Other cities embrace job centers

Alicia Robinson

Ask officials in Laguna Beach or Huntington Beach about their job

centers, and they’ll tell you they’re satisfied.

“There’s less crime, there are fewer complaints; everything is

better because we’re out there running that,” said David Peck,

chairman of the South County Cross-Cultural Council, a nonprofit

organization that operates the Laguna Day Worker Center.

The Costa Mesa City Council isn’t quite as happy with its center.

It voted last week to close the city’s Job Center at the end of June,

with proponents of the closure saying they hope to redevelop that

part of the Westside into housing. Since 1988 the Job Center has

connected day laborers with employers.

Before the Costa Mesa center opened, the city dealt with

complaints about workers hanging out in parking lots or flagging down

cars hoping for jobs. For other cities with employment centers, those

complaints are a well-known story.

“It came out of the perceived need to find a way to move casual

labor off the streets, out of the shopping centers, out of people’s

neighborhoods and put them in what turned out to be a safe and sane

and controlled environment,” said Huntington Beach Business

Development Manager Jim Lamb.

The Huntington Beach facility, the Luis M. Ochoa Community Job

Center, opened in 1999. It reported more than 5,000 job placements in

2004.

The Laguna and Huntington facilities, as well as one in Brea, vary

in size but operate roughly the same way as Costa Mesa’s. They are

open six or seven days a week, generally between 6 a.m. and noon.

Laborers come with some form of identification -- Brea’s center is

restricted to those who live in that city -- and get registered.

Because there are always more workers than jobs, some centers use

a lottery system to put workers on a list. Some charge laborers $1

that is refunded on days they don’t find work, and employers may be

charged a $5 fee the first time they hire a particular worker.

But how the facilities are funded sets them apart from Costa

Mesa’s Job Center, which the city spent about $103,000 on in the

2004-05 fiscal year.

The $50,000 annual cost to run Huntington’s Ochoa center is

largely paid by grants. The Laguna job center’s expenses also are

about $50,000 a year, about half of which is a grant from the city;

the rest is money raised in the community, Peck said. Brea’s center

costs the city about $37,000 a year.

The other centers have higher rates of workers finding jobs.

Huntington’s center placed 69% of job seekers in 2004, and Peck

estimated the Laguna facility usually places about 60% of its

applicants. While fewer workers use the Brea center -- only about 30

workers a day in 2004 -- the placement rate was around 50%, said

Scott Malkemus, the city’s community services director.

Compare that with Costa Mesa, which reports an average of 34

placements with 110 applicants per day, or nearly 31%.

Job centers in other cities also haven’t polarized residents the

way Costa Mesa’s has divided people here.

While Lamb wasn’t sure if attitudes toward Huntington’s job center

would be different if the city was paying for it, he hasn’t heard any

complaints about the facility.

“I think frankly most cities see it as a positive thing,” he said.

Peck said he gets at least one call a month from communities

wanting to know how to get a job center started. He expects to see

more employers and laborers coming to Laguna Beach after Costa Mesa’s

center closes, though he’s not sure how many more.

The argument that job centers are abetting illegal immigration has

come up in other cities -- none in the area require proof of legal

U.S. residence, and all serve a largely Latino population. But job

center officials rejected that argument as a reason to not offer

their services.

“We have a choice of finding a decent, safe place to house these

people ... or we could leave them on the street,” Lamb said. “We

can’t make them go back to Mexico. We can’t stop them from coming

across the border.... As a city official I have to work with what I

have.”

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers government and politics. She may be

reached at (714) 966-4626 or by e-mail at alicia.robinson

@latimes.com.