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This cartoon critiques the issue
of temporary workers
brought in to construct and staff the Olympic Village and sporting
centers then laid off after the Games' close. From S Zebulon Baker's Whatwuzit?: The 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics Reconsidered |
Without health insurance, financial reserves, employment benefits, and facing a difficult ladder out of the daily-pay marketplace, day laborers' individual and collective workaday lives were sometimes marked by trauma and despair, particularly for African American men. Discrimination and stereotyping had a caustic effect on the men that comprised Atlanta's day labor marketplace. "Dangerous" inner-city African American men with perceived limitations in their "soft skills" (ability to get along with co-workers and customers) and "hard skills" (ability to perform the task at hand) were denied employment in the primary labor market.35 "Illegal" Latinos lacked the identification documents necessary for a driver's license. "Lazy" African American men were overlooked in the day labor marketplace when employers instead chose "hard-working" Latinos.36 "Compliant" Latinos were denied wages when employers flouted their responsibility to pay them. "Desperate" day laborers of all races, ethnicities, and nationalities encountered verbal abuse (and sometimes physical assault) at street corners and labor pools.
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Day laborers talk about their daily lives, (3:28 min.)
Audio interview with Terry Easton, October 10, 2003, Atlanta, Georgia. RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime Day laborers talk about prejudice and discrimination, (4:51 min.) Audio interview with Terry Easton, October 10, 2003, Atlanta, Georgia. RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime |
At worksites, day laborers were sometimes asked to perform duties without proper safety equipment and training. Exposure to hazardous chemicals and dangerous machinery, lifting heavy loads, and working several stories from the ground were day laborers' constant companion. For many day laborers, every day is a first day at a job site. Danger is close at hand for both day laborers and regular, full-time workers in these scenarios. Construction, a common day labor job, has been consistently ranked as one of the most dangerous occupations. In the late 1990s the industry divisions related to day labor with the greatest proportion of fatalities were construction (first place) with eighteen percent and manufacturing at fifteen percent (third place). The occupation of day laborers had the fourth greatest proportion of fatalities. In 1999 the fatality rate for roofers was six times the average for all jobs, and for construction laborers, generally the least skilled building workers, it was eight times as high. In Georgia between 1983 to 1995, construction led all industries for the total number of deaths (481) and rate (18.1 per 100,000 workers). Latinos die from workplace injuries at a far higher rate than other workers; in recent years, Latino death rates were twenty percent higher than whites.37
Hugo Sánchez of Zacatecas, Mexico, worked as a day laborer demolishing stores in Atlanta. Not only was it hard work, but it was also very dangerous. "I was in a crane that took me up very high," he says, admitting that he feared injury or death.38 Thirty-six-year-old Samuel Delgado of Mexico City believes that "most of the jobs [in the United States] are dangerous, especially roofing."39 A day laborer recalls an accident at an Atlanta jobsite: "It's hard work. We carry cement and we do things up high and one guy fell one time, and he had lots of injuries, and they didn't pay him, and they didn't do anything to help him."40 Delfino Lara adds, "there have been jobs that are dangerous but I just do it anyway . . . painting jobs [at] really high levels where they want us to paint the tallest something around. We just have to do it. Yes, there are risks."41
In On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States, a national study released in January 2006, researchers revealed that one-fifth of Latino day laborers had suffered a work-related injury and more than half of those injured did not receive medical care.42 More than two thirds of injured day laborers surveyed in On the Corner had lost time from work. Seventy-three percent of the day laborers surveyed said they were assigned hazardous tasks like digging ditches, working with chemicals, and working on roofs or scaffolding. The study also revealed that employers often place day laborers in dangerous jobs that "regular" workers are reluctant to do. Fifty-four percent of day laborers who had been injured reported they did not receive medical care because they could not afford it or the employer refused to cover them under the company's workers' compensation insurance.43 "Day laborers continue to endure unsafe working conditions, mainly because they fear that if they speak up, complain, or otherwise challenge these conditions, they will be fired or not paid for their work," the authors revealed.44 Jorge Simmonds-Diaz's 1993 research on day laborers waiting for work along Atlanta's Buford Highway corridor indicated that only thirty percent of day laborers used personal protective equipment or received training for safety hazard protection.45
