The rules surrounding day laborers and the reality may be two different things.
For businesses using day laborers, state law requires they treat day laborers just like regular employees and normal workplace rules must be followed, according to Elaine Fischer, state Department of Labor and Industries spokeswoman.
That is the case with labor services such as Seattle-based CASA Latina and Skill Temps in Lynnwood. However, the increasingly common practice of businesses picking up often Hispanic workers in area parking lots for a day or more of work may be falling outside the law.
“It’s not legal to pay them cash and not report it if you are a business,” Fischer said. Companies are required to track and report hours worked, pay owed wages and pay worker’s compensation premiums.
Employers must assess work hazards and ensure worker safety. Construction contractors must be licensed with the state.
For homeowners who hire day laborers, the rules are more lax because the state has no jurisdiction, Fischer said.
For cities where day laborers congregate while looking for work, the rules get a little fuzzy.
In Shoreline, police Sgt. Kevin Fagerstrom said that since the beginning of the year, the 19 businesses who share parking space at Aurora Village have received complaints associated with groups of men gathering to look for work.
“(Businesses) have been receiving complaints from female customers who say they are uncomfortable getting out of their cars where there is a large cluster of males (in the parking lot),” Fagerstrom said.
As a result, signs have been posted to discourage loitering in the area. Fagerstrom said the department requested signs and criminal documents printed in Spanish and English.
“We’re trying to take a cooperative approach, advising those that do not have business (in the area) that they need to leave and if they don’t then they will be criminally trespassed from the area,” Fagerstrom said.
Fagerstrom said that for the most part, police have had few problems — a few citations — related to the groups. However, groups of Hispanic males loitering while looking for work create the perception of a problem, he said.
“No criminal activity associated with these groups have occurred to the best of our knowledge,” Fagerstrom said.
When it comes to regulating day laborers in Lynnwood, there’s little role for cities, said city attorney Mike Ruark.
No city law regulates the hiring of day laborers or the companies and agencies that may hire them, he said.
“The day labor issue is kind of the quintessential federal thing,” he said. “And it’s a relatively new phenomenon, within the last five years.”
The situation is much the same in Edmonds, where officials make no attempt to regulate day labor — neither the laborers themselves, nor the people who hire them.
There isn’t a single day labor law on Edmonds’ books, city attorney Scott Snyder said.
At Skill Temps, 20801 Highway 99, manager Richard Swinton says he’s noticed “more and more” the prevalence of under-the-table day laborers. Those workers don’t get jobs with his agency, which also has sites in Puyallup and Arlington.
“When we get our guys in here, we screen them,” he said.
He said the agency pays above minimum wage “non-grunt” wages to its pool of laborers, most of whom have a variety of technical skills.
“We’ll get carpenters with 10 or 20 years experience,” he said. “They come to us because we pay according to your skill level. You can’t go to a Home Depot and pick up a guy with a bunch of tools.”
The company conducts a thorough background check on all applicants.
“We do know what’s going on with our workers,” he said.
The company allows contractors to hire its laborers after 30 days in what’s called a “lease-to-own” program.
Once a Skill Temps worker’s put in 240 hours, if the contractor and laborer agree, then “he’s all theirs,” Swinton said.
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