As Summer Job Market Improves, Day Laborers Prepare for Opening of Hiring Center

Day laborers who solicit temporary jobs while waiting on the street near the have seen in increase in work opportunities this summer and are getting ready to organize themselves at a community hiring center.

With the increase in temporary job opportunities, the day laborers are finding themselves far busier than during the winter, when jobs were scarce, said Carlos, 33, from a rural section of Guatemala who has been living in Centreville for the past five years. Carlos, who like other laborers would not give his last name because of the sensitivity of the situation, has served as one of the organizers to get the center going.

“There will be a place for workers to go and offer them some protection. It will also help the employers because there will be one place for them to go,” said Carlos. 

The center is privately funded and will receive no public money, unlike other day labor centers. It will run on a set of rules largely established by the workers themselves, said Alice Foltz, the Centreville Immigration Forum (CIF) president.

For example, the workers wanted to establish an equitable system of assigning jobs to replace the random system that now exists along the streets near the library where drivers pick up workers curbside. The workers’ committee approved a system where the first two workers to show up every morning would be guaranteed a job that day. The rest would put their names in a hat and the rest of the jobs assigned would be by lottery, Foltz said.

“The center will help because there will be a chance to regulate the job opportunities to make sure everyone has a chance at getting a job,” said Miki, 30, another day laborer who works as a painter.

Organizing the workers to support the center was made easier because the day-labor community in Centreville is largely homogeneous, drawn from the same impoverished, rural section of Guatemala. Foltz anticipates about 40-60 workers a day will use the center; about a total of 100-150 day laborers will sign up to use the facility.

“This is something that we’ve been working on a long time with meetings that began in the fall of 2008,” Foltz said. “We have always encouraged the leadership among the workers because we thought this was important.”

The center will be housed at the shopping center inside a permanent structure, Foltz said. There was some criticism last year to one plan that called for putting the center in a trailer or other modular building. That plan has been discarded. The center will be open from 6 a.m. until 12 noon, Monday through Saturday. They hope to raise enough funds, about $45,000, to open the center later this summer.

The center is a cooperative effort between the CIF, a volunteer group, and developer Albert J. Dwoskin, who owns the Centreville Square Shopping Center.

Carlos, who is a painter, noted that the center will vastly improve the lives of the workers, offering them the potential for steady day labor, which by its nature is a hit-or-miss operation.

“This will allow the workers and employers to create a trusting relationship and benefit both,” Carlos said.