The City of Austin wants to open and run a new day-laborer site in East Austin. Our city already has one day-labor site near I-35 and 51st Street in north Central Austin, which 150 to 250 laborers (almost entirely hispanic) visit every day.
For those not familiar with day-laborer sites, they are a great idea — in theory. The day-laborer site provides a centralized place where laborers can gather and wait for contractors/businesses to hire them out for labor jobs (landscaping, construction, and demolition jobs are the most common). Workers get work through a lottery system, instead of soliciting work informally on street corners.
Most all of these jobs are paid in cash at the end of each day — also referred to as “under the table”. The exisiting day-laborer site guarantees that all laborers are paid at least $10/hour.
The new site would be run by the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services department. Leasing the site and running the program would cost Austin tax payers about $275,000/year.
There is a public hearing about the site is set for 6 p.m. Sept. 28 at City Hall. I think I’ll attend, as I want to ask a few questions and make a few comments:
- What measures will the City of Austin take to make sure that all laborers who use the site are legal residents or citizens of the US?
- I am not in favor of my tax dollars being used to fund a jobs program for illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants come to Austin because for the jobs. I do not want my local govn’t facilitating illegal immigrants by providing an easier way for them to find jobs.
- I think that we should be going after and fining employers who hire illegal workers. I also think that any contractor who hires a worker from a city govn’t funded/run laborer site should have an expectation that the workers are legal to hire. Therefore, if the workers are illegal and the city did not do anything to prove their status, then I believe that those individuals responsible for running the program should be held legally responsible.
I don’t suspect the city is anymore responsible for the contract between worker and employer than, say, you or your ISP is responsible for what I might say here: in each case a forum is provided but it is the responsibilty of the users to obey the law.
In any case, hiring sites are a great idea. I visited one outside of New York that was making a huge impact in immigrants’ lives. Instead of standing in a parking lot wasting time they were learning English as they waited for contractors (with the added benefit that the neighbors weren’t threatened by large groups of men loitering). The hiring site was also acting as a community center that provided day care and family counselling services perhaps preserving the marriages of these highly stressed workers and preventing other problems down the road.
It sounds like money well spent to me.
Left by Preston on August 31st, 2006 at 9:58 am