DAY WORKERS
(stock photo)
Over at the Return to Reason Daily Pilot blog, some of the usual characters are trotting out their typical uninformed opinions about loitering, day workers, job centers, etc. LINK
Here's a quick Q&A about the issue:
Q. Why aren't the cops arresting day workers for loitering on public property?
A. Loitering laws that meet Constitutional requirements are difficult to craft. See: City of Chicago vs. Morales
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Q. Wasn't the loitering problem less when we had the job center on Placentia?
A. No. We had both. We had a tax payer supported job center that drew illegal aliens and helped them find work on the tax payer dime, and we had other day workers loitering up and down the street to get an advantage over those who were at the job center.
There are fewer day workers on Placentia now, than in the past.
The job center, which had been on the Westside for more than 15 years, also helped keep the Westside from improving.
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Q. What about loitering on private property?
A. Costa Mesa's ordinances are backwards. If private property owners want the CMPD to be able to automatically stop loitering on their property, they must post a City approved sign and send a letter to the Police Chief authorizing the department to remove those on the property. Few owners want to do this.
Q. What about the ordinances in the City of Orange?
A. They have some provisions that are better than those we have in Costa Mesa.
1. THE JOB CENTER PROVISIONS
For example, in Orange, owners of private property can give notes to loitering day workers allowing them to be on their property.
However, if an owner does this, he must get a CUP to be an authorized job center and meet various other regulations.
And, doing this is fraught with all types of potential legal problems. What if a day worker is injured at your new convenience market job center? Will your normal insurance as a convenience market cover that? Probably not. So you'll need to buy a new insurance policy. Good luck.
And, what if the worker claims he was injured on your property--perhaps by a car--and then hires an ambulance chaser Abogado, to represent him and sues you for negligence because you, in effect, said your property was safe for soliciting work, when it wasn't--as indicated by the worker's injury.
Here's a little of what you might hear in court: "You, Mr. Owner, knew in advance that your customers constantly drove into and out of your parking lot, did you not? And, you do know, do you not, Mr. Owner, that cars and people don't mix and that the purpose of a parking lot is to park cars, not run a job center business?
"And, knowing the danger your job center business posed, you still ran your job center business because your job center clients bought products from you in your store, isn't that right, Mr. Owner? So, you had a profit motive in running your job center business. Isn't that right Mr. Owner? Yet, Mr. Owner, in order to increase your profits, you knowingly allowed day workers to wander around that active parking lot--that mini-freeway--with cars constantly coming and going, in total disregard for the safety of the day workers.
"Is this your signature on a note you gave to my client allowing him to solicit work in your unsafe parking lot, Mr. Owner?
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, due to the negligence of Mr. Owner, my client, who is just 30 years old, and who was doing nothing more than trying to make a better life for himself, his wife, and his five children aged one to nine, will not be able to work for the rest of his life . That's my client's family sitting in the front row, right over there.
"It was foreseeable that someone might get hit by a car and be seriously injured in a parking lot, but Mr. Owner, in an attempt to make more money and in total disregard for human safety, put my client in danger by inviting my client on to his property to solicit work."
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In addition to the legal exposure, you as the owner of one of these convenience market job centers would have to supply restrooms for your workers and maybe a guard to prevent various types of problems.
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2. THE PUBLIC STREETS PROVISIONS
In Orange, people are prohibited from soliciting work from streets where there is no parking. This eliminates all the major arterials where most day workers would want to congregate.
Q. IS THERE A PROBLEM WITH THE ORANGE ORDINANCES
A. Possibly. In order to be able to stop work solicitation from other locations, the city has to offer a reasonable time, place and manner where people can solicit work.
If Costa Mesa were to adopt the Orange ordinances as written, we might have to offer a reasonable, time place and manner for people to solicit work. This means some sort of location where it is legal to solicit work.
A FEW SUGGESTIONS FROM WESTSIDERS
If Costa Mesa does have to have some sort of job center, it should not be on the Westside, but on the Eastside.
Two locations come to mind:
1. Down at the end of E. 17th Street near the Newport Beach border by Dover Shores.
2. Over near the end of E.19th Street near Irvine Blvd. Some of the biggest and stupidest blowhards in Costa Mesa who want to turn the Westside into a new Huntington Park, so they can visit it for an hour or so to have a taco and be one with humanity, live on the Eastside.
It's time that these blowhards be exposed to their neighbors as the phonies that they are.
Also, the Eastside is even closer to most of the homes in Newport Beach than the Westside.
Statistics we reviewed in the past show that the majority of homeowners who hire day workers in Costa Mesa live in Newport Beach.
One guy from Newport whined in a letter to the Return to Reason Daily Pilot that Costa Mesa was mean to close down the job center and that he had hired fifty or so day workers over the years and even fed them dinner [before returning them to Costa Mesa].
And, if a new job center is opened it should not be paid for by citizens.
SEE CM PRESS # 362, 5/12/08 for more info on this and links to Orange's ordinances.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
