Philly’s unregulated ‘underground economy’ is ripe for tragedy
By Vinny Vella, Philadelphia Daily News | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
In July, Ortega and two other men, all three of them day laborers, were razing a defunct
A wall collapsed on Ortega, killing him, said his mom,
That's because Ortega, 40, a father of two, was an undocumented immigrant brought to the U.S. in the '80s by his mother, who was granted political asylum after fleeing the Contras in
Ortega's story embodies the plight of day laborers, who experts say make up an "underground economy" that is being exploited.
'Like the Wild West'
When someone is killed at a job site, the worker's employer is required to contact the
If violations of
Criminal charges are rare and usually follow the discovery that a company "willfully ignored" federal standards.
That can be difficult to prove: DeJesse couldn't recall any willful violations in cases involving day laborers in the past two years.
As director of the
"It's really sort of like the Wild West," she said. "We're dealing with an industry that's very difficult to stay on top of."
Undocumented immigrants stand in groups at area stores waiting to be selected for work. They are drawn to day labor for obvious reasons, Rahke said.
"If you're new to the area, you don't have access to the informal networks that provide most construction jobs," she said. "Standing in front of these stores is sometimes the most efficient way to get work.
"The result is a large underground economy that hires a lot of people."
"Underground" usually means not providing proper safety equipment or training.
Sometimes, said Rahke, it's as simple as pointing to the tools and saying, "Go to work."
The reason these employers hire undocumented workers is also obvious.
"If a worker tries to exercise his rights, the employer can hold [
But an undocumented worker is entitled to the same rights as his or her American-born colleagues.
"Otherwise, there would be even more incentive to say, 'Oh, I'm hiring someone who's undocumented, so I can pay them whatever I want,' " Rahke said.
The tricky part is exercising those rights.
Fight for your right
Employers must have insurance, said
In the event of a workplace injury, the policy helps pay for medical bills and other expenses. If someone dies, it provides "dependency benefits" to the worker's spouse and children.
How much those benefits offer depends on the wages paid to the worker.
"When it comes to that, your status as undocumented really is irrelevant," Lasky said.
For day laborers, the best-case scenario is that the employer pays for medical bills or other expenses out-of-pocket. The worst case is that the employer denies ever hiring them.
And without a solid paper trail, proving employment becomes almost impossible.
"Someone gets picked up at
In successful cases, the workers piece together scraps of information: a number painted on the side of the truck, a first name remembered in passing, a T-shirt bearing the contractor's logo.
More often than not, however, the cases are uphill battles with little recourse for the worker's family.
That's why Lasky and his office are joining other labor advocates in teaching workers what they are entitled to before their boots even touch the dirt on a work site.
'No one has to . . . die'
Every morning, the parking lot of
Men in paint- and dust-stained jeans mill about, converging on cars as they pass by.
On a recent morning, amid this chaos, a handful of workers learned how not to fall off a roof.
The session's other tool was much smaller: business cards that, alongside contact information for the local
Nicastro's organization formed last year, after the workers outside
"People don't realize that [undocumented workers] are escaping from bad situations in home countries and trying to survive here and find honest jobs," she said.
"It's not that they are not willing to work with the legal process; it's that they don't have the opportunity. It would be better for everyone if they did."
- Staff photographer
On Twitter: @Vellastrations
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