Day workers, also know as day labor, are an interesting discussion and poise problems or benefits depending on your perspective. Some people see them as a blight and even a danger in their communities. Long lines of men dominating public areas reasonably makes any woman uncomfortable. Then the local businesses and homeowners step in and say these day laborers are the only ones who will do the manual labor requested. Thrown into the mix, the controversial law in Arizona allows local officials to check a person’s citizenship status based on probable cause (undefined at the moment). This creates extra work for police officers, who already have enough to do, and promotes racial profiling most likely against these day workers. There are better ways to deal with this, that avoid the knee jerk reaction to think every hispanic on the street is an illegal.
Designate a single area in your community to be a Day Worker Depot and the use of any other area for day workers would be illegal. This will be preferably near public transit to help the people get to work. It wont change the feel of the area since public transit tends to be crowded already. Located on premises will be a worker depot station, which would be either a machine or personnel in a box similar to those at small gas stations and of course lots of benches around the area with easy drive-in access. Each person who wants to work will have to purchase a day working pass for $1. A worker can purchase a yearly pass for $100 at a local DMV. In the case of the yearly pass a worker will have their ID verified for the worker program. They then can use their ID like a credit card to acquire a day pass for free or they will be given a yearly pass card which will let them get a day pass on the days they wish to work. View full article »
