Outside Do-It-Yourself Store, Men Yearn to Do It for Them

Looking for Work - From Phoenix to San Diego, Hollywood to San Jose, thousands of men descend upon the local Home Depot, the self-styled do-it-yourself stores, to offer to do the work for them.

LOS ANGELES, April 20, 2004 (Hispanic PR Wire) — It is near the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue that the inalienable law of supply and demand collides with the rule of law and order.

It is here, from the first light of dawn until the last rays of light, that scores of Hispanic day laborers ring the lot of the Home Depot , hoping to find some casual work that is in increasingly short supply.

Unlike their East Coast counterparts who mill around the doughnut shops and convenience stores in hopes of employment, the West Coast laborers long ago realized that this is not the optimal strategy.

Why not go where the work is? So every morning over the past few years, thousands of men descend upon Home Depot stores from Phoenix to San Diego, Hollywood to San Jose.

This is not the sort of thing the company had in mind.

"Home Depot is a do-it-yourself center," said Chuck Sifuentes, a company spokesman based in Southern California. "We want people to do the work themselves. But baby boomers are getting older and want the work done for them. This attracts labor that we don't endorse."

In response, some Home Depot outlets like this one have hired private security firms to keep the men off the premises.

Though the economy has headed south, the men have not, as the company might have hoped. On the contrary, even more laborers who have been laid off from their casual jobs in landscaping and construction are gathering in the mornings to fight for what crumbs are left. Perhaps there is a lady who needs her eaves cleaned, or a man who needs some bricks moved.

The show of muscle has done little to scatter this hungry and desperate subclass. "It's a life of hard knocks," said Juan Alvarado, a Honduran whose wife is stuck in Mexico waiting for him to send money that will not be coming anytime soon. It seems that with the downturn in the economy and the increased border security after Sept. 11, smugglers, or "coyotes," have doubled their price from $600 a head to $1,200.

"Some guys don't have money to eat, and our families have no idea what we're doing out here," Mr. Alvarado said through an interpreter. "But I've got a dream. The guys with luck, the ones with no vices, they make it from the corner to their own job. It's kind of rare, but it's the dream."

Those who have no money accept small loans from those who do. The woman who sells tortillas and chicken from a pot and wagon gives credit to those of good character. Some men have given up on work, and only come for the companionship.

"The corner is like a disease," Alex Santos, a 26-year-old Mexican, said in English. "You come everyday, but fat chance."

The men who gather around Home Depot are something like economic groundhogs whose shadows portend a prolonged and bitter winter.

Joblessness in California has reached a five-year high at 6.6 percent, as measured by those filing for unemployment benefits. But casual corner laborers are not counted since these men do not file for benefits and are not entitled to take them. According to those hanging around the Home Depot, unemployment nears 100 percent these days.

Furthermore, a few American citizens now come to the corner looking for a day's wages, a phenomenon almost unheard of two years ago.

Finally, according to the police, idle hands are accepting the devil's work. Street gangs are finding a willing labor pool here to peddle drugs for what amounts to pocket change.

Indeed, the laborers are a shabby lot. While most are orderly and law abiding, a few do smoke marijuana, some play dice, and one in need of a bath and razor sleeps in the bushes.

What the company hopes to prevent at its 1,400 locations is disorder. Whenever a contractor or homemaker calls on the men, a stampede ensues. The wage is nonnegotiable, an invisible floor has been established at no less than $10 an hour, though one Armenian contractor recently tried to play the men's stomachs against their allegiances.

"That's too much," he said with a blank, oddly aggressive smile, standing in Sunset Boulevard, waiting for the crack in solidarity. A few men did consider taking up his offer to paint a house for $40, until the contractor insisted that they come with their own truck. The contractor was hooted off the corner.

When the men do flock toward a car it is an interesting study in self-promotion, whereby a man tries to appear at once hungry and virile, forlorn yet eager. Others, when left unattended, simply roam the parking lot to drum up business, which, according to Home Depot officials, destroys the clean and pleasant shopping experience the company tries to create.

"I'm just doing a job," a security officer said. "I don't want these guys to hate me, but they scare women away."

The company does seem to treat the laborers humanely. The police are not regularly deployed. The men are not prohibited from using the outlet's toilets. In a San Fernando Valley store, a hiring hall has been set up three blocks away so that contractors looking for a casual laborer can find the men.

The security, it would seem, would discourage the day laborers from gravitating to Home Depot, but the sour economy has left them fewer options. On any given morning at the Sunset Boulevard store, there will be more than 100 men, when just a year ago, there were half that number, according to all parties involved.

"I used to hire these guys sometimes," said Roberto Jalbam, a maintenance man who purchased some copper plumbing the other morning. "But I'm holding on to my money now. There's a war coming. The future's unsure. I can't afford to hire them now."

This seems to be the prevalent attitude among shoppers. Home Depot earned $53.6 billion in sales in fiscal 2001, and while the company encourages its customers to do it themselves, the retailer does have a $2 billion network of contractors.

"Those Mexican guys say they can do everything, but they're really just farmers," said Cristiano Moricci, a homeowner loading lumber into his truck. "I tried them before. They're only good for stuff like digging a hole, and I'll do that myself now."

Then there are those whose virtues are overcome by their vices. "They're a pain in the neck," said Capt. Michael Downey, commander of the Hollywood Precinct. "The rebels among them drink and gamble or get picked up by gang members and sell dope for a daily rate of 50 to 100 bucks."

A few American laborers now come to the corner in search of work. They are black, white and brown. They speak English and have valid working papers. Their luck seems only slightly better than the undocumented immigrants. Why stand on the corner at all, Mario Cassiano was asked.

"It's pointless putting in an application because they never call you," said Mr. Cassiano, who has a rap sheet. "Anyway, this corner pays the best."

A Mexican man standing behind him, laughed and said in Spanish: "If I was that young and had that English I wouldn't be standing here."