Community leaders announced recently that they will present before the New York City Council a bill requesting for the creation of centers for day laborers in New York.

“There is an urgent need for at least eight centers,” said Oscar Paredes, who along with Javier Gallardo launched Latin American Workers Project, during the Third Annual Assembly of Day Laborers held on July 28 at Hofstra University in Long Island.

Paredes and Gallardo planned a forum at New York University Law School in Manhattan where politicians, workers, lawyers and representatives of community organizations could share their points of view. Both were sponsored by the New York Laborers Coalition and the National Laborers Network.

“In the county of Los Angeles, California, poverty was reduced by 22 percent after workplaces were established for workers,” said UCLA professor Abel Valenzuela, indicating that final results of a study carried out in 140 U.S. cities will be released in September.

Jorge Diaz, a Salvadorian businessman who in his free time collaborates with the Institute of Popular Education in Southern California, praised these types of centers, indicating that on days that the day laborers find no work, they can get computer skills and learn English.

According to Paredes, there were clashes with day laborers in the white neighborhood of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, for quite some time until a center was created, where laborers could gather to wait for work. Today, the center serves close to 1,500 workers.

As part of a message sent to the organizations from the event at Hofstra University, Arturo Sarukhan, consul general of Mexico in New York, assured that “a contracting center (in Farmingville, Long Island) would help to reduce the tensions there, giving day laborers a worthy and safe space to meet the demand for work.”

The present situation for day laborers in Farmingville is tense after the eviction of dozens of workers from various houses where they lived in great numbers. Suffolk authorities announced that 117 houses were under investigation and the lodgers there could end up having the same fate.

Number of laborers:

In the city (Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens): 16,000

In other places (Staten Island, Long Island, Westchester): 19,000

Total in the state of New York: 35,000

- Source: Latin American Workers Project