Gilroy
– Dayworkers looking for odd jobs know where to gather in Gilroy
each morning.
The problem is, they congregate at Home Depot, trespassing on
private property.
By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – Dayworkers looking for odd jobs know where to gather in Gilroy each morning.
The problem is, they congregate at Home Depot, trespassing on private property. At the start of the work day, store employees ask the men to leave the premises, only to find them back again the next day.
While some cities like Morgan Hill have a designated space, even shelter, for dayworkers, cities such as Gilroy must find a way to balance the laborers’ rights with those of businesses and private citizens who sometimes complain of being harassed.
Some California cities, like Redondo Beach in Southern California, take a hard-line approach to dayworkers. That city arrested dozens of workers during a sting operation in October. A federal judge on Monday issued a temporary restraining order blocking further arrests, saying the city’s policy could do irreparable harm to workers and questioning its constitutionality.
Gilroy police do not have a set policy for dealing with dayworkers, but respond to calls of trespassing.
“The issue with day laborers is, if they’re in a privately owned parking lot – a business parking lot – and they are interfering with the business and … asked to leave, they are subject to arrest only after they refuse to leave,” Sgt. John Sheedy said.
A Home Depot manager said the store’s policy that prohibits the dayworkers from approaching its customers must be applied fairly and consistently.
“We have a non-solicitation policy,” said Roy Ramos, the store manager. “The process is, we go out there and let them know how the store stands and that they can’t be on the property.”
Ramos said the store deals with dayworkers on a daily basis. Though they clear the parking lot, the dayworkers keep coming back.
Friday morning, a handful of men stood on San Ysidro Avenue, in front of the store but not in the parking lot. Around the corner, though, stood about 30 others, mostly in groups of two or three, lining the parking lot entrance through which drove the first customers of the day.
One 23-year-old Gilroy man said he and other dayworkers do no harm by standing in the parking lot.
“Everybody’s looking for work, we just need to make a living,” Carlos Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said he recently moved from Los Angeles, where he earned a living as a dayworker, finding odd jobs near downtown. Friday was his second day going to Home Depot to look for work.
The pay for a dayworker like him varies, Rodriguez said, but often is about $10 per hour, for a half-day’s work.
“It all depends – sometimes people come and take you for a couple hours, sometimes for a full day,” Rodriguez said. “Sometimes a lot of people need you to work, but sometimes nobody comes.”
Another man in the parking lot, wearing a cowboy hat to shade his weathered face, said the jobs are steady enough in Gilroy that he has been going to the parking lot for five months now.
But the men have caused some Home Depot customers to complain after being approached by dayworkers, said Ramos,
Several of the men at the store Friday said they do not approach people, but that people know to approach them.
If the dayworkers do solicit Home Depot customers, they are interfering with business, and the police get involved, Sgt. Sheedy said. If officers do not make arrests and simply clear the area, he said, they often encounter the same problem store management does – the dayworkers come back later.
Some law enforcement officials urge caution to people who are considering hiring dayworkers, particularly following thefts in South County.
Gilroy police have reported several break-ins of cars in the store’s parking lot in recent months.
Sheriff’s deputies last month arrested five people suspected in a burglary ring, which they connected to dayworkers. Detective Julian Quiñonez warned South County residents that, sometimes, dayworkers who take a job will stake out the house, and return later to burglarize it.
That risk, and the stigma that accompanies dayworkers, has spurred some cities in California and across the country to attempt to stop the practice altogether.
“The notion of looking for work in this manner annoys a lot of people,” Abel Valenzuela, a University of California Los Angeles sociologist who has surveyed day laborers around the country, told the Associated Press. “Most cities react negatively.”
About 60 dayworkers were arrested by undercover Redondo Beach police in a series of sting operations in October, for violating an ordinance passed in 1987 that prohibits soliciting employment in a public place. An attorney for the city said the city only detained people who were causing road hazards.
Saying their First Amendment free speech rights were violated, about 30 workers filed suit against the city Nov. 16. The city can respond during a Dec. 13 hearing.
Meanwhile, a Dayworker Center is scheduled to open in Morgan Hill today. The center will provide shelter to the dozens of dayworkers that have gathered near Depot Street and Main Avenue, thanks to a donation of portable buildings from the Gilroy Unified School District. The center will eventually offer laborers job training and English classes.
