Labor dazed
Oakland cracks down on those who shun its new Day Labor Center, sparking bitter divisions over workers' rights.

By Reet Rana

OAKLAND'S MOVE TO consolidate the city's day laborers in one location is proving problematic, both practically and politically. The city wants workers to go to its new Day Labor Center and is enforcing that desire with a $1,000 fine on employers who pick up laborers outside of the city-designated six-block hiring zone.

Carlos Mares is one of the many workers who choose not to abide by the city's ordinance, which was approved in 2001 but only enforced over the past few months. He says the Day Labor Center just doesn't have enough jobs for the hundreds of jornaleros, or day laborers, plying the streets of Fruitvale in the wee hours every morning. Furthermore, he and many other workers say the pickup zone is too small for everyone and the center is poorly located. Worst of all, it has little publicity, so few would-be employers know about it.

"The majority of workers think they are better off looking for work in the street than at the center," said Mares, speaking in Spanish. And he knows that in the United States, as far as public space goes, you're supposed to be allowed to stand anywhere.

The position taken by Mares and others has triggered protests and peppery squabbles with City Council president Ignacio De La Fuente, Latino community leaders, Fruitvale merchants, and dozens of local community groups, all pitted against Mares and other members of the community-based immigrant rights group Centro Legal de la Raza of Oakland.

Center of controversy

Three months ago, Oakland opened a new and improved Day Labor Center in a dark, 14,000-square-foot warehouse on the corner of San Leandro Avenue and High Street. Three barely visible hand-painted signs advertise what's inside. There is no functional plumbing; two portable toilets sit out front.

The hiring zone begins in front of the center and continues up the low-traffic, mostly industrial San Leandro Avenue to 34th Street. The only sign designating the pickup zone is a single 10-by-14-inch placard on a light post. The city also put up two small signs in the Walgreens and Goodwill parking lots, where day laborers commonly congregate, warning employers about the ordinance and the $1,000 fine, enforcement for which began when the new center opened.

Nearly 1,500 workers are registered at the center. But on any given day, only about a dozen are placed in long-term jobs with registered employers. On the street in front, getting work is a free-for-all. Whenever a truck rolls up, a dozen or more men rush toward it. Most are turned away and resume their wait, arms folded, wearing dejected, empty gazes.

Workers interviewed at the center by the Bay Guardian on two recent mornings confirmed Mares's assessment that there are not enough jobs coming through. Between 7 and 9 a.m. on both days, about 20 men got into trucks with the promise of work for the day: hauling, digging, painting, or one of dozens of other activities they could potentially be asked to do for $8 to $10 per hour.

When the Day Labor Center was created two years ago, it looked a lot like San Francisco's current Day Labor Center: a nondescript trailer located in an obscure corner of the city. In both cities, plans to build a center were driven at least in part by complaints from merchants and community associations about loitering day laborers.

De La Fuente proudly admits that he, like many of the workers, came to the United States illegally. For several years he was a day laborer himself. That's why, combined with his years of work with community and labor organizations, he thinks he has exceptional insight into the workers' plight. But as a city councilor, and a potential candidate to succeed Mayor Jerry Brown, De La Fuente told the Bay Guardian, "my job is to balance all the needs."

Dueling protests

"I have full support of the City Council," De La Fuente said. After working on the issue for seven years, he is adamant about his day labor plan and says he will never change the ordinance.

But for nearly two years Mares and his group at Centro tried to meet with De La Fuente to share their concerns about the ordinance. They also wanted to discuss the Day Labor Center and reported cases of police harassment, like pushing, aggressive orders to disperse, jaywalking tickets, and arrests.

Ever since De La Fuente told cops to enforce the ordinance, Mares said, the regular flow of employers at the Walgreens parking lot on Foothill Boulevard and Fruitvale Avenue has vanished. For a while work became so scarce that he was sleeping on the streets and couldn't send money back home to Mexico. His situation was typical of the testimonies delivered at the July meeting with Centro that De La Fuente was reportedly supposed to attend but didn't.

De La Fuente told us he didn't go to the meeting with Centro because the group pasted flyers all over Fruitvale saying it was going to have a big protest and invited every progressive organization in the Bay Area to confront De La Fuente because he won't listen to the workers. He said he just can't get anything done in such a confrontational protest atmosphere.

"They're just shouting matches," he said. "It was going to be like what they did in San Francisco" – a reference to the charged City Hall protests led by San Francisco's Centro Legal (a separate organization) against Mayor Willie Brown in December 2001, in the wake of San Francisco's battle for the Day Labor Center contract there.

Yet De La Fuente led his own raucous protest against Centro on July 26, a week after he shunned their meeting. On the steps of Centro's office, he gathered a crowd of seniors, merchants, Latino community leaders, and lots of angry local residents urging Centro to "stop dividing the community."

Workers divided

De La Fuente accused Centro's executive director, Patricia Loya, of deceiving workers for her own political advantage and said Centro has tried to turn people against Volunteers of America, which runs the center.

"We know that we need to improve, but I can tell you that Centro Legal has done more damage than any other Hispanic organization in the community," he told the crowd. "If you're going to use these tactics, you better leave town because we're not going to work with you."

Loya told the Bay Guardian, "We don't want to control the Day Labor Center, but we are supporting these workers, informing them of their rights and civil liberties, and supporting them to organize."

Loya says she has documented evidence of the police abuses against workers. An Oakland Police Department spokesperson did not respond to these allegations before press time, but De La Fuente insists the accusations are "blatant lies." He gave special instructions to the police in Fruitvale not to bother workers, only employers, and to tell employers to go to the Day Labor Center. He says that only four citations have been issued and that cops mostly give out warnings.

Loya and De La Fuente agree that a big reason contractors are not coming by as much is the slow economy. But Loya says the ordinance seems to be totally drying up the supply of employers.

Emilia Otero, program director for Volunteers of America, challenges Loya to make a real difference in the workers' lives. "Loya doesn't find them work or give them food, training, or language skills," she said, referring to all of the services available at the center.

Employers from the Day labor Center are asked to drop off workers at the center at day's end, in a safe environment where they can congregate and leave in groups, with watchful eyes nearby. Things like that make a difference to people walking home with cash in pocket from the day's work – many of them have been mugged in the past.

Publicizing the center and attracting more work is one of Otero's goals, she told us. But she concedes that plenty of workers stand around looking for work just four or five blocks down the road, and they still ask, "Where is the Day Labor Center?"

Loya supports the idea of the center, which she said could be even more effective if the city would stop shutting out her group. But there's another issue involved. "Even if they could attract more jobs to their center," she said, "there is still going to be need for a man to say he's going to elect to find work in ways that he deems effective. So long as he's not breaking laws, and not disturbing people, he wants the right to do that."