What Are Day Labor Centers? • Charles D. Thompson, Jr.

A: What are they?

Day labor centers are community-based, non-profit organizations established to create an organized and streamlined process to match day laborers with potential employers. They provide a safe and clean environment for day laborers to congregate and wait for work, in places protected from the elements. They are often established in response to community complaints about day laborers who congregate on public street corners or in front of stores while waiting for potential employers to pick them up. They attempt to solve several problems at once.

Day Labor Organizing
Day laborer organizing began in the mid-1980s with efforts to educate workers about their civil liberties and workplace protections. This work grew to include advocacy on behalf of day laborers with police and other community stakeholders and to prevent wage and hour violations.

National Day Laborer Organizing Network
The National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), founded in 2001, is an alliance of 36 community-based organizations and worker centers across the United States, dedicated to improving the lives of day laborers.

Learn more about NDLON at their website: www.ndlon.org

Starting a Day Labor Center
NDLON has published a summary of the ‘best practices’ for starting and running a day-labor center from the perspective of both workers and organizers. The report can be found here.

Are they legal?
Residents of Jupiter and others who oppose El Sol believe that the hiring of day laborers violates federal law making it illegal to hire, fire, or recruit for payment any person who is unauthorized to work in the U.S.. Federal law also requires employers to verify a worker’s documents, ensuring that s/he is a documented worker.

However, the people at El Sol, and other day labor centers around the country, assert that they are violating no laws. They cite an exception, allowed by federal law, which allows private individuals and homeowners to hire independent contractors or temporary domestic workers for short time periods without violating federal law. Employers are not required to verify the papers of workers they hire as independent contractors.

Magnets?
Aside from concerns about legality, some protesters opposed to El Sol say that the center could serve as a magnet for undocumented workers, encouraging more undocumented immigrants to cross the border and thus exacerbate the immigrant problem. However, according to a 2006 report by UCLA’s Center for the Study of Urban Poverty, 83% of day laborers learned of day labor centers only after migrating to the U.S., and therefore the center could not have served as an incentive to migrate.