Day laborers: Legitimate work or loitering?

If you’ve seen one Home Depot, you’ve seen them all.

Every store boasts the same features; gigantic dimensions, wide aisles, forklifts roaming to and fro indiscriminately and only a handful of employees, harder to find than that one certain type of screw that you’re looking for among the store’s thousands of bins. It can be a pretty intimidating and overwhelming experience, especially if one isn’t the handyman type and couldn’t tell the difference between a pocket wrench and a cordless drill.

It’s another aspect of the Home Depot chain however that has some San Carlos citizens concerned. It’s the scores of day laborers, lined up in front of the store.

Such a sight is commonplace at the San Carlos Home Depot and other high-traffic hardware stores around the Peninsula. Hundreds of local contractors think nothing of the practice of hiring uncertified, unlicensed strangers for cheap, cash under-the-table labor to perform simple tasks such as painting a room or moving furniture. Other times, however, the job calls for more complex, dangerous work, such as shingling a roof or working with dangerous equipment like a blowtorch or a power saw.

Either way, a large gathering of hopefuls line up every morning in front of the San Carlos Home Depot, waiting to be hired, and some annoyed citizens think something should be done about the loitering and the solicitation. Not everyone feels safe parking their cars in the unsupervised lot or comfortable walking in and out of the store.

San Carlos City Clerk Christine Bolland doesn’t believe much can be done about it.

"There’s nothing [anti-loitering laws] on the books. Home Depot has been an issue of contention with residents and customers. We tell them to talk to the manager,” she said.

San Carlos City Attorney Robert Lanzone echoed her sentiment but stated there is some vaguely worded law about loitering on the state level, but not for individual cities. When cities have tried to enact laws, they have run into unwanted civic litigation.

"Other cities have been taken to court by the [American Civil Liberties Union]. It’s a big problem , a nationwide problem, but cities have tried to legislate against it have run into civil rights lawsuits.”

Lanzone cited a case pending in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals involving the city of Glendale concerning this very issue, as well as lawsuits filed after laws were enacted in New York and Arizona.

"Most of us [city officials] are waiting to see what happens,” he said.

"It’s a problem, but how do you solve it?” he asked rhetorically, before concluding that right now the matter is an "invitation for litigation as opposed to legislation.”

San Mateo was notorious for having an overflow of day laborers, particularly around Third Avenue, but the city built a "worker resource center” that now requires the hiring process to be licensed and formalized so neither employee or employer can take advantage of one another. Also, it rounds up all the laborers into one location and eliminates the loitering problem. Lanzone however said that remedy would be impractical for his city.

"San Carlos is too small for that and such a solution is beyond the city’s means,” he said.

To hear day laborer Francisco Zuna, tell it the San Mateo worker’s shelter isn’t working well at all and has turned off most would-be employers.

"Nobody goes there anymore,” he said. "Now the Home Depot parking lot [in San Carlos] is one of the best places to get hired.”

He went on to explain the impracticality of the licensing system and, while it sounds good in theory, it doesn’t work in practice.

"A lot of people just want to hire somebody for a couple of hours and don’t want to obtain a license just for someone to help them move a TV or a couch,” he said while noting that in the San Mateo worker resource center a prospective employee would have to show his or her driver’s license and fill out liability forms.

While many citizens look at day laborers as a burden, Zuna pointed out that as with prostitution, the trade only exists because of the solicitors. And just like that field of work, there are many risks the employees take on, implicitly.

"Some employers don’t pay. They might hire you for two or three days or even a whole week and promise to pay you at the end and then not show up that last day to pick you up and pay you. And if someone gets hurt or injured, they just get rid of you and tell you to find another job. Maybe some guys will drop you off at the county hospital’s emergency room,” Zuna said. "Also, there are lots of unsafe working conditions. You can work with toxic materials, you can be painting in non-ventilated areas, or you can be working in a garden and be exposed to poison ivy or poison oak, things where you won’t feel the effects right away but you need antibiotics to treat later.”

At the same time, Zuna acknowledged that employers are rolling the dice as well.

"The risk for employers is that some laborers don’t have their papers, they don’t speak English well at all and they can’t vouch for their work experience or their skill. If they do something wrong at the job, if they make a mistake, it’s the employer’s responsibility, not the laborers’, because he’s not affiliated with anyone,” he said.

However, San Carlos Police Chief Greg Rothaus believes the day laborer controversy is overblown.

"We don’t get many calls about it. It’s extremely rare. In 2007 we had 36 calls in the Home Depot area, [about day laborers specifically] but only four were legitimate disturbances. We’re dealing with it on a case-by-case basis,” Rothaus said. "We’ve talked to the management of Home Depot and the Albertson’s area and it’s a difficult situation for them. There is no law on the books preventing or prohibiting the solicitation of day workers, but if people feel intimidated by anyone, they should give us [the police] a call.”

Home Depot management refused to comment on the matter, citing company policy of not speaking to the media, and calls made to Kathryn Gallagher, public relations spokeswoman for Home Depot’s western region, were not returned.