Making It Work

In Chicago, as across America, Mexican day laborers struggle to navigate an underground economy.

Image: Jon Lowenstein

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


In Chicago, as across America, Mexican day laborers struggle to navigate an underground economy.

View Photo Essay
Read Text

{publish-page-break}

Next Photo
Previous Photo
Read Text

{publish-page-break}

The building owner refused to pay the contractor, so the contractor refused to pay the day laborers, including Antonio Velazquez, who complains to police. Velazquez says living in the United States is difficult and he often feels like “doing something crazy.”

Next Photo
Previous Photo
Read Text

{publish-page-break}

Angelo Ojeda was promised $60 to dig this ditch but worries that the contractor won’t pay him.

Next Photo
Previous Photo
Read Text

Frustration boils over after a worker is offered less than minimum wage.

Next Photo
Previous Photo
Read Text

Exhausted from long days in a Chicago factory, a Mexican woman counts out the $4,500 her family is sending a “coyote” to smuggle three relatives across the border to Phoenix.

Next Photo
Previous Photo
Read Text

A family meets relatives at Midway airport. They will now be ushered into a life as jornaleros.

Previous Photo
#
#

Roofing, painting, wiring, plumbing, laying carpet, building a house; weeding, planting, watering, pruning, digging a ditch; moving boxes and removing asbestos; working in a soap factory, a sweatshop, a meatpacking plant; washing dishes, flipping burgers, sweeping the floor — when you’re a day laborer, you never know what a day’s work will be. It could be 12 hours of construction work for $100, four hours of yardwork at minimum wage, or no work at all.

Early in the morning, los jornaleros, Mexican slang for “day laborers,” stand on sidewalks and at busy intersections, outside paint stores and Home Depots, waiting. When a van or a pickup appears, they rush toward it, surround it, declaring their skills in broken English. A few get hired, climb in, and drive off. The rest wait for the next one. Day labor is work at its most elemental: no benefits, no job security, no overtime, and payment in cash. The employers get cheap labor, tax-free. And the workers get work.

Until recently los jornaleros were a common sight only in California and the Southwest. Today, you can find them at the intersection of Lawrence and Springfield in northwest Chicago (right) — which is known as la parada (“the stop”) — and on street corners across the United States. They have become the urban and suburban equivalent of migrant farm-workers. In his writings on day laborers, UCLA professor Abel Valenzuela Jr. offers a portrait of working life at the bottom. Day laborers are overwhelmingly male and Latino (though Latinas can find day work in factories or as domestics). One survey found that more than 80 percent are illegal immigrants and more than half never made it past sixth grade. Most speak little English. Their marginal legal status and lack of education make them vulnerable to unscrupulous smugglers, landlords, and employers.

Sometimes day laborers work all day but never get paid. Or they get paid less than what was promised. They handle toxic materials without proper safety equipment, perform dangerous work without health insurance, suffer injuries on the job, and then get fired. Anti-immigrant groups blame them for all kinds of social problems. More than 30 cities and towns have passed laws to keep day laborers off the streets. But the new laws rarely target the contractors, home owners, and factory managers who profit most from this unregulated, illegal work.

In Chicago, many jornaleros find jobs through the temporary employment agencies that have sprung up in Latino neighborhoods on the city’s West and South sides, as well as in suburban towns such as Villa Park, West Chicago, and Bensenville. Such private firms give day labor a rudimentary structure, maintaining relationships with employers, requiring Social Security numbers from workers (authentic or not), paying wages by check, and charging workers for these services (see “Street Corner, Incorporated,” March/April). Most of the agencies are legitimate, but some rip off day laborers as efficiently as any crooked employer. The jobs they provide are often located in the factories and industrial parks where Chicago’s stockyards once stood. In the neighborhood known as Back of the Yards, in the same small houses where Eastern European meatpackers lived for generations, Mexican day laborers now sleep half a dozen to a room.

Activists across the country recently formed the National Day Labor Organizing Network. And church groups and nonprofits have opened about 75 day-labor centers that offer a variety of services to poor immigrant workers. But most of America’s jornaleros must look after themselves. The one trait that their job requires, more than any other, is self-reliance. They come to the United States at great risk, operate outside any formal hierarchy, rely solely on their own skills, work hard, send money home, save money to bring relatives north, and usually succeed at raising the income of their families. They possess the very qualities that our business schools celebrate. The great irony of day laborers is that they embody the American dream, yet are widely used, abused, and despised. Some of the strongest animosity is felt by the workers whom they displace. The nation’s poor are now being forced to compete with the even poorer. It’s the latest chapter of an old story, unfolding on a street corner near you.

#

#

#

#

#

#

#

#

#

   

 

View Photo Essay
#

#

Close Window

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate