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Title: Tensions rise in Sodo as day laborers crowd sidewalks
Source:
Seattle PI
URL Source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/230510_laborers29.html
Published: Jun 29, 2005
Author: VANESSA HO
Post Date: 2005-06-29 13:31:33 by Mr Nuke Buzzcut
Keywords: sidewalks, Tensions, laborers
Views: 3
Tensions rise in Sodo as day laborers crowd sidewalks By VANESSA HO A multitude of strong dudes soon swarmed him, along with a few hungry and eager dudes, allowing him to pick a crew for $10 an hour per person. Then he sped off to a job unloading drywall. In the next few hours, contractors, landscapers and a man in a silver Jaguar pulled up near the giant, orange-branded, home-improvement store south of downtown Seattle -- but not to shop. At least, not for supplies. They wanted muscle, and they wanted it cheap. "Everybody knows this is the spot," said the man with the drywall job. As he idled his truck, more than 50 mostly Hispanic day laborers lined the sidewalks -- men with kids, drifters in their 50s, teenagers miles from home, all willing to move rocks and dig up lawns for quick cash. Ever since Seattle's logging days, Western Avenue near the Alaskan Way Viaduct has been a gathering spot for men searching for hard work. When Casa Latina moved there in 1999 to help organize the informal employment hub, the area became more established, particularly for Hispanic laborers. There's even a taco truck there now to feed them. But these days, the muscle-for-hire hot spot is the Home Depot on South Utah Street. A stream of laborers arrives soon after the store opens at 6 a.m., followed by a smaller stream of men wanting to cut costs for the day. And why not? "People come here, grab a whole bunch of sod, grab some guys out here," the man with the drywall job said, figuring he comes four times a week for labor. The situation mirrors a national trend in which many Home Depots have become gathering spots for day laborers, particularly in Southern California. These days, employers are increasingly turning to temporary, or informal, workers to contain ever-rising health care premiums and other costs, economists say. But it can be difficult to gauge how big a role these workers are playing in the traditional U.S. economy -- in part because their numbers are so hard to track. The gatherings of day laborers have presented a touchy issue for Atlanta-based Home Depot, the country's second-largest retailer, with 1,800 stores in North America. Many stores have hired security guards to boot laborers out of their parking lots. Others have leased space to temporary-worker agencies or helped set up labor halls nearby, with mixed results. Laborers say the jobs they pick up around the South Seattle store are better than on Western Avenue, and that it's more pleasant, with no obvious street drunks or addicts among them. But not everyone in the neighborhood is pleased. Business managers have complained about trash and public urination, and they say the men harass and intimidate customers. City officials say the job transactions cause traffic hazards, because they often trigger a stampede of men to a truck stopped in the street. Some people say the sight of illegal immigrants making money in America is enough to enrage them. "If there's 50 men standing there looking at you, you're going to feel a little intimidated," said Angi Davis, vice president of property management for Nitze-Stagen, the corporate landlord for Home Depot and for Sears and the Starbucks Center across the street. In recent weeks, Home Depot has begun pushing the laborers farther from its parking lot, telling them to stand on a dirt patch away from a front sidewalk, even though most of the sidewalk is public property. Across the street, security guards roam the parking lot fronting Sears and Starbucks. Earlier this month, the city made the stretch of South Lander Street between Home Depot and Sears a "no-stopping zone." Police began ticketing drivers who stop in the street to talk to laborers. On many mornings, an irritated Adrian Bernberg, owner of a surplus clothing store in the area, shoos men away from his storefront. He said more workers began converging on the area last summer and they intimidate his female customers. "They're not supposed to be here! They're here illegally! They need to go stand on Fourth Avenue, in front of the mayor's office. You got to blame the city," he groused. "If I had to beat the crap out of one of them, I'd be the one going to jail, not them. They have all the rights in the world. The cops come here and say there's nothing they can do." On a recent sunny morning, Lupe Felix arrived from a men's shelter to join laborers from Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador. As they drank coffee and quietly waited for work, few felt as if they had "all the rights in the world." Rather, many worried about losing any chance to find work, of which there was precious little to begin with. Often, they obeyed a security guard's order with little protest. They steered clear of police and kept the area clean, for fear of being kicked out; when one man tossed an apple core into the dirt, another motioned for him to throw it in a garbage bag hanging from a wire fence. With pressures on all sides, some felt like they were the ones being harassed. "Why should they give us a hard time? We're just looking for work. You don't see no drugs. You don't smell no weed. You don't see nobody drinking here," said Felix, a lifelong drifter who had just moved from Arizona. "There's a young lady crossing the street, and nobody's whistling. You don't see nobody causing trouble." Despite his American citizenship -- Felix said he was born in California -- he felt little sense of privilege, especially after being ripped off at a job the week before. A man had hired him to slide enormous stepping stones off a truck bed at $10 an hour. After eight back-breaking hours, Felix got only $20. At 53, he also felt too old for the day-laborer scene. Around him were the unlined faces of much younger, stronger men, such as 17-year-old Jorge, who said he paid a smuggler $200 to cross the border from Mexico a few months ago. There were also men who had been around so long that they had business cards, cell phones and regular employers, as well as men such as 26-year-old Alberto, born in Los Angeles and an expert in flooring, who often works one job in the morning before returning to the corner for a second. He can work legitimately, he said, but for him, the money is better under the table. Whenever a man with a job pulled up, laborers crowded around him, shouting, "Pick me!" Competition was so fierce that workers sometimes jumped into a truck's cab or bed, uninvited. One morning, a delivery truck driver pulled up and squeezed two men in the front and two others in the packed, windowless cargo hold in the back, prompting jokes about being smuggled across the border. "You want to hire someone young than old, see," Felix said indifferently, after watching two younger men score a landscaping job. "This ain't for me." His neck sports a large prison tattoo that seems to echo his outlook: "Naci para perder en el mundo." I was born to lose in the world. Jordan Royer, senior policy adviser for public safety for Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, said he's heard complaints from merchants but there's nothing the city can do except enforce the no-stopping zone. "They want us to basically shoo everybody off there, and we can't do that with a public sidewalk," Jordan said. The complaints "are legitimate business concerns, but this group is not there panhandling. This group of people is looking for work." He said the Police Department does not enforce immigration laws, because it doesn't want to alienate immigrants who rely on police services. After the city established the no-stopping zone, some of the laborers returned to Casa Latina last week, feeling unwelcome near Home Depot. Many fretted about a drop in business. "It's too bad. It's nice when customers come, but when customers get tickets, guess what? The customers no come here," said 38-year-old Santiago Cardona, who figures he makes $500 in a good week. Others say it's a matter of time before police move onto something else, and a few contractors said the no-stopping zone won't prevent them from hiring day laborers. "On any job where there's a crew, there's usually at least one unskilled, Spanish-speaking guy," one contractor said after stopping to hire a man to carry concrete for a job in Madrona one morning. Kathryn Gallagher, a spokeswoman for the Home Depot Western Division, said that the company has a strict no-solicitation policy, and that the Seattle store is working to discourage customers from hiring laborers outside. "This is not just a Home Depot issue; it's a civic issue. It's a public safety concern for everyone," she said. "We're open to working with the city, trying to come up with something to make it safe for everybody." But how open? Royer said when he approached store managers about putting in a nearby trailer for workers, talks fizzled. Gallagher said a group of community members and merchants -- not just Home Depot -- rejected the idea, over concerns about how the trailer would work. Royer said he also asked Casa Latina if the non-profit agency was interested in organizing the workers, to no avail. Hilary Stern, the executive director of Casa Latina, said moving near Home Depot would be inconvenient for other programs the agency runs. Also, she said the city and merchants should have "realistic expectations." Even at the well-established Western Avenue site, many laborers prefer to work on their own, independent of the agency. The market dictates where they go. "We realize it's impossible to organize everybody in one place," she said.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER 
The man pulled his truck into the parking lot of Home Depot and shouted, "I need four strong dudes!"
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