Malibu May Expand Day Laborer Rules

Small groups of men lean against lampposts on the corners of Heathercliff Road on Point Dume, eyeing passing cars in the hopes of flagging down an employer-for-the-day. Their presence on this Malibu street and at two other sites along the coast has reignited a debate about day workers in the city and sparked concerns among labor advocates about official proposals to limit their presence.

Despite a city-sanctioned labor exchange that was set up four years ago, business leaders charge that job seekers still congregate in front of stores, intimidating customers and disturbing the peace. When it was created, the nonprofit exchange was heralded by many as a peaceful solution to the furor that grew as more and more laborers gathered on street corners looking for jobs. But after local sheriff’s officials recently reported that workers continue to wait on corners, like Heathercliff and Point Dume, Malibu began considering toughening a local law that prohibits employers from picking up workers outside designated areas.

At tonight’s meeting, the City Council will vote on expanding the ordinance, banning the workers themselves from soliciting jobs anywhere but the center and approved commercial sites--a prohibition labor advocates challenge as unconstitutional and workers at both the labor exchange and on the street corners call unfair and impractical.

“The City Council is wasting its time,” said John Neal, 34, a day worker who sits on the Malibu Community Labor Exchange Center’s board of directors. “Day laborers have been coming down to Malibu for years, and they’ll keep coming. There’s one reason they keeping going down there [to the corners]--they get work.”

City officials contend that if the laborers leave the corners and go down to the center, employers will be forced to use it. Although employers attempting to hire workers on the corners already can be cited and fined, few ever are.

“It’s a tough ordinance to enforce unless a deputy overhears the transaction,” said Lt. John O’Brien of the Lost Hills sheriff’s station, who said about 40 employers nonetheless have been cited in the last 10 months. “It places all of the onus on the employer and not the employee. This [new proposal] puts teeth in the ordinance.” If the council passes the proposed changes, day workers--like employers--could be cited and fined about $100.

Business leaders said they hope adding day workers to the legal equation will end the often contentious climate between residents and laborers.

Our “concern is that you have people standing around and they’re trying to get work and that can be intimidating to people who want to come into a shop,” said Mary Lou Blackwood, executive vice president of the Malibu Chamber of Commerce. “Our business people don’t have any problem with them getting work, but it doesn’t make one’s storefront look good and it doesn’t make coming in and shopping easy or comfortable.”

The workers take a different view: “We come here because people know us and this is where we find work,” Lorenzo M. Medran said in Spanish, as he stood on Heathercliff Road with a few other men, their hands stuffed in their pockets as they watched cars zooming by. “We don’t bother people. We don’t cause problems. We just look for work.”

Labor advocates who challenged a similar law in Agoura Hills--which was upheld in state appellate court--maintain the ban on street corner solicitations infringes on freedom of speech.

“When you clear a law for it to be a criminal act for a person to stand and ask for work, that seems to me to strike at the very core of the 1st Amendment,” said Robin Toma, a former ACLU attorney who fought the Agoura Hills law. “If you can’t express yourself freely about your need to work, what can you express yourself about?”

Some community members fear the financially strapped labor exchange won’t be able to handle an influx of workers without more resources. Four years ago when it was created, the exchange got $35,000 from the city. Last year, its budget was cut to $10,000.