Cornered

AT THE DAY LABORER hire site on NE MLK, the recession is more
palpable than abstract Dow Jones graphs. There are more day laborers at
the site than usual, including more white American citizens who’ve come
to the site after losing their jobs. “We’ve seen lots of new faces,”
says Site Director Ignacio Paramo.

Portland day laborer advocacy group VOZ opened the hire site last
June with a $200,000 grant from the city to provide a safe, sanitary
place for the workers who usually stand on street corners around
industrial Southeast waiting for jobs. But the site is also a rare
resource for keeping a pulse on one of Portland’s most difficult to
track communities.

Paramo says the number of day laborers in Portland usually declines
during the winter as migrant workers head south. But at the center as
well as the nearby street corners where laborers wait for work, Paramo
and other organizers have seen more day laborers of late than during
the busy summer months.

Over the summer, the site normally hosted about 60 workers a day and
usually found day-long jobs for about 20 of them. This February and
March, 70 to 80 day laborers sign up for work most days, while only
four or five typically get jobs.

“We have more day laborers and fewer jobs,” says Paramo. “People get
desperate. They are moving out of the center to the corners—back
and forth, back and forth—desperate to find a job.”

Some of the immigrant day laborers have given up on Portland
entirely and returned to their home countries, says Paramo. Every year,
VOZ puts together a soccer team of about 20 day laborers. When Paramo
tried to track down last year’s members to field this season’s team,
most of them had left the country. The job situation in Mexican and
Latin American towns is far worse but “the mentality is, ‘I’m doing
nothing here, I’ll be doing nothing there, but at least I’ll be with my
family,'” says Paramo.

With Oregon’s unemployment rate the worst in 23 years, the
demographics of the day labor site are changing.

“Guys roll in who look like subcontractors with SUVs and it turns
out they’re looking for work,” says Justin Shear, day laborer hire site
coordinator.

When the site first opened in June, only two or three of the
laborers who showed up each day spoke English as their first language.
Now, 15 or so native English speakers turn up at the site most
days.

“Traditionally, day laborers have been Latino but in two years maybe
‘day laborer’ will have a different meaning,” says Shear.

Several times a week employers show up at the center, but drive off
once they learn that day laborers there demand a minimum wage of $10 an
hour. On Saturday morning, March 7, one woman looking for cleaners left
the site after seeing the minimum wage paperwork—she could hire
guys off the street corner for eight bucks.

“People have this attitude that times are tough right now, people
should take what they can get,” says Shear.

VOZ and the day laborers met in February to discuss whether they
should lower their wage to corner levels. The workers voted to keep
their wages at $10 an hour, even if it meant turning away some
jobs.

With jobs scarce, the role of the day laborer hire site is changing.
VOZ has started putting together classes for the dozens of men who
spend hours every morning waiting at the site for nonexistent jobs.
Portland State University and Reed College students teach English
classes every morning in a small trailer office at the site.

Volunteer Allyn Mejia recently started showing up with paint and
paper at the site three days a week to lead art classes for the day
laborers. Saturday afternoon, Mejia collected a vibrant portrait of
Jesus, a still-wet acrylic jungle, and a small stack of other paintings
from a roomful of guys who didn’t win one of the five jobs employers
offered that day.

In the corner, a day laborer named Jesse Vazquez wrapped up a giant
painting of a Mexican pueblo. Vazquez has not found work in weeks. In
his ample downtime, Vazquez transformed this corner of the day labor
center into his de facto studio during art classes, complete with
canvasses found in dumpsters and a donated easel.

“I came from a small town like this one,” says Vazquez, gesturing to
his painting of red hills and simple houses. These days, he lives in a
van parked on the streets of Portland.