Most mornings Jay's Market on South Eastern Avenue doubles as de facto headquarters for dozens of day laborers. They loiter around the entrance, in the parking lot and near the flower bed—waiting for work. Up the road, a small throng squat on the sidewalk in front of Star Nursery; a black-jacketed security guard keeps surveillance on them. Across the street from the Interstate 215 onramp, in a gravel area adjacent to the Moon Valley Nursery, 20 men shoot the shit and munch on food bought from a lonchero. Nearly every pickup truck is viewed as a potential employer. As they pass, the guys, most in dingy rags and dusty hats, nod and wave, signaling their availability.
It's a scene reminiscent of West Bonanza Road, long the Calcutta of day laborers and ground zero for a 1997 government and police crackdown that ultimately did little to fix the problem. Eight years after the Las Vegas City Council passed an ordinance banning employers from soliciting work from pedestrians (penalties included fines up to $1,000 and/or six months in jail; the workers were warned they could be cited for loitering), Bonanza still teems with undocumented workers, nearly 70 idling on sidewalks between H and Main Streets on a recent Friday morning.
Citing potential constitutional conflicts, the County Commission abolished an ordinance modeled on the city's. Labor experts say that was the smartest move it could make.
"None of those ordinances have been effective anywhere in the country and, legally speaking, many of those ordinances have been ruled unconstitutional," says Pablo Alvarado, national coordinator for the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network. "In 2000, a federal judge declared a similar LA county ordinance unconstitutional and more than 25,000 workers were able to go back and continue making a living. We're currently litigating against the cities of Glendale and Redondo Beach (California)."
Since hiring security to patrol the grounds, Star Nursery Vice President Jim Jones says problems have vanished. "It was a customer safety move ... men were running up to customers' cars asking for jobs," Jones says. "It sucks to have another bill, but we've had no more issues."
Mike Solomon, a manager at Moon Valley Nursery, says Metro police sweeps have mitigated the problems. "They've been patrolling a lot lately," he says.
Residents complain about men loitering and littering, but Alvarado says the complaints likely stem more from prejudice and fear than actual public nuisance.
"'I don't know who these people are,'" is a common refrain, he says. "'They look different and talk different. I don't know if they killed someone in Mexico and are fleeing.' There's lots of education needed. There are a lot of preconceived notions."
Similarly, the ways communities deal with the problem vary. Aside from ordinances prohibiting companies from soliciting work from pedestrians, local governments across the nation have outlawed using private commercial parking facilities for solicitation. Immigration authorities in Marin County, California, conducted sweeps of day labor sites in San Rafael after the Marin Immigration Reform Association photographed and took video of day laborers, then sent that information to the media. In some areas, residents have tried to demonstrate the effect day laborers have on property values or business sales. In nearly every case, Alvarado says problems return because government and law-enforcement officials can't maintain such aggressive enforcement. "Regardless of enforcement," he says, "workers have to feed their families and will do anything to continue to do that."
Mel Hadfield, office manager of the state's Casual Labor Office, which helps companies find temporary workers, offers this approach: Go after employers. His theory: As long as companies know they can get cheap labor off the street, there'll be day laborers. It's a demand-supply issue. The average client age of the labor office is 43. In Hadfield's sales pitch, he equates the 27-year-old office to a form of insurance. You don't know who's jumping in your truck. Some are addicted to drugs; others have multiple pathologies. Still others have issues with hygiene and housing.
"This person could be an ax murderer," says Hadfield, noting that the office also benefits workers. "There have been some bad incidents. One company was helping dig a trench ... well, one day, the employer never came back and there were 15 guys left digging a trench with one jug of water ... We're here to help. I want employers to know that we're not going to hassle them. This is not a temp agency. Employers can register for free, give me their contact info, type of pay and kind of work, and I link them with workers."
If the county reprises its ordinance, Commissioner Bruce Woodbury says it'll be legally defensible and likely part of a comprehensive solution. Meetings with the Mexican Consultate and City Councilman Weekly (West Bonanza is in his ward) are in the offing. Driving on South Eastern late last week, Woodbury noticed a crew of day laborers loitering in front of Jay's Market. Some residents have pressed him to get the Immigration and Naturalization Service involved. "We have no way of knowing if they are illegal immigrants," he says. "This is a difficult problem."
Any approach that relies less on enforcement and more on engagement is cool with Alvarado. Las Vegas would do well to learn from the eight-year failure on Bonanza Road, he says, as well as the areas in California whose laws on soliciting day laborers date back 15 years. Invariably, day laborers returned once enforcement subsided and, eventually, the issue grew to include not only the problems they were causing but the ones they were having—namely, being underpaid or not paid at all for their work. A 1999 survey by the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty at the University of California, Los Angeles noted that half of all day laborers were not paid for their work at least once.
Says Alvarado: "The problems will be a lot easier to address once you talk to the workers and include them in the negotiations."