Latino Activists: Pandemic Leaving Day Laborers without Work

 

 

As the COVID-19 virus pandemic continues to ramp up, local day laborers have found it harder to find work.

Yesterday there was not a single job that came in,” said local activist Pablo Alvarado, co-director of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network. “So the jobs have fully decreased. It’s incredible, with the workers. And then there’s the restaurant workers who are going to be laid off.Workers are desperate because it’s not like workers have a safety net that would allow them to weather the situation at home without worry.”

More local residents are home and unsure of how long the pandemic could last. That uncertainty could lead them to cancel home projects.

Locally there are only two cases of the virus in Pasadena. The numbers in LA County continued to climb with 50 new cases reported on Tuesday bringing the total in LA County to 144.

City officials have called for social distancing.

The job center where many day laborers congregate is open and officials are sending people out, but not many.

The center has divided the employees into small groups, and only one group is allowed in the center a day.

An official there said “30 jobs” we’re canceled this week.

According to a new Marist poll conducted for NPR/PBS News earlier this week, about 18 percent of US adults said that they had already lost their job or had their hours reduced due to the pandemic.

But those numbers may not include day laborers.

Half of the employers of day laborers are local homeowners. According to Alvarado, those jobs have now dried up.

“Fifty percent of the employers are homeowners,” Alvarado said. “And 43 percent of the employers are subcontractors and contractors that do have small home remodeling projects for the same homeowners. So you can see the impact.”

According to Yuni Parada, a friend only had three hours of restaurant work because there were no dishes to be cleaned after the restaurant began only serving take-out meals.

“It is a very sad day for our workers because as you know, we are more vulnerable because we don’t have excess money to be putting in banks,” Parada said. “Sometimes we don’t even have a bank account. We live payday to payday.”

City approved developments in construction have not stopped according to Planning Director David Reyes.

“Every project that I’m working on is still moving forward,” said local developer Richard McDonald. “I know that a lot of the financing only gives you so much time to get things done. So that weighs on everybody as well.”