Day laborer jobs dry up in wilting economy

San Jose Mercury News (MCT) - It had been four days since Francisco Castillo last worked, earning $10 an hour helping a San Jose family move. And the 35-year-old Mexican immigrant wasn't sure when his next job was going to come in at St. Joseph the Worker Center.

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On a recent afternoon at the center, housed in an East San Jose warehouse that's been converted into a gathering place for day laborers, 50 workers were on the waiting list. At the rate jobs were trickling in, Castillo expected to wait about six more days before he reached the top of the job list again, he said over a lunch of canned corn, rice and sausages.

Across the Bay Area, and in many such centers that serve documented and undocumented workers around the country, the global financial crisis is hitting the sector of local economies once powered by home improvement projects and construction. The day jobs that placed immigrant workers such as Castillo in the job market have all but dried up as the housing crisis forced many homeowners to forgo paying for gardening, housecleaning and other work they used to hire out.

Directors of day-labor programs across the Bay Area report a dramatic decline in jobs. At the same time more and more day laborers are seeking work and food. Like Castillo, many of the workers now coming into day-labor centers used to hold steady jobs.

Without employment, a growing number of the workers are relying more on local food banks, unable to send money to their families in Mexico and other countries in Latin America. Although there aren't any official estimates, center officials say that thousands of immigrants in California have returned to their home countries.

"It's difficult for me to see and watch what's happening," said Mary Mendez, longtime director of the St. Joseph the Worker Center. "But our encouragement is that things are going to get better."

A year ago, the majority of the 60 workers who might have come to the center on a given day would have all been sent out to paint homes, mow lawns or help someone move. "If we get five in one day now," Mendez said, "we're lucky."

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Maria Marroquin, director of the Mountain View Day Worker Center, is seeing similar numbers.

"Four jobs one day and 100 people waiting. Seven jobs, 100 hundred people. Nine jobs, 100 people," Marroquin said, reading from her monthly reports. "This is the drama."

The crisis is national in scope, said Marroquin, president of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a group of 41 centers in California and 10 other states.

"I'm worried definitely," Marroquin said. "We're trying to approach the situation with an optimistic view. And I believe in praying."

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At Monument Futures, a day-labor center in Concord, Calif., where workers pay the equivalent of 33 cents a day to be members, the number of workers coming in daily to seek work has plummeted.

During peak membership in the last couple of years, 100 to 120 workers would come in one day. Many would find day jobs; others would get steady, temporary jobs.

The membership fees then were $22 a month, or about 73 cents. Today, about 60 workers come in daily, and the center has slashed membership fees in half.

"Most of the guys are lucky to get one day of work in a week," said Mike Van Hofwegen, interim director of Monument Futures.

On the streets _ outside hardware stores and lumber yards _ the situation is no different, said Castillo, who lives with a sister in San Jose.

He worked five years as a stock boy at a warehouse in Mountain View, Calif. A year ago, he lost his job and has been coming to the day-labor centers in San Jose and Mountain View.

"Today no one called," Castillo said. "No jobs. We're all waiting."

Rosana Herrera, 31, a Mexican immigrant from Vera Cruz, worked for six years as a nurse's aide at a senior center in Los Gatos. A month and half ago, she was laid off, and she's been coming to the Mountain View center ever since. One day last week, she worked as a housekeeper for six hours.

She said she does not plan to return to Mexico.

"It's better to be bad off over here than to be bad off over there," Herrera said. "At least there's a chance to get one day of work here."

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After lunch, Herrera and a group of workers retired to a back room, where they followed instructions from a volunteer on how to cut out paper stencils for a T-shirt silk-screen.

Many of the day labor centers are keeping workers busy with English classes, job-safety training and workshops on how to start their own businesses. In Concord, day workers who learned that a local food bank had run out of food collected $713 and food, giving it all to the food bank.

Van Hofwegen said the economic downturn is forcing day-labor centers and the immigrants who use them "to recast ourselves."

"We have to think beyond a day job," he said. "We have to be more intentional about long-term, sustainable kinds of things, like developing work co-ops."

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© 2008, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).