Day Laborers Offer Negotiating Tips.....

JamesNLA

I think this is the right place for this post, powers that be please move if desired.

Nothing really new in this however it just reinforces this problem and the legal support for breaking our laws.
Go Red Sox.

"PALISADES PARK, New Jersey (CNN) -- For four hours Friday morning, I joined about 200 immigrants -- legal and illegal -- at a day-laborer site at the corner of East Columbia Avenue and Broad Avenue in downtown Palisades Park, New Jersey.
My goal was not to find a job; rather it was to see how day laborers go about finding one themselves.
Dressed in jeans, running shoes and a short-sleeve shirt, I looked like one of them. I also carried over my shoulder a bag containing a hidden camera.
Day laborer sites like this one have sprung up all over the country. The laborers -- mostly immigrants, mostly men -- come to them to find jobs in construction or masonry or painting or landscaping.
Some communities encourage the formation of these sites. In others, they have become lightning rods of controversy. In Palisades Park, they have become fixtures.
At the site I visited, the last thing the folks there needed was more competition for jobs, but they nonetheless welcomed me into their group. They gave me pointers about how to get a good job.
"Always ask how much," one man told me in Spanish as he prepped me in the art of negotiating for a days' wage.
Another said it's better to be paid by the day instead of the hour. That way you're assured of a decent payment even if the work is cut short or the job is finished early.

The guys I met told me they come here seven days a week. They wait and wait and wait for work.
"Sometimes there's no work, sometimes there is work. Not every day," one man said.
It gets worse when winter comes.
"When it's cold, there's no work," another told me.

A good week, they said, is one where they get offered jobs on two days for about $90 a day. That's a weekly salary of $180. It's barely enough to put food on the table, but it's better than the alternative. Life in Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, they said, offers little in the way of income -- about $5 a week for manual labor.
"We don't have a choice but to try to save a little bit and go back to our country," a 23-year-old Guatemalan man told me.
The routine is simple: Show up early and wait for hours until a prospective employer shows up, if one shows up. As more people flock to these sites the competition for jobs gets intense.
"There are a lot of people ... and I mean a lot of people at the stop here. So you no longer get a lot of work," the Guatemalan said.

On Friday, I was there for 3½ hours until I finally witnessed a job offer. It came from, ironically, another immigrant. He was from the Ivory Coast, Africa, new in America himself, and delighted to provide work for fellow immigrants. He was looking for someone to help him move furniture and other belongings.

These immigrants -- the African with a job and the Latinos seeking work -- negotiated the job terms in broken English, with African and Spanish accents swirling in the air.
"I need two," said the African employer referring to the number of workers.
"Two dollars is not enough," responded the Guatemalan.
After much arm waving and false starts, they eventually figured out what the other was saying and a deal was struck.
Many of the men here have a love-hate relationship with the United States. They miss their home countries but feel compelled to stay here out of economic necessity.
"All you get in this country is bitterness, sadness and loneliness," one man told me.
"But money," I interjected.
"Of course, that's true," he responded. "First place is ... the money, that's why we come."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/02/san...tsc/index.html

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"....And then we all switch places when I ring the bell"
-Adrock

Celtic

They should be carted off for unlawful assembly....legal or illegal....maybe tas' a few for good measure.

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JamesNLA

I know there a bunch of guys on here that are from NJ, Does your local tax paying american citizens support these places for them to gather?

__________________
"....And then we all switch places when I ring the bell"
-Adrock

mahlere

yep...everytime they want cheap labor

Floordude

They just had the whole story on CNN, tonight at 7 central, here.

It got my blood boiling!!

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Celtic

Some town do...some don't....all paid attention to what happened here:


Freehold, NJ


The day laborers gathered and were banned from doing so. A local church set up a temporary "center"..
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...0of%20Assembly

...they gathered again as a protest..
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...51C0A9629C8B63



there was a crackdown:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...-workers_x.htm


...there was a lawsuit:
http://www.hispanictips.com/2006/11/...278000-settle/

...and a settlement:
http://civilrights.lawyersandsettlem...-laborers.html

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aWorkaHolic

As a Contractor, I am totally against curb side labor's. I will not allow anyone of my employee's to ever use them on a job site ever!

There are allot of resources for these people to be able to find a decent job period whether their legal or not.

Home owners are at a big risk hiring these people but at least they do work to try and make a buck or two rather then just hanging out on the street corners holding a card board sign.

220/221

I am one of those guys that has used these laborers.

With all the crackdowns and new laws I can't use them for my business anymore but I sure as hell use them for personal things.

I respect anyone that works his ass off like that. The legal guys that come from the temp agencys don't come CLOSE to working as hard as these illegals.

Not once have they even asked me about money and not once have I been diisappointed with their production . I have seen one guy fill a 40 yerd dumpster with drywall, plaster, insulation and lumber in a short day.

I am not happy about illegals taking advantage of our welfare and health care system but we could EASILY change laws to prevent that. No citizenship= no help....simple.

When I try and imagine myself in their place I gain a lot of sympathy and respect.

There is only one reason I have such a great life today. I was lucky enough to be born in the right place.

Ed the Roofer

But 220,

That is one of the reasons that the illegal workforce exists. Contractors using them to get 2 days work out of an impoverished man to gain a competitive advantage in his marketplace.

Even though most contractors are not Union, they should envision the training and wages that a union tradesman earns and strive for the higher qualified employees that are legally available.

Your comparison of the Day Laborers to some of the drunkards and druggies at the temp labor force is no ideal platform for a proper comparison. Lift up the scale of wages you are willing to pay and you will find better trained skilled tradesmen. Sometimes, you find a diamond in the rough that can be trained, but even those individuals eventually will need to be properly compensated, that is unless you want a revolving door of employees instead of stability and uniform production levels that can be counted on.

Ed

Floordude

It is very depressing to see, the career I have chosen many, many years ago, that provided me a respectable living, is and has turned into one of those jobs, Americans don't want to do. How can that be?? I love what I do. The "going rate" that everyone wants to believe there really is, has gone down, not up. The guys that dictate the "going rate" to subcontractors, is less today, then what I did it for in 1975, 30 years ago. How does that happen?? I'll tell you.. The ability to mislabel employees as subcontractors, which begs the illegal labor, to be able to work, without anything but a slapped hand.
This has brought on the exploitation of a guy that made $8 a week. Now you can see, why the "going rate" has been stagnent, and acually decreased, as subcontractors are mislabelled, and illegal immigration moves northward.
The guys further north, have no clue what it is really like with illegal immigration. You see them here and there, but come on down here and it is infact Mexico, and Americans are the minority.

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**Education is the key to success. Learn more, earn more.**
http://www.AustinFloorguy.com

odleo

If you want to stop the day laborer then ask the Feds why they have not been fining employers who use the illegals. When I lived in Ft. Worth Texas, I had to pass an area that day labor frequented. You could not stop or two or three would jump in your truck and not get out till you paid them.
Thia only happened once and then I started to take my dog with me. If they wanted payment he would obliged them with a payment for getting in the truck.
Thankfully there are no day labor sites where I live now, but but the larger area have them springing up.

220/221

Not me. I just used them when I have the need for good laborers. I spend plenty of time training guys to earn a good living but sometimes I JUST need someone to load a dumpster.



I'm not saying that I don't believe you but....I don't believe you.



I am sure everyone has seen this but just in case.
So wrong but so funny.

*******crap.

I can't post URL's yet so google "the amazing racist home depot".

Celtic

So you want the gov't to mandate legislation to curb what you already know is wrong???

What's wrong with that picture?

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KentWhitten

get a neighborhood kid.

That's been shown to death unfortunately. I personally don't think what that guy did was wrong one bit. If those guys in the truck were here legally, then they'd have no problem with being in front of the immigration building except that it was wasting their time.

Funny yes. No other race off the top of my head that is illegally in this country are hanging out at Home Depot waiting for work every day and being tricked by a fed up white guy that probably has had his wages reduced because we are accepting these people in our country as necessary.

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