Demand is strong for day laborers

[Rose Siding]

snip>
About 12,400 more Kentuckians found work between January and April than during the same period last year, but many of them aren't in comfortable long-term positions. The largest group works for companies that supply temporary workers. Some are white-collar professionals working through executive talent firms, but many are unskilled, low-wage day laborers.

After years of not having enough jobs to bother with recruiting, temporary agencies increasingly are sending vans to homeless shelters to find laborers. West has his own apartment, but the 5 a.m. Labor Works van that picked him up for a construction job draws many workers from the nearby Wayside Christian Mission.
...
The American Staffing Association reports that temporary employment nationwide was up 11 percent the first four months of this year compared with the same period last year. On average, temporary agencies employ 2.6 million people per day in the United States, the association estimates.

Agencies say they are growing because employers want the flexibility to get workers as they need them and keep payrolls low when times are slow.

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050605/NEWS01/506050450/1008

[elehhhhna]

1. There is pent-up demand for fulltime hires BUT

nobody's stupid enough to hire when there's a war on.

Temp is the leadding edge of hiring trends--use goes up before perm hires take off, & down before periods of high unemployment. See GHWB's Gulf War employment stats & trends. Happens every time.

To the unemployed,underemployed: This is a good sign

Stop the war machine and let some OTHER businesses recover for a change.

[hatrack]

2. Cheap no-benefit labor in high demand. Wow. What a surprise.

Who could possibly have imagined this? :eyes:

[Hobarticus]

4. Meanwhile, corporate profits are climbing...

Who'da thunk it?

[NashVegas]

3. Very Much Like Depression-Era

When folks would gather in certain spaces waiting for the man who needed a hand. Kind of like a farmers' market for labor.

[Rose Siding]

5. This is like free advertising

The article even has the pick up locations. The employer pays the middle man and then doesn't have to invest anything in the worker but a low hourly rate.

[SoCalDem]

15. Are the "middle men" anything but "American Coyotes"?..nt

:(

[cap]

18. It's exactly like the Depression Era

no difference. Especially since employers are looking to "legally" pay less than the minimum wage.

Shits.... The wealthier they are the worse they get. I worked as a "mother's helper" for a partner in a leading investment bank one XMAS. 12 hours a day/6 days a week for $50/week plus board (had to stay there. It was too far to commute). It was supposed to be a part-time, temporary job.

[aneerkoinos]

6. Précarité

The new subclass of proletariate in precarious employment.

http://www.eurofound.eu.int/emire/FRANCE/PRECARIOUSNESS-FR.html

[Rose Siding]

7. "employers are actively trying to find ways around paying the minimum wage

This seems relevant...

Cracking down on employers who ignore wage laws

NEW YORK – This week Ansoumana Faty, a former grocery deliveryman in New York City, will pick up a paycheck for $7,000. Meanwhile, in upstate New York, the waiters and waitresses at the New Delhi Diamond's Restaurant in Ithaca will share a cash payout of $10,000.
They are among hundreds of people in New York who are getting reimbursed back wages and unpaid overtime as a result of recent legal settlements. Many of the employees were paid as little as $2 an hour, in jobs they worked for 10 to 12 hours a day.
...
In New York City alone, researchers have identified 14 types of businesses - from maintenance contractors to the hotel industry - where minimum-wage and overtime laws have been routinely violated. In Florida, a survey of contract construction workers found that 27 percent who worked overtime didn't get paid time-and-a-half for it. And in Fairfax, Va., interviews with day laborers at four sites found that 54 percent were paid less than agreed - and at one time or another, 53 percent received no pay at all.
...
Community activists also contend that more employers are actively trying to find ways around paying the minimum wage, by doing things like paying a flat rate or hiring outside contractors......

"Companies are looking for legal payment approaches that do not rely on minimum-wage and overtime laws. That's their prerogative," says {Marc Freedman, director of labor-law policy at the US Chamber of Commerce}. "We're not encouraging anyone from going beyond the law, but in a free society and in an open market, companies should have the ability to choose how they pay their employees, and employees should be able to choose whether to take those jobs or not."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0603/p01s04-usec.html

[LuPeRcALiO]

12. hey, this is even cheaper than slavery

If they'd read Marx and Engels down South they could have saved themselves a war.

[wasp in a wig]

13. F U Marc Freedman

n/t

[acmavm]

8. That's how I survive. I'm a Temp. It's a pretty good racket (for business

owners).

[Gormy Cuss]

22. Yeah. it beats starving. Barely.

I have always temped when I had no other cash flow. The very short term assignments (under a week) were the worst, because the staff person usually assumed you were a moron. I never blamed the staffer because some temp agencies do send out any warm body, but it was very annoying.

[Roland99]

9. Demand is strong for day laborers (but the workers still lose)

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050605/NEWS01/506050450

Every weekday, employment agency vans drive by to pick up workers. Sometimes it's for construction or factory work, sometimes it's cleaning up after a sports event.

Many of the workers are homeless and few have job skills, so their best shot is temporary employment agencies that can offer work -- even if only for a day.

<...>

West said that even though more agencies are hiring day laborers, there is still competition for the $6-to-$7-per-hour jobs. That's what got him up for the van. If he waited until the sun was shining, someone else could have gotten the work.

<...>

Workers need to make about $11 per hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Louisville, Gordon said, and "the jobs that we're seeing aren't paying that."

And the employees receive no benefits.

So, the employers are making out like bandits by only hiring people on an as-needed basis and paying zero benefits. Is this a recovering economy? The GDP is still healthy above 3% but who, other than corporate execs and shareholders, is making money?

[msongs]

10. jesus saves.....money for employers :-) - wayside mission:

"....many workers from the nearby Wayside Christian Mission.
..."

this makes a pittance for the workers, saves big bucks for the emplyers, and the mission gets a brownie point for good PR. wonder how much the minister at the mission makes?

Msongs
www.msongs.com/liberaltshirts.htm

PS - the day labor racket is huge in our area, so cal. mostly illegals, so if they won't do what they are told, they can be fired, cheated, or deported. the ideal corporate american employee.....

[Roland99]

11. I've done work for Rev. Tim Mosely in the past. He's a good guy.

Don't go there, please.

[SoCalDem]

14. "...employers want the flexibility ..."

to AVOID paying for benefits and costs of maintaining a REAL workforce, and they want to pit the many unemployed against each other so they can always get people who will work for less money.

[vogonjiltz]

16. This isn't quite as cheap as it looks to the employers.

I've had occaision to use temporary labor. While the daylaborers might be making 6 or 7 dollars an hour, the agency charges 12 to 15 dollars or more(something fairly unconscionable in my opinion). This is a good dign for unemployed people in general. Alot of these jobs are something that needs to be done now so while the companies take the time to hire permanent workers.

[rainbow4321]

17. Our TX county has opened a health care clinic for them

http://www.mysanantonio.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8AGPJ900.html

Free Clinics have sprung up to bridge the gaps, including the Plano Day Labor Center Clinic, where Macias found treatment. The makeshift clinic, which treats mainly migrant laborers, screens patients in a room inside a modest home just a few miles from The Shops at Willow Bend, where shoppers snap up the latest fashions at Burberry, Escada and Emporio Armani.

At the clinic, patients seek everything from diabetes and blood pressure checks to treatment for poison ivy from tending lawns or burns from lye in cement mix, said Julia Grenier, a retired nurse who oversees the clinic and another one in Plano.

Staffed by volunteers, Collin County's at least half-dozen free clinics rely on donated and sometimes outdated equipment. Some, such as at the Collin County Adult Clinic in Plano, use grants from the county, charitable organizations and donations to pay for prescriptions, supplies and space. But demand and lack of volunteers cause staff at the adult clinic to turn away up to 30 people on Thursdays, the only day it opens.

In the last decade, the promise of jobs drew more than 189,000 immigrants and others to Collin County, pushing its population to more than 608,000 residents by 2004, according to the Texas State Data Center. With that growth came a need for more services and workers. About two-thirds of hospitality industry workers and about 70 percent of construction employees in North Texas are immigrants, according to DFW International, a nonprofit umbrella group of ethnic organizations.

[shanti]

19. par for the course here in cali

particularly for mexican/central american laborers. cheaper than labor ready too!

[Chicago Democrat]

20. This is the 2nd Great Depression all over again!

Outfuckingragious!

[icymist]

21. The new 'work houses' of the 21st century.

Christian missions with the 5 a.m. Labor Works van! Welcome to the neo-feudal ages.