This church group talked with day laborers to hear their story. They don't have any way to make sure they are treated fairly, and often aren't. DP
Workers seek fair pay, safe conditions.
By Bonnie Hobbs, Centre View
connectionnewspaper.com: Good, steady jobs with employers who won’t cheat them, health insurance and safe working conditions — these are the top things Centreville day laborers say they need.
Seven of them met last week at Centreville United Methodist Church with members of Wellspring United Church of Christ, some local residents, CUMC’s Director of Missions Barb Shaiko, attorney Edgar Aranda who works on behalf of immigrants, and Martin Rios, assistant director of Project Hope and Harmony with Reston Interfaith.
The men — most of whom are in their 20s and originally from Honduras — spoke Spanish, interpreted by both Rios and Aranda. To protect their identities — and so they felt free to speak their minds — Centre View is only using their first names. Most of them used to live in the affordable, Knolls of Newgate apartments, but moved to the London Towne community because Knolls was leveled to make way for luxury condominiums.
Wellspring had already held five, community meetings about immigration in Centreville so, explained member Alice Foltz, "We thought that, if we were going to talk about them, we should talk with them. These are human beings living among us and we need to care about their health and safety while they’re here."
Wellspring’s Mike Morse said the group learned recently that, often, immigrants are forced to pay "exorbitant rent for crowded spaces that are unhealthy and unsafe," and wondered if that was the case with any of the laborers.
"The prices are high and there are not many comforts of life," replied Giovane, 29. "We pay $1,600-$2,000 a month, including utilities — water and electricity or gas." He said there are usually five to seven people per home.
"Does anyone here have a car?" asked Shaiko. Giovane said most of them have bikes, but Miguel and Teodoro, both 25, and Chinto, 27, don’t, so they walk.
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2 comments:
Hi,
My name is Tim Nealison and I have been writing blogs for a while now on anything that I think is interesting. Because there is so much controversy with "day labor" I search for new articles on the issue everyday.
They say that there is around 117,000 day laborers at all times looking for work around the U.S. and when these laborers can't find work, people feel sorry for them. They feel so sorry for them that we build day labor pick-up sites to help them find work and at this point I'm sure we all know the kind of money The Home Depot is investing. But what about the 7.8 million Americans that are unemployed, who's building day labor pick up sites for them ?
I recently spoke to a person that was in the lending industry working for a fairly large company that laid them off due to no work; surprise, surprise. They have been searching for work for months but they said they just can't find a job. So I asked them what they were doing to pay the bills and they said they would do just about anything at this point. They said the other day they went on to the website POSTaNEED and picked up a job cleaning a house for $70. I said you went from a professional career to cleaning houses ? They said, "sure why not its work and it pays my bills, technically I worked very hard and was able to clean the home in 5 hours, that’s $14 per hour. I was happy to make some money and the homeowner was happy they could help me."
I took some time to look in to this website they were talking about, POSTaNEED, and I realized something very simple with this free little website. "It could change the day labor industry over night." Lets face it, every business could benefit from "hiring workers when there is work" and what this website is doing is connecting these 7.8 million unemployed people with individuals or businesses that could really use their help. Its a win, win situation for both business and the 7.8 million unemployed, yet we still shell out millions if not billions, in private money from business like The Home Depot, and tax payers money to deal with 117,000 or so day laborers.
As well, I remember when I was going to college I could really use a little money but, obviously, I couldn't take on a full time job while taking 18 units. The only answer was to pick up odd jobs from here to there. However once the work of mouth, from the circle of people I knew, ran out of available work, there was no real way to find odd jobs. With this website, people that needed odd jobs done, like "their home cleaned" and businesses that could always use workers on an "as needed basis" could offer the 6.1 million college students and the 7.8 million people unemployed, (www.bls.gov) work to get a head.
Why are we spending so much time protesting on the streets and spend unheard of amounts of money on 117,000 people when we have a work force of 13.9 million people that could really use the work. More so, people could pick up these jobs from their home computer not from a neighborhood street if we all just "postaneed" !
Is the answer really that simple ? Use a website to stop people from loitering communities, to curve illegal immigration, and to offer jobs to 13.9 million people that really need them. I still study this website with its possible effects and if I had yard work to do, I would post it, and if I had a business I would take as much advantage of www.POSTaNEED.com as I could, because there are also legal Americans that want to work, that need to work.
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