Day laborers a no-show

Andrew Glazer

COSTA MESA -- A closely watched four hours after the city’s first Home

Depot opened, not a day laborer was in sight.

But at another Home Depot, two miles away on Harbor just across the Santa

Ana border, more than two dozen men stood outside the home improvement

warehouse looking to paint houses, build fences or clean floors for $50

to $80 a day.

Home Depot has made efforts to ward off the day laborers by handing out

fliers and hiring a consultant to stand guard, but that hasn’t been

enough for some city officials.

Councilman Joe Erickson contends Home Depot refused to help pay $32,000

required to extend the hours at the city’s job center, where the men are

to be directed.

“I’m not going to be satisfied until they pay for some of the job

center,” Erickson said on Wednesday. “They promised to be a good

corporate citizen. We won’t be happy until they are.”

So far, however, the parking lot at the newly opened store has been free

of day laborers.

“Word hasn’t gotten around yet,” said barrel-chested Ray Bastos, a Home

Depot-hired day laborer consultant in charge of making sure the Costa

Mesa store doesn’t become an attractive spot to solicit work. “It may

take a couple of days before people start coming around. We’ll see what

happens on the weekend.”

In their discussions over the past year, Home Depot officials and the

City Council agreed they didn’t want the new store to become a day

laborer hangout.

Home Depot consultant Tom McCarty recommended hiring Bastos to channel

workers to the city’s job center -- a city-sponsored building on

Placentia Avenue, where day laborers can legally solicit work.

“He’s a big, mean-looking guy,” said Lynn Svensson, who works for

McCarty. “He really knows how to do it.”

McCarty also recommended the store hand out fliers with the job center’s

address and run a video informing potential day laborer employers of the

job center.

Additionally, he said the city should expand the job center’s hours to

eight hours a day, seven days a week from just five hours a day, six days

a week.

These are all great ideas, said Steve Hayman, a city administrator

helping manage the day laborer issue.

“We’ve been meeting with Home Depot representatives for nearly a year,”

Hayman said. “They have a very aggressive approach to new stores. They

have pride in not opening a store in three years with day laborer

problems.”

At the “board cutting” ceremony -- Home Depot’s version of a

ribbon-cutting -- Erickson once again urged McCarty to ask Home Depot to

chip in. Erickson said McCarty was noncommittal.

“They still owe it to the citizens,” he said. “I believe they will

support the job center in some way. I just may need to work with the Home

Depot management to get it.”

Erickson said he checked the Home Depot parking lot Thursday morning to

see if any day laborers would show up on opening day. He saw none.

“I was pleased,” he said. “It was all very quiet.”

The question still remains whether the laborers will try out the new Home

Depot location this weekend. Three men standing outside the Santa Ana

store on Wednesday said they might.

“We’ll look for work anywhere we can find it,” said Julio, 33, in

Spanish. “But Costa Mesa police are much tougher than those in Santa

Ana.”