Day Labor Yesterday and Today
Day laborers just won't go away. Herndon, Virginia recently closed a day labor center after a judge ruled that the city-run center could not exclude undocumented workers while still enforcing its no solicitation ban outside. Constitutional rights of free speech and free assembly would be violated. So now the day laborers are hustling business outside, while the city considers what to do next. This story, reported in Sunday's Washington Post, is mirrored by one in the Daily News of Los Angeles on Wednesday, September 11. The L.A. paper reports that the city is considering requiring Home Depot to build a day labor center as part of a proposed store. Build a center? Close a center? What to do?
This isn't a new issue. Day laborers have been part of the American scene, off and on, since the early days of the Republic. Demand for casual labor surged with the growth of the railroads, agriculture, and construction in the late 19th century. That demand was matched by a supply of willing workers, consisting of recent immigrants and civil war veterans. Demand declined during the First World War as labor went to war, but then surged again when the veterans came home. Day laborers took to riding the rails from town to town looking for work. The ranks of the hobos mushroomed during the Great Depression. Immigration was down, but home-grown workers were desperate for whatever work they could find. Just like today, day laborers were by many feared as criminals on the make and a public nuisance.
The cycle nearly repeated itself with the arrival of the Second World War. Labor again went war, and day laborers nearly vanished from the scene. The country expected to see day laborer explode when the veterans returned, but it didn't. The GI Bill and other programs, along with changing manufacturing practices and unionization of labor, pulled would-be day laborers into steady employment. Commentators in the early 1960s predicted the end of day labor.
They spoke to soon. These days "lean" and "just in time" production of goods and services requires flexible labor. What a firm needs today it may not need tomorrow. Temporary labor fills an important need. As the life time employment contract has eroded for skilled workers, so it has for the unskilled. Increased demand for casual labor has been met again by increased supply. Labor, much of it undocumented, has stepped into the breach once again.
Day labor today is, for the news media, the flavor of the month. But in the life of the nation, it is old news.