Chicago – An organization of day laborers in Illinois says the already difficult lot of the mostly Hispanic workers is made worse by unscrupulous contractors who cheat them out of hard-earned wages.
The director of the Latino Union of Chicago, Jessica Aranda, says the “esquineros” who stand on street corners waiting for potential employers do not have any legal protection, as they are not covered by a new state law benefiting workers who get employment through temp agencies.
Besides being shortchanged – or even stiffed entirely – on pay, esquineros often work under dangerous conditions and have no recourse if they are hurt, Aranda said.
The laborers must also often contend with what the activist describes as harassment from police responding to complaints from merchants and residents who don’t want the esquineros congregating in their neighborhoods.
She mentions an episode in the Chicago suburb of Cicero, where after more than a decade of tolerating day laborers on its grounds, the managers of a Home Depot outlet asked police to expel the work-seekers for trespassing on private property.
Since that request, several esquineros have been arrested and their comrades have been in constant conflict with the store’s management.
Aranda recalled that it was in the hope of protecting themselves from exploitation and harassment that a group of “esquineros” – many of them women – created the Albany Park Workers Center in Chicago.
She said the facility provides the laborers with a decent place to gather and await prospective employers as well as an institutional framework for dealing with contractors.
A spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Labor, Anjali Nayyar-Julka, says her agency will accept complaints about employment abuses from anyone, whether a lone esquinero or a temp agency.
“We have a very tough and strict law that generates more severe governmental actions in this area … but the workers must know the legislation to protect their labor rights,” she told EFE.
The various groups advocating on behalf of day laborers estimate that Chicago has just over a thousand permanent esquineros, most of them Hispanic undocumented immigrants and therefore reluctant to file complaints with authorities.
The Latino Union says there are three principal corners in the metropolitan area where laborers go in search of work, and that each spot attracts 250-300 esquineros on an average day, with higher numbers on weekends.
About 85 percent of the corner laborers are Hispanic, the Union says, adding that one-third are Mexicans while the remainder hail mainly from Central America.
A nationwide study carried out by several universities found that on any given day, more than 100,000 day laborers are seeking work at upwards of 500 sites across the country.
Ninety-two percent of 2,660 laborers surveyed in Chicago and other Midwestern cities said they sometimes performed dangerous tasks and one in three reported being injured on the job during the previous 12 months.
Two-thirds of esquineros in the Midwest said they had been cheated out of pay by employers, while 27 percent spoke of being abused by exploitative employers if they complained.
