Day laborers—those workmen for hire you might see gathered on a street corner—are often the targets of abuse, sometimes asked to work under unsafe conditions for low pay. Many become victims of wage theft, and because many of them are immigrants or have only a limited grasp of English, they have little recourse. According to a report by Baruch College, many day laborers employed to repair the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy became sick from contact with hazardous materials. But as Claudia Torrens reports for the Associated Press, several organizations across the country are working to make conditions fairer and safer for day laborers.
The Latin Union of Chicago hosts a worker’s center to help day laborers negotiate work contracts and educate them about safety. “In street corners the agreement is only verbal. We are more organized in the center,” Jose Luis Gallardo of the Latin Union told Torres. “We want to prevent wage theft. We want both the contractor and the day laborer to sign the work agreement.” Similar organizations are found in San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles.
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New York City has three such centers, including the new Workers Justice Project in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. This nonprofit has helped 500 registered workers raise their average annual wage from $20,000 to $46,800. Representatives from this and other centers visit day laborers, educate them, and hand out gloves and masks to keep them safe.
These centers don’t only help the workers—they also help the employer find the right people for the job. Allan Suarez, whose company All Renovation works with the Workers Justice Project to find temporary help, told Torrens, “We have full faith that if we tell them we need a specific person they will bring us someone with that experience. It alleviates us from going out and trying to find someone when we have these good connections.”
MORE: Think You Can’t Afford to Give? These Inspirational Immigrants Will Change Your Mind
Tag: Seattle
Hungry? This Community Planted an Entire Forest of Free Food
What’s not to love about a forest of free food ? Beacon Food Forest is a 7-acre garden of self-sustaining produce, maintained by local volunteers in Seattle, Washington. Check out this video to learn about this model community and how the idea behind their collaboration can feed a whole town.
You’ll Never Guess What a Secret Millionaire Did With His $188M Fortune
When Seattle resident Jack Macdonald died at 98, he left behind a staggering $188M fortune. He gave it all to the Seattle Children’s Research Institute, the University of Washington School of Law and the Salvation Army. Macdonald was known for cutting coupons and wearing sweaters with holes in them, but he amassed his wealth by investing in the stock market for more than 60 years. The donation headed for Seattle Children’s Research Institute is the largest gift to pediatric research given in the United States—ever.
Seattle Readies ‘Financial Empowerment Centers’ for Low-Income Residents
Often it takes plenty of extra cash on hand to afford a consultation with a financial advisor, but Seattle has a plan to make financial advice available to the people who need it most: the working poor. Using a $1.8 million grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Seattle will open four “financial empowerment centers” in 2014, where the ten percent of city residents who live in poverty can seek financial advice, coaching, and money management training with the goal to reduce their debt and shepherd them out of poverty. Families will be taught ways to avoid predatory lenders such as payday loans and credit card debt, and financial counselors will work with them intensively for several years. The plan is based on a similar program New York City implemented in 2008, which helped 19,000 families reduce their debt by $9 million.
Treehugger’s Nirvana Opens in Washington State
If your idea of paradise is a close-knit, carbon neutral, bike-sharing community, I’ve got a deal for you. A new planned community on Bainbridge Island, Washington called Grow Community has it all built in from the get-go.There are apartments and single-family homes, community gardens, and all the pleasures of Seattle just a short ferry ride away—even a community car-sharing program. Of course, most of us live in places that weren’t built green from the ground up, but Grow Community gives us a working model of what’s possible with time, knowledge and intention. Every town can be a little greener in ways that add up to big quality-of-life improvements. If you like what you see, check out the One Planet Living program that helped shape Grow Community.