November 2000

Day laborers picket abusive agency

Chicago--Day laborers and their supporters rallied Oct. 25 outside the offices of Labor Ready, a national labor supply outfit notorious for exploiting the working poor. Having only their ability to work-in construction, delivery, manufacturing, and other hot, heavy and dirty jobs-day laborers end up usually shortchanged, sometimes injured, and powerless to complain, until now. "They are history! They are not treating us right!" declared one laborer.

Labor and community activists heard another day laborer describe how Labor Ready whittles away his paltry wage. "Labor Ready charges $2 for transportation to the job and $2 for transportation from the job. That's illegal. They also charge to cash your check, up to $1.50, and they keep the change." The City of Chicago uses contract labor instead of city workers for the Taste of Chicago festival, one worker pointed out. "They are supposed to pay $7.60 an hour, the union rate, but they only pay these people $5 an hour minus deductions."

Money isn't the only issue, said one man. "There's no formal training when they send you to a job where you don't know what kind of equipment you'll be using." Another day laborer said he was sent to a Teamster-run site at McCormick Place to set up for a convention. "They charged me for a back support. After a day of hard work, I had a check for $14." Often crews have day labor and union labor working side by side. An African-American man explained the situation at United Temps which has an office inside the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper printing plant. "Guys get the minimum wages while they work with drivers, Teamsters, who get $25 an hour to drop off bundles. Then there are the jobs at Judge and Dolph beverage distributors. Sometimes the driver and you get to the last delivery and he's in a hurry and he leaves you behind in the suburbs. You spend everything you have to get home."

One Latino worker told the rally why he was committed to organize the day labor industry. "I had to work from four in the morning until four in the afternoon, for $38, and then I had to be back at five in the morning the next day. They didn't send me out until 10 a.m." Pay for the temporary workers for Labor Ready and others doesn't start until they have arrived at a job.

He continued, "You can try to find another job, but most are closed to us. Agencies send us to factories making pillows, candy, magnets, all kinds of things. Hundreds come to places like this for labor, a lot of them speak only Spanish." Some 100,000 men and women every day resort to 300 labor contract agencies for work in the Chicago area.

Labor Ready and similar purveyors of "human capital" have supplied companies experiencing labor shortages because their employees are on strike. Labor Ready's not informing workers that they are being sent to struck jobs, including in the Five Star Laundry strike, is a violation of Illinois law. But the law carries no penalty. Steelworkers came from Local 977 to offer support. They are on strike at the John Gillen machine shop in nearby Cicero.

--J.O.