homeless Theodore, Valenzuela
and Meléndez were able to create a statistically valid snapshot
of day labor in America today, a portrait previously considered too
difficult to capture.
Many day laborers turned out to be family men. A significant number
are married (36 percent) or living with a partner (7 percent), and
almost two-thirds have children. Furthermore, many are engaged in
community activities. More than half regularly attend church, one-fifth
are involved in sports clubs and more than one-quarter participated
in community worker centers. Many (40 percent) have been in the United
States for more than six years.
"These guys proved to be much more active and ensconced members
of their communities than commonly supposed," said Valenzuela,
a UCLA associate
professor of urban planning and Chicana/o studies and director of
UCLA's Center for the Study of Urban Poverty.
The researchers say that the prevalence of abuse proved to be the
most defining characteristic of the market. In the two months leading
up to the survey, 44 percent of day laborers were denied food, water
and breaks; 32 percent worked more hours than initially agreed to
with the employer; 28 percent were insulted or threatened by the employer;
and 27 percent were abandoned at the worksite by an employer.
"Coming into the study, we knew that the low-wage market is rife
with violations of basic labor standards, but we still found the statistics
shocking and disturbing," said Theodore, who also is the director
of UIC's Center for Urban Economic Development.
Day laborers suffered violence at the hands of employers, fellow day
laborers and bands of youths who see easy marks in the workers who
are paid in cash for a day's work.
"I don't know of any other occupation so susceptible to so many
abuses," Valenzuela said.
Injuries were also common. In the year leading up to the study, 20
percent of day laborers were injured on the job, and of those two-thirds
missed work as a result.
In fact, accidents sidelined injured workers for an average of 33
days and caused them to work in pain for an average of 20 days. More
than half did not receive the medical care they needed for the injury,
either because the worker could not afford health care or the employer
refused to cover the worker under the company's workers' compensation
insurance.
The Midwest displayed the highest rates of abuse in almost every category.
Also with the highest overall injury rate, the region's laborers were
the most likely to face physical risk. A whopping 92 percent said
they considered their work to be dangerous.
"The dangers and injuries in the Midwest may have to do with
the fact that roofing jobs are undertaken at significantly higher
rates than in the other regions," Theodore said.
Anti-immigration forces have portrayed illegal immigration as the
driving force behind day labor. But the researchers found a market
fueled by a growing zeal for home improvement and by employers under
pressure to cut wages and benefits. The report characterizes the market
as "employer-driven" with more than two-thirds of day laborers
hired repeatedly by the same employers, including contractors in the
building and landscaping trades.
The researchers call for greater worker protections, better monitoring
of safety conditions and increased access to legal services to adjudicate
workers' rights violations.
"Many day laborers believe that avenues for enforcement of labor
and employment laws are effectively closed to them," Valenzuela
said. "This belief
is reinforced by the general climate of hostility that exists toward
day laborers in many parts of the country."
The researchers also advocate support for strategies that can help
day laborers make the transition from the informal economy into better
jobs and what the report calls realistic immigration reform, including
the normalizing of the immigration status of undocumented workers.
"Employers are often able to deter workers from contesting labor
violations by threatening to turn them over to federal immigration
authorities," Theodore
said. "Even when employers do not make these threats overtly,
day laborers, mindful of their undocumented status, are reluctant
to seek recourse through
government channels. We want to change that."
A complete copy of "On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States"
can be found at http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/issr/csup/index.php.
© CONTACTO Magazine
Published on January 22, 2006
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