Feature: Why Are Day-workers Complaining?

On any given day, you can drive down Broad Avenue in Palisades Park and see dozens of day-workers sitting on the sidewalks and standing on street corners. They’re Spanish illegal immigrants who wait on the streets for people to give them jobs. Usually contractors pick them up, but Koreans also hire them to help them move, paint houses, or do other manual work.

Some people say that they have tough lives and that they’re being exploited. This is absolute phooey.

We Give Them Good Money

As a Korean, my parents have hired many day-workers. And to be honest, we’ve been nothing but great to them. Most recently, we had them help paint our house. We paid them a whole seven dollars an hour, and what’s more, we fed them Domino’s Pizza (yum!), absolutely free of charge. That’s a pretty solid deal.

I know that technically, just technically, we paid them under the minimum wage. And one could maybe argue that Domino’s Pizza isn’t so much yum as it is a cheap, greasy meal.

But it’s still better than nothing, right? I mean, rarely do the workers get underpaid or not paid at all.

In fact, according to the New Jersey Department of Labor, this only happens a measly 12,000 times a year.

We Appreciate the Labor They Do

Some crazy critics will say that workers getting robbed out of their wages 1,000 times a month is unjust. Agree to disagree, I say.

One thing they can’t argue, though, is that we, as a society, recognize day-workers as a valuable part of our daily lives. We all know that they do the jobs that other people wouldn’t want to do for wages that others wouldn’t work for. Everyone knows that they are vital to American society.

What about the immigration debate, you ask? They don’t have a clear path to citizenship, you say? Even though they don’t reap the benefits of government programs, a study found that half of New Jersey’s undocumented workers paid into Social Security and Unemployment, you argue?

Those kind of are valid points. I suppose not everyone sees day-workers as important. But that’s just bureaucracy. Big government doesn’t represent you and me. It doesn’t represent those hiring day-workers. I remember my family being genuinely kind and appreciative to the workers we picked up. And I’m pretty sure that most contractors and employers feel the same way.

I’m sure that the story of the employer dropping a seriously injured day-worker off in the outskirts of Morristown, instead of taking him to a hospital, was just a rare fluke. Maybe even a lie told by that crazy New Jersey Department of Labor.

Even if it were true, hiring workers for dangerous jobs and not helping them after getting hurt is only a loose interpretation of exploitation.

We Try to Help Them

Exploitation or not, the loudest voices of complaints are probably the ones that do the most to help these people.

The letters of complaint sent to local government probably say something like, “please help these people so that they don’t have to be on my property. I want these people to do well so I can be happy, too.” After all, people are kind-hearted by nature.

And you know what? The government listens. In fact, in 1995, former County Executive William Schuber proposed and began executing the creation of an employment and training center. Not only would this center provide proper facilities (see: bathrooms) and serve as a place for contractors and day-workers to meet, as well as having free English classes available to them.

Well what happened to this plan? Those day-workers messed it up! Well, no, that’s a lie. Actually, the mayors of Palisades Park, Ridgefield, Cliffside Park and Fairview couldn’t decide on a location so the idea was dropped and very little has been done since then.

But the truth sounds so crude.

Despite the fact that the planning was halted because of location and nothing else is being done to alleviate the problem, it’s not all that bad. Waiting outside all day long, regardless of weather, isn’t so bad.

I think I’ve proved that the life of a day-worker isn’t as horrible as all the critics say. We give them good money, most of the time. We appreciate the labor they do, in our own special non-thankful sort of way. And we try to help them, by planning something and then failing to execute it. What more could they possibly ask for?

I have no idea either.