The day laborers who crowd Denver’s nonprofit El Centro Humanitaria Para Los Trabajadores likely are better off than their brethren who find employment at street-corner labor markets, according to a new report.
The nationwide survey found that those who seek work in the street-corner job market frequently face poor and unsafe working conditions and are sometimes cheated of promised wages. The study, done by experts at the University of Illinois at Chicago and UCLA, found that a day laborer’s best hope of getting fair treatment was at centers like El Centro where workers and employers are required to register.
“They monitor the hiring process so it is not just a mad rush to the cars. They pull down information on employers so if there is an allegation of an abuse or an injury there is some accountability,” said Nik Theodore, director of the center for urban economic development at the University of Illinois.
The study is based on interviews with 2,660 workers at 264 hiring sites in 20 states and the District of Columbia. The Denver metro area was among those studied, but researchers didn’t provide results for individual states.
Most of the 63 centers studied required employers to pay a minimum wage, often $10 an hour.
“A person needs $20 an hour to have a decent living in cities in the U.S., and that is not living in luxury,” said Harold Lasso, El Centro policy and program development director. “We request a minimum of $10 at El Centro. We know and understand that that is not a living wage, but if we were going to ask for $20, we would have no employers coming in.”
Since opening in 2002, the center has gotten no complaints that those it arranged jobs for were cheated out of wages. Nor have there been any injuries, Lasso said.
The center sees about 2,000 people a month. About 30 percent are native-born Anglos, 20 percent are African-American, 5 percent are American Indian and the rest are Hispanic, most from Mexico, Lasso said.
The national study found that 59 percent of day laborers are from Mexico and 28 percent are from Central America, while 7 percent are born in the U.S.
Homeowners and construction contractors are the principal employers of Denver’s day laborers.
The survey also found that three of every four day laborers are illegal immigrants. El Centro doesn’t ask if a worker is in the country legally, Lasso said.
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
