:: rawblogXport ::

:: Saturday, June 05, 2004 ::

Day Laborers Seek Safeguards After Teen Worker's Death By Darragh Johnson, Washington Post
The morning after Barrios's death, jornaleros, or day laborers, in paint-splattered jeans raged against those who come to their corner in the mornings and hire them. It was a stormy day, and few people were hiring, so the men stood under the eaves in front of the Silver Spring office of Casa of Maryland, an immigrant rights group. Barrios was not a day laborer, but the men said his death reinforced their feelings of vulnerability.

'They lie,' Javier Caranza, 36, of Langley Park said of those doing the hiring. 'They don't tell you what the real job is. . . . They say they need a carpenter's assistant, but the job requires a carpenter. You're paid like an assistant, and you don't know how to use the machines and saws.'

Walking past the workers, Silvia Navas, Casa's senior manager for the employment program, said: 'The day laborers are exempt from the workers' compensation laws, and they don't get benefits. Everybody can hire day laborers, and if they get injured, well, bye-bye!'

Barrios was working on landscaping in a neighborhood of three-car garages and immaculate lawns in North Potomac when he fell into the grinding machinery of a mulch-spreading truck. A co-worker from TopMulch, a company with about 20 employees based in the Montgomery community of Brookeville, found his remains soon after.

posted 8:11 AM :: reference link :: 0 comments ::

-------------------------------------------