Day laborers seek stronger advocate

Finding work and getting paid for it has been an unending struggle for the day laborers of Carrboro. And relief, whether in the form of policy or advocacy, is not on the immediate horizon.

Operating as a job-search resource, El Centro Latino, the Latino community’s chief advocate that closed in November, has been sorely missed by workers, policymakers and advocates alike.

Now, as the community awaits the delayed opening of El Centro Hispano, the Durham-based Latino center that was scheduled to open April 1, the conversation on how to assist day laborers has been stalled.

The Carrboro Board of Aldermen began researching how to craft an ordinance to criminalize wage theft earlier this year. The board also has begun looking into the possibility of founding a day labor center.

But the lack of a Latino community advocate has seriously delayed the process, day laborers and government officials agree.

In need of a center

A day laborer who works in carpentry, Bernardo Morales works on a day-to-day basis.

Chasing trucks at the corner of Jones Ferry Road and Davie Road hasn’t been easy, he said.

“We need a work center where there are bathrooms, where we can wait. Somewhere that employers can register and workers can list their skills,” Morales said in Spanish.

Rafael Gallegos, associate director of the Chapel Hill & Carrboro Human Rights Center, which provides some resources for day laborers, said selling a skill set on the corner has its difficulties.

“There’s not a whole lot of negotiation that goes on once they stop, because it’s just too overwhelming,” he said, adding that it isn’t beneficial to day laborers with specific skills.

“The way they see this job is entrepreneurial. You are what you know,” he said.

While the corner is well known to a distinct few employers, Morales’ roommate, Efren Cisneros, said he worries that new businesses might be repelled by a corner culture they don’t know.

“It’s dangerous for us and for the employers,” Cisneros said, referring to how workers rush the trucks, jockeying to earn a day’s wages.

At the same time, the corner evolved for a reason, and moving it could have unintended consequences, Gallegos said.

“Businesses know it’s here, and that’s why when we talk about the day labor center, we sort of stalled,” he said. “We wanted to relocate them but it’s hard to move cause this is so well known.”

Nonprofits lead efforts

Formal day labor centers supported by local governments only began cropping up in the last 20 years, starting in California, said Abel Valenzuela, who researches day labor at UCLA and spoke at UNC in March.

“Most communities ignore day laborers, at least in terms of doing something about it,” he said.

Valenzuela said he counted 1,100 sites where day laborers gather in the United States. Only 65 of them are formal worker centers. Most are run by nonprofits.

In Graton, Calif., community members came together to organize a similar day labor “catch-all” corner into a non-profit workers’ center.

“It was a long, arduous process. A year long of consensus building,” said Christina Zapata, project coordinator of the Graton Day Labor Center.

The center, which is run mostly by volunteers on a budget of $245,000, was founded in collaboration with the town government.

Carrboro officials are also counting on a nonprofit to provide a day labor center, and the loss of El Centro Latino has prolonged that process.

“We’re back to square one,” said Alderman Randee Haven-O’Donnell.

Aldermen are looking to El Centro Hispano to fill revitalize the debate for a potential center.

El Centro Hispano has been trying to move into a space in Carrboro Plaza on N.C. 54 West, a convenient location for a day labor center, as employers need to get on the highway quickly, Haven-O’Donnell said.

And while not currently targeting day laborers specifically, depending on Orange County’s needs, El Centro Hispano’s resources office could be expanded to assist them, said Executive Director Pilar Rocha-Goldberg.

“Of course (day labor) is something we need to look at,” Rocha-Goldberg said. “And after we learn more about it, we can take away … how is the best way to approach it.”

Legal questions arise

Before El Centro Latino closed, its staff was involved in finding solutions to the issues at the corner.

A lack of shelter, bathrooms and water fountains, and a lack of regulation contributing to wage theft have been pegged as human rights issues by Gallegos and Haven-O’Donnell.

Emilio Arceo, a day laborer who waits for work on the corner to support his wife and child in Mexico, has experienced what policymakers call wage theft.

Wage theft occurs when an employer hires day laborers and drops them off at the end of the day with a promise to pay them later, but never does.

“Mostly, they pay us. But lots of people, they’ll say, ‘Tomorrow I’ll pay you. Oh, I’ll pay you the next day,’ but sometimes, they just don’t come back,” Arceo said in Spanish.

The Board of Aldermen assigned town attorney Mike Brough to research the legalities behind wage theft and whether Carrboro has the authority to implement any kind of policy to criminalize it.

“I think we probably do have the authority to engage or adopt such an ordinance,” he said, adding that jurisdiction is hard to determine.

“If someone picks somebody up in Carrboro, goes out and they do work in Orange County, and they don’t pay them for it, where does that offense occur?” Brough said, citing one of the legal gray areas.

Alderman Sammy Slade said he understood wage theft involving workers picked up in Carrboro as being under town jurisdiction.

“It’s really difficult to keep track or help or even provide information to day laborers on what they can do when the people who hire them don’t pay them,” he said. “It’s another reason for why it makes sense to make a formalized day labor center.”

In need of a leader

Ilana Dubester, the last interim director at El Centro Latino before it closed, said that whatever advocacy group replaces El Centro needs to consider that population’s needs.

“That community needs to be integrally involved and brought in and helping developing decisions for whatever the day laborer center is,” Dubester said.

But the Latino community has lacked someone to organize it.

“We don’t have a leader,” Morales said. “We need a leader who has standing in civic matters.”

Slade said that the community’s lack of a voice might be part of why day labor issues haven’t been on the Aldermen’s agenda lately.

“It goes to show why it’s important to have an advocacy group for Latinos in the community,” he said. “But hopefully when (El Centro Hispano) moves in that can be taken up as an issue.”

Unlike in Graton, where one of the obstacles to establishing a center was a group who was expressly against it, Slade said that no opposition group is pushing the issue off the table.

“Carrboro has historically been very supportive of the Latino community and immigrants,” he said.

“But it’s something that as elected representatives we should be sensitive to anyway.”



Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.