Workers celebrate success

Barbara Diamond

The Day Worker Center on Laguna Canyon Road celebrated five years of

success Saturday.

“In the beginning, we said we’d try it for three months,” staff

member Irma Ronses said. “Five years is proof that it works.”

The Crosscultural Council organized the center in 1999, devised

the operating system and in a bold move, hired Ronses and Natividad

Martinez to run the testosterone-heavy site.

“We we’re really worried when we started,” Ronses said. “We didn’t

know the guys. Now, if something comes up, they defend us. The city

police also have been very helpful. They used to cruise by all the

time, but no more since we are more organized -- although they come

right away if we call.”

The center opens at 6 a.m. and closes at noon six days a week,

matching workers and employers for temporary and long-term jobs.

Workers register and then draw a number for the daily hiring-lottery.

Employers can ask for a particular worker or a specific skill;

otherwise the worker with the next number gets the job.

Luis Fierro, 33, will take any job.

“I do everything,” he said.

He has been a regular at the center for four years.

“I used to come here until I got a month-long job,” Xavier Montana

said. “I’ll start coming again next week.”

Montana, 29, specializes in dry wall installation.

“The system is OK, but you have to get here really early to get a

job.”

Rules were set five years ago and haven’t changed much:

* Choice is by lottery or personal selection.

* Workers wait their turn. Hassle the staff and get tossed out of

the site.

* Refuse a job and go to the end of the line.

* Payment is negotiated between worker and employer. Employers are

responsible for requesting legal documentation and preparing federal

tax forms.

* As closing time nears, three workers who did not get jobs are

chosen to clean the site. They go to the head of the line next day.

* No alcohol, drugs or littering.

The system protects both workers and employers.

Employers can drive into the center parking area without being

swamped by importuning workers, and workers know they will be paid.

Organizers said that before the center opened, workers often were

stiffed because they were afraid to complain to police if they had no

green card. The late Alice Graves, longtime Crosscultural Council

member, changed that. She worked a deal in which residency was not a

requirement to file a complaint.

Eduardo Garcia, 28, married and the father of a son, 8, likes

working for local employers because he makes more money here than in

Santa Ana.

“Americans pay Hispanics better than Hispanics pay Hispanics,”

Garcia said.

He has been coming to Laguna since the workers used to gather at

Circle K on North Coast Highway. Protests by North Laguna residents

led to the creation of the center on Laguna Canyon Road, which is

funded mostly by city grants and donations.

“The biggest change in five years was charging the workers $1 per

day for a number and having the employers pay $5 per job, regardless

of the number of workers,” Crosscultural Council President David Peck

said. “The workers get the dollar back if they don’t get a job.

Employers don’t pay again if they hire the workers for consecutive

days.”

While waiting for a job, workers can take advantage of health and

education programs offered at the center by a coalition of the

council, Mission Hospital, the Laguna Beach Community Clinic,

Coastherapy and recently, the Laguna Beach Unified School District.

“Once a month, we come and screen for cholesterol, diabetes, blood

pressure and periodically for HIV,” registered nurse Cathy Kang said.

Kang, who is employed in the hospital’s Health Ministry,

distributed miniature first-aid kits Saturday to everyone at the

celebration.

“We also offer classes in nutrition, depression and smoking

cessation,” Kang said. “We ask the guys what are your needs?”

All classes are bilingual.

Retired Cal State Fullerton language professor Doris Leffingwell

began teaching “Roadside English,” in April of 2003.

“I used to drive by the center every morning and cringed to think

of all those young people who couldn’t find jobs,” Leffingwell said.

“One day, I just walked in and said I am willing to teach English.

Irma said, ‘Oh my God.’”

Structuring the classes would be a nightmare for a less flexible

teacher.

“You don’t have the same students two days in a row, and they all

have differing skill levels,” Leffingwell said. “It has taken me 1

1/2 years to figure out how to do it.”

She has prepared bilingual papers on 25 topics. Students get

copies of the two-sided text for the day and pay 10 cents, if they

have it.

“If they don’t have it, oh well!” Leffingwell said.

Topics include simple questions and answersand more complex

lessons in types of work, job interviews and present and future

tenses.

Ronses and Martinez learned their English at La Playa Center at

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church on Park Avenue, another Crosscultural

Council success.

“We are proud of our mom,” said Martinez’s daughter, Jacky, 8, an

El Morro Elementary School student.

She and her older sister help at home when their mother has to be

out early to open the center.

The girls, their father, Alex, and baby sister, Michelle, 10

months, attended the picnic celebration Saturday.

Sally Rapuano, who taught Ronses and Martinez English at

Crosscultural Council’s La Playa Center, shared the anniversary

celebration, along with her daughters, Casey and Kelly, and grandson

Allessadro Palazzuoli.

The gap created by a language barrier was the impetus for Laguna

residents to seek a bridge between Spanish- and English-speaking

neighbors. It began as a city task force and morphed into a nonprofit

organization commended by the city.

In 2001, then-Mayor Paul Freeman wrote “Laguna Beach is blessed

with your contributions, without which we would not be as desirable

place to live and work.”

For more information about the day worker center, call (949)

510-9675. For more information about the Crosscultural Council, to

volunteer or to make a donation, call (949) 497-3936.