Local home-improvement stores on front lines of day-laborer issue

The woman pulls up in a beater station wagon just outside the Home Depot and a throng of men quickly surrounds her car.

Momentarily startled, she raises four fingers to indicate the number of workers she needs — two for drywall and two laborers.

She'll pay $8 an hour.

That's low — too low for such grinding work, several of the men grumble as they drift away. Four others slip easily into the woman's car and she drives off.

On the opposite side of the store's sprawling parking lot, a dozen or so workers rush the slowing car of another woman as she heads toward the store. She offers $9 an hour for help moving heavy boxes.

The scenes unfold outside day-laborer sites across the country every day — and, increasingly, outside home-improvement stores such as the Home Depot south of downtown.

Customers who come shopping for mulch know they can drive away with extra muscle from among the dozens of young men, most of them Latinos, who cluster outside the entrances of home-improvement stores.

"People know they can find any kind of worker here," said Jose Castillo, 40, who came up from California seven months ago.

But as public discourse over immigration heats up nationally, it is at places like these where the real battles are playing out. Estimates suggest that between 40 percent and 80 percent of day laborers nationwide are not authorized legally to work in the U.S. and are among an estimated 12 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

Some say the homeowners and contractors who hire these workers are helping to keep wages low, creating an unrealistic expectation for what contractors should pay for such work. And labor unions say it leaves the workers open to exploitation because the cash-only payments allow employers to walk away with no further responsibilities.

"We feel that affects the economy," said Jimmy Matta, lead organizer for King County/Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters. "When they are hurt, the burden falls back on taxpayers. Legitimate contractors should have to pay payroll taxes and federal income taxes."

Hilary Stern, executive director of Casa Latina, which operates a day-labor center along Western Avenue, said workers have tried to organize themselves in an effort to keep wages up.

"But they don't really have the tools to do it," she said. "The people who are the leaders there may get a job and so they're not there all the time."

Members of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, civilians who report illegal border crossings to authorities, had planned a demonstration today to photograph those who hire these workers and post their pictures on the Internet.

"People are starting to realize that these folks are in essence taking jobs from Americans — in many cases Americans who need the jobs the most," said Minuteman volunteer Spencer Cohen. What they do "drives down wages for everyone."

Demonstration planned

While Cohen's demonstration was postponed for lack of manpower, immigrant advocates, led by Casa Latina, still plan a 10 a.m. demonstration today along Western Avenue downtown.

"What they are doing is assuming that anyone who is a Latino man is undocumented," Stern said. "There are many documented Latino men who look for work out there."

But the sidewalk commerce unfolding outside the Home Depot in Sodo has clashed with stores and property owners in the two-block area along South Utah Avenue, where between 3,000 and 4,000 people work.

Many of them — including Nitze-Stagen, a real-estate investment firm that owns the Starbucks headquarters building and the Home Depot store site — complain that the day laborers create a public nuisance and intimidate customers and employees.

For the past year, the businesses have been negotiating with Mayor Greg Nickels' office to address the problems.

Jordan Royer, the mayor's senior policy adviser for public safety, said the sides are close to finding a solution, but declined to elaborate on what that might be.

"The city has a role in this because it's an economics and jobs issue," he said.

The workers, he acknowledges, will be there "as long as they're getting hired. It's why people come [to this country] in the first place — because they can't find it where they live."

Kathryn Gallagher, regional spokeswoman for Home Depot, said that in some California cities, including Burbank, it has been required to build shelters for workers near the stores. "This is not a Home Depot issue. It's a community issue," she said. "We respect the right of anyone to earn more for themselves and their families so long as they do so in a lawful manner."

Day laborers are not a new concept in Seattle.

Even before Casa Latina in 1999 organized a workforce along Western Avenue near Battery Street, that area had been known as a place where a homeowner or contractor with a quick job could find cheap labor.

Workers, some from Casa Latina, started clustering around area home-improvement stores about two years ago.

Competition tough

They arrive around 6 a.m., when the store opens, and stay until 5 p.m., Castillo said. Their numbers can range up to 100.

In addition to the Sodo location, workers also gather at Home Depot stores in Aurora Village and on Aurora Avenue North and the Lowe's Home Improvement store on Rainier Avenue South.

Competition for the few jobs they get is tough.

"Our guys have to run to the cars to get work. They all have families they have to send money to in Mexico," Castillo said. Depending on the job, workers can get between $10 and $15 an hour cash, compared to $15-plus an hour that union workers make.

"If someone works three or four days, he keeps two days' pay for rent and food and sends two days' pay to his family. These are hard-working people. We're not criminals. We're here to work."

In the beginning, merchants complained the workers trashed the area. And they would rush oncoming cars along South Lander Street, creating a safety hazard.

In the past year, the city has erected "No Stopping" signs to control where motorists can hire and pick up workers. Home Depot removed parking-lot displays of storage sheds, which some laborers used as toilets. The store now allows them to use the bathrooms inside.

Some affected businesses in the area are paying for the services of an off-duty State Patrol officer to secure the area.

Royer said crime in the neighborhood has dropped 25 percent between 2004 and 2005. "What that tells you is the people who are there are there to work. They are not committing crimes as far as we can tell."

But the improvements have come at a steep cost to the local businesses, said Angi Davis, senior vice president of property management at Nitze-Stagen.

"We are losing customers," she said. "We've had people come up and tell managers of those stores that they're not coming down there anymore." In addition to Home Depot and Starbucks, Office Max and Sears are tenants of Nitze-Stagen.

"Our concerns really have to do with the safety of both the day laborers and of pedestrians and customers and visitors to our site," Davis said.

Casa Latina has been involved in the discussions with the city, and Stern said her group's interest is to "protect the workers from wage theft and help keep wages up."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com