New York Daily News -
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She waits on
corner for day job
By LISA MUÑOZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, May 7th, 2005
On street corners all over the nation, men - many illegal immigrants - wait for construction, landscaping and factory work. But there are far fewer places where women wait, hoping for a day's pay.
Two of those places are in New York.
Outside the delis and newsstands at Eighth Ave. and 37th St. in Manhattan, Latinas wait to be hired for work in Fashion District factories or New Jersey warehouses. And at the corner of Marcy Ave. and Division St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Hasidic housewives hire Hispanic and Polish women to clean.
"There aren't many permanent jobs left around here, so here we are," said one Ecuadoran woman waiting on 37th St. on a recent chilly morning. She, like others who stood nearby with their arms crossed, wore low-heeled shoes and dangling gold earrings.
There are 60 such "shapeups" for men in New York City and at least a dozen on Long Island, said Nadia Marin-Molina of the Workplace Project in Hempstead, L.I.
Women traditionally have found work through other means, such as agencies or newspaper ads. But about five years ago, labor organizers said, women started waiting for daywork.
In some ways, the shapeups are an American rite for new immigrants, who seek menial labor that doesn't pay well - but still eclipses what they would earn back home.
At the same time, they have become tacit components of the underbelly of the U.S. economy, which depends on undocumented cheap labor.
"African-American women used to stand on the corner in the Bronx waiting for housecleaning work. And Irish men used to stand on streetcorners waiting for work as day laborers," Marin-Molina said. "It's traditionally been immigrants."
Today's women laborers take the same leap of faith others before them have: At some point, they go off with strangers, not knowing what they will want them to do or if they'll be paid for their work.
Advocates say day laborers face many problems, including below-minimum-wage pay, pressure to work faster, and dirty or unsafe conditions. They often cobble together work hours, earning $5 to $10 an hour but with no insurance, vacations or job security.
Beyond that, some women day laborers have been sexually harassed and even raped, said Oscar Paredes of the Latin American Workers Project.
"These women are always afraid, afraid of losing their jobs, afraid of the police, afraid of anti-immigrant sentiment and laws," Paredes said.
In Farmingville, L.I., and other parts of the country, male day laborers have come under fire by residents who say their presence lowers the safety and property values of their communities. In Williamsburg, residents hire the women, but they've objected to building an official work center for them.
The female day laborers are hired for what jobs the Fashion District has left, mostly sewing and ironing. Others are shuttled by van to warehouses to pack CDs and DVDs.
In Williamsburg, they clean homes and tidy neighborhood stores. Margarita, a Mexican woman, said it's important to negotiate pay and hours in advance and to warn others if the employer doesn't pay.
"That way, they know they can't get away with that," she said. "Out here, you're your own boss."
A grueling 7 hours of scrubbing - for $42
I was climbing down from Mrs. G's fire escape when she thrust a small plastic cup of lemonade at me.
"Here lady," she said.
After more than four hours of cleaning her windows, walls and floors, Mrs. G still hadn't asked my name.
At 7 a.m. each day, women gather alongside the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to find cleaning work.
Recently I worked one of those jobs, waiting with women from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Poland as Hasidic housewives and daughters contracted us to do the intense pre-Passover cleaning their Orthodox tradition requires.
I asked Margarita, a thin-eyebrowed Mexican woman sitting against one of the concrete barriers, how things worked, explaining that I was new to the spot.
I should start with two key questions, she said: How much do you pay, and how many hours are you looking for? The pay is usually $8 or $9 an hour, but with the holiday looming, there was enough work to be choosy. No one was working for less than $10 an hour, Margarita explained.
And, she warned me in Spanish, they are very strict about cleaning. "Everything has to be done just so."
Ten minutes into my wait, I had several offers.
One young girl offered me $10 an hour for a few hours. She gave me a slip of paper with her address on it.
When I showed Dionisia, a tall Dominican woman, she clucked her tongue and said, "Oh no, don't go there. She doesn't pay. It's a good thing you showed me that."
About 10 a.m., a woman approached me as I stood slightly apart from the group.
"You want to clean? You want a job?" she asked.
Yes, I said, and I followed her home. Inside her nearby apartment on Hooper St., she handed me a bucket, a rag and bleach and told me to bring a 6-foot metal ladder from her formal dining room into her kitchen.
For seven hours I washed her dishes, cleaned her windows and blinds and scrubbed her walls. I scoured the insides of her cabinets and wiped out greasy dust bunnies from the top of her refrigerator. I washed the back and sides of her dishwasher.
As I worked, she sat at her kitchen table, talking in Yiddish on the phone and to her sons, who passed through the kitchen for snacks without so much as a look in my direction.
She scrutinized my work, pointed to spots she said I'd missed, then instructed me to redo most of it. I plunged my hands into the cold water and bleach again to clean the same things two or three times.
After hours of climbing up and down the ladder, I mopped her kitchen floor on my hands and knees. I tried not to talk much, except to say, "Okay" in a manufactured Hispanic accent when I'd finished something or gotten a new task.
At 5:30 p.m., with no end in sight, my back and knees were weak and my hands were peeling. Exhausted, I made up an excuse about needing to pick up a child I don't have.
Mrs. G asked if I could work every Friday, then gave me a piece of paper with her name and address. She also gave me a chilled apple and stuck $42 in my hand and sent me off.
As I bit into my apple, I realized I had been a nameless, $6-an-hour bargain for Mrs. G - and no doubt a joke to the other women leaving their cleaning jobs. But I was thankful that the only house I have to clean is my own.
Note: The $42 was donated to the New York Women's Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps low-income women and girls in the city achieve economic security.
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