The Nashville Movement

Work disappears for day laborers

The dawn has not yet arrived. Only the light from a gas station illuminates Victor Marquina, who walked in the darkness from his garage apartment. He is a day laborer looking for work.

Marquina sits on the curb, sipping coffee as others trickle in on a warm August
morning. They wait, talking among themselves, but there is little work
to be had. Marquina has no idea whether he will be chosen to work on
this day. The same is true for the others.

Day laborers, berry pickers, taxi drivers and service industry workers like
Marquina are the underbelly of the nation's economy, advocates and
experts say, the underrepresented and the unwanted in American society.
And now, they are hurting.

Nationwide, the economic slowdown has hit them hard — especially Hispanics. The
real estate construction deceleration has spurred the loss of about
250,000 jobs in the past few years, according to the Pew Hispanic
Center. For day laborers, just getting by has morphed into barely
surviving, barely eating.

"They are the new Americans," says Megan Macaraeg, director of Middle
Tennessee Jobs for Justice. "These workers are what makes the world go
'round. We have forgotten where we come from, who we are and the value
of the work. They wash our cars, give us our rides from the airport and
help in our building."

On any given day, according to studies, there are an estimated 120,000 day
laborers — both legal and illegal — in the United States. They are
bricklayers, painters, landscapers, anything their "patrones" — Spanish
for bosses — want them to be.

During the height of the construction boom, they earned $12 or more an hour
and held steady employment. Now, they earn much less working at places
like carwashes or cleaning the seats and bathrooms at LP Field and
Sommet Center.

Travel to find work

On this day, like most days, Victor Marquina is the first one to arrive at the station next to a
Jack in the Box, a location that serves as an informal day labor hiring
site.

The 45-year-old man is the senior member of this set of day laborers,
having worked this corner for more than a dozen years. He's now a
victim of the recession, earning just a portion of what he made in
years past.

Marquina is also one of many day workers yearning for a steady job in Middle
Tennessee's declining job market. Hours and even days go by before they
get hired. On some days there are more than 50 people waiting and fewer
than half get hired.

A day's work is the difference between eating a good meal and skipping
one for this hidden demographic in Middle Tennessee's population.

"If there's no money, you can't go to the Chinese buffet," says Jose
Valenciano, who waits for work at a gas station. "No work means it's
the Maruchan noodle cups."

Almost every city and town in America has its corners and spots where people
go to hire their day laborers. Every corner has its almost ritualistic
dance, with the bosses who do the hiring and the police who shoo away
the workers.

"I've been doing this for a lot of years," Marquina says in Spanish. "Things
have changed quickly. There's no work. Before, we could pick who we
want to work for. There were more jobs than people."

The hidden economy always has a segment of people who are struggling to
make it. But in Nashville there's no clear picture on how many there
are, says Sekou Franklin, assistant professor of political science at
Middle Tennessee State University.

"When there's a recession it exacerbates what already is an existing
struggle," Franklin says. "A recession brings more people off the shelf
into that struggle. The working-poor population can't make a decent
living, and we don't know how large that group is."

Some who can't find jobs here move on to other states. With little in the
way of local job prospects, Marquina took a gamble and recently went to
New Jersey to pick blueberries. It wasn't what he expected. The pay was
$30 a day for backbreaking work from morning to evening, filling up
crates as the sun beat down.

He asked a church in New Jersey for help and it paid his bus ticket back.
On this day at Marquina's corner, people start to gather but only a
handful are picked up for jobs.

An employer in a pickup truck hires a day worker and leaves quickly. A
blue minivan with a sign on its door about building patios swoops in.
Workers jump in and the van zooms away.

Shortly after 11 a.m., police tell the laborers to disperse. Once in a while,
the laborers say, police come in undercover as employers in a truck or
van and arrest them. Still, it's better than the alternative offered in
their home countries.

Marquina, from El Salvador, was a victim of his country's civil war that prompted
an exodus in the 1980s of many Salvadorans who were granted protection
in the U.S. Marquina buried 12 relatives, including a brother, a sister
and a son, who were victims of the guerrilla firing squads.

It was then he decided to make the trip to the U.S.

He's tried to get legal residency but had no luck despite paying for a
lawyer. He jokingly refers to himself as a mojado, wet, the slang used
to describe an illegal immigrant.

"I can't go back after that," he says. "I am here with my family and
that's the principal thing. We ask God for stability but if we have to,
we eat bread and water.''

They come for better life

Osman Aguilar has a boyish face that belies his life experiences. He's 18, working as a hired hand
as a carpenter and doing other construction jobs. Aguilar has earned
some good money despite being shortchanged by employers, he says.
Somehow he manages to find an odd job here and there, making enough to
eat and contribute his share of the rent.

Then, there's Anastacio, also 18, who wants only his first name used.
Anastacio traveled to Nashville from North Carolina looking for work
that was more promising than the $6.50 an hour he made cutting tobacco.

In separate interviews, both young men talk about the necessity to find
consistent employment to help their families pay the bills. It's hard
to believe both men, slight in height and weight, welcome the hard
labor. Anastacio says he has routinely worked in the tobacco fields
from morning to evening.

Anastacio says he'll be returning to North Carolina soon since work here has been sporadic.

Aguilar, however, likes it here. At 15, Aguilar decided, with a friend, to make the trek from Honduras to the U.S.

A strained relationship with his mother, having never met his father, and
a vast connection with relatives in the U.S. made the decision that
much easier.

He hitched rides, jumped on moving trains, and walked for days in
Guatemala and Mexico before crossing over in 2005. He endured Hurricane
Wilma's flooding; sleeping in the cold, wet soil. He gives a
demonstration on how he crossed some choppy waters — walking sideways
so the current wouldn't take him.

Aguilar speaks some English, learned in Honduran schools. He enrolled in high
school here and dropped out. His reasons for dropping out vary:
pressures from gangs, a misfit in classrooms where teachers were less
than supportive, and some fighting.

"I think about it, and I have regrets," Aguilar says. "I kind of regret
that I fooled around in class. I regret that I'm not studying, that I'm
not in school anymore."

Listening to Aguilar speak, there's a sense of talent and intelligence that sets
him apart. He mentions the noteworthy news that leaves him stumped: the
arrest and shackling of a pregnant illegal immigrant.

"Why do that to a person? And other countries get criticized for violations of human rights?"

He also blames the election year for the bad economy and the lack of movement on immigration reform by Congress.

"What will they do without the workers?" Aguilar asks rhetorically. "Think
about that. I just think people say things without thinking."

The 'new Americans'

Unlike in other cities, day worker centers that provide services for laborers have not taken hold
in Nashville, and that's part of the problem with the exploitation,
according to Macaraeg, the director of Middle Tennessee Jobs for
Justice.

"There has to be a place that can help where they get advice," she says. "At the same time, this helps them have a voice."

Macaraeg, whose family emigrated from the Philippines, says her family was
voiceless despite being people of means in their country. Her uncle was
an editor at The Manila Times and his introduction to the
American work force was a low-paying job cleaning office buildings. Her
father, a doctor in the Philippines, was sent to Indian reservations to
work and to redo his residency.

"It was a nomadic existence," Macaraeg says. "These people are just like we were. They are the new Americans."

A couple of blocks away from the gas station where day laborers wait,
Somalian cab drivers have their coffee and tea at a Somali-owned shop
waiting for a dispatcher to send them to their fares.

Macaraeg is in the middle of a fight for better working conditions for Nashville
taxi drivers who are also low-wage workers. She also advocates for
carwash workers who have been cheated by employers. The plight of the
day laborers and taxi drivers is similar, Macaraeg says.

Back at the gas station after a long day of waiting, men listen to Juan
Lugo, an evangelical Christian who opens a Bible and starts preaching
to the laborers left behind. Lugo knows there's a recession but tells
them God will solve these problems.

"God has taken us out from much worse," he says. "He can take us out of this recession."