The Workers'
Organizing Committee was founded in 1993 to advocate for
Portland's hotel workers. The group has also organized
to fight toxics in
the workplace and subsidies for
union-busting companies.
The full English
name for VOZ is
the Educational Project for Worker Justice. You can contact
the project at 233-6787.
City-funded
hiring halls for day laborers have been built in Houston,
Austin, San Francisco and Seattle.
Raymond Diaz's peaceful radiance doesn't completely mask
his frustration. Seated in a spacious room full of tennis
rackets, pillows, plants and drums, Diaz emphasizes that
he's got nothing against the Latino day laborers who gather
on Southeast 6th Avenue each morning to look for work.
He understands that their lives are hard. "I'm not mad
at them," he says, "but I want them to move."
Diaz is the latest warrior to wander into a protracted
conflict simmering at the east end of the Burnside Bridge.
For years, local business owners have tried to dislodge
the knot of men waiting for casual under-the-table work.
But with all the new construction in Portland, and the
unemployment level low, work has been steady for the day
laborers, and wages are up. They seem to have carved out
a spot in a neighborhood that has been less than hospitable
to them.
When Diaz set up a counseling center at Southeast 6th
Avenue and Ankeny Street five years ago, the corner was
better known for its prostitutes than its New Age facilities.
Today Opening to Life houses therapists, an acupuncturist,
a chiropractor, an astrologer and a variety of other healers.
The central east side is in no danger of being mistaken
for the Pearl District. But in subtle ways it is changing.
Diaz is part of the change, which is why he's frustrated.
Every morning anywhere from 25 to 75 Latino men gather
below Diaz's clinic to wait for work. Most of the laborers
keep to themselves, but Diaz has been getting complaints
about those who don't. Three quarters of Opening to Life's
clients are women, he explains, and they generally don't
appreciate being referred to as mamacitas.
"It just isn't good for our business to have 60 or 75
men--of any race--hanging out in front," says Diaz. He
has called the mayor's office and the police department.
"Everybody I called meant well," says Diaz, "but they
couldn't do anything."
Early the next morning, on both sides of 6th Avenue,
Latino men are standing on the sidewalk, waiting for work.
They spring into motion when a woman in a Subaru pulls
off of Burnside and stops. After fast negotiations, two
young men jump in and go.
As many as 200 Latinos find work in this manner each
day in Portland, at three designated corners. Unknown
thousands migrate through the city in the course of a
year, fixing roofs, digging foundations, earning wages
that would be unheard of in their homelands.
Practically every morning for the past four years, Carlos
Portillo has gotten up at first light and walked to the
corner of Southeast 6th and Burnside to look for painting
work. Four years ago, he was lucky to make $6 an hour
and had to provide his own rollers and brushes. Today
he doesn't get into the truck unless the price is at least
$10, with rollers provided.
That's not to say his life is easy. Portillo has never
had an address in Portland. He sleeps under bridges, washes
up in church bathrooms. When there is no work, he collects
cans. His hands are tough and callused and he has a prominent
scar on his forehead. He's 36, but he looks older.
Still, Portillo is getting ahead. He sends home $350
every month to his family in Honduras.
Like most of the laborers waiting here this morning,
Portillo is working illegally. The temporary residential
permit he carries ran out in July. Few of his compatriots
even have an expired permit. One tells of the $1,800 he
paid a "coyote" for help crossing the border illegally.
Another says he's been able to sneak back into the country
five times on his own.
The workers hired from the street here pay no taxes.
The employers who hire them provide no benefits. The laborers
are glad to have the work, but their rights are limited.
Sometimes they get ripped off by unscrupulous contractors.
Other times they get stuck with dangerous, toxic jobs
with no safety protections.
A few feet down the sidewalk sits Joe Lloyd Carrasco,
a husky 46-year-old Apache-Yaqui known on the corner as
El Indio. Carrasco has been working day-labor jobs from
Tucson to Portland since the '70s.
Carrasco has seen a lot of friends migrate back and forth
between here and Mexico. "They go through a lotta shit
to get here," he says. He points across the street. "See
that one over there? See how fat he is? Well, send him
down to Mexico and back, and see how skinny he gets."
Carrasco understands why local businesses people want
them off the street. He also would like to come in from
the street. He talks almost wistfully of a hiring hall,
a place where he and his co-workers could meet safely,
use a clean toilet, get some water or coffee to drink,
and keep the drug dealers out. "We could build this place
ourselves," he says. "We're sitting over here doing nothing
except waiting. We've got carpenters, framers, roofers.
All they would have to do is give us the materials."
If only it were that simple.
In 1998, when Serena Cruz was an aide to City Commissioner
Erik Sten, she hoped to find a solution to the day-laborer
dilemma. Instead she found a stalemate between business
leaders determined to move the laborers along and an advocacy
group convinced it was on the side of the righteous. Not
even $20,000 worth of city and state-funded dispute resolution
sessions could break the stalemate.
"I haven't been able to understand why we can't talk
about this and figure it out," says Cruz, now a county
commissioner.
Part of the problem is bad blood. For years, the Workers'
Organizing Committee fought aggressively for the rights
of the day laborers. When immigration agents, prodded
by local business owners, swept the neighborhood to deport
people two years ago, WOC held a rambunctious march that
forced the INS to back off.
But over time, disagreements within WOC sharpened. Eventually
the group split. A splinter group, VOZ, recently set up
offices on the second floor of St. Francis Parish, at
330 SE 11th Ave.
VOZ's organizers, Pedro Sosa and Elizabeth Perry, are
committed and energetic. But they have a long way to go.
They have yet to secure their nonprofit status. They're
located at a place that is already controversial in the
neighborhood, thanks to its homeless programs. And they
need to win over the same business community that WOC
alienated.
Business leaders from the Central Eastside Industrial
Council are not talking publicly about the day-laborer
issue. They have made it clear that they can't support
a hiring hall, and they want the laborers gone. They have
little to gain by talking now, and they risk being portrayed
as racists.
Perry is well aware of their hostility. "We need to do
a better job of working with the business community,"
she says diplomatically.
She may have an ally in Diaz. For now, he just wants
the laborers off his block. But he says he would be willing
to work on a more lasting solution. And he thinks the
idea of a hiring hall may have merit. "It would be great,"
he says. "But who's going to pay for it? Taxpayers are
not going to want to support a non-taxpaying population."
