SF Day Labor Program Under Attack

The San Francisco Day Labor Program, a program that struggles for the rights and survival needs of day laborers, requests your urgent support. After a recent worker-led speak-out against police ticketing which took place outside the mayor’s office, La Raza Centro Legal was contacted and informed that the money it was being given to administer the program was being put up for pubic bid. This means other groups will compete with La Raza Centro Legal to obtain city funding to run the program. The Day Labor Program is primarily funded through the City and County of San Francisco, although it also receives funding through private sources which is specifically earmarked for community organizing. Previously, the city renewed the funding given to La Raza Centro Legal each year without an application process.


Why the funding of the program should not change hands:

-Retribution: This is punishment for the crime of supporting worker-based campaigns. Workers on Cesar Chavez street have been meeting weekly and strategizing about the local issues that affect them most such as the lack of public bathrooms on the streets and the intense police scrutiny. Because folks at City Hall are annoyed when poor immigrants bother them about their most basic, human needs, they are retaliating and searching for a strictly service-based organization to administer the Program.

-Continuity: The program changed administrations less than three years ago. Every time the program switches to a new administration, the work starts from scratch. All of the carefully crafted case management, job development work, and office efficiency are lost, not to mention the hard-won relationships of trust and respect between workers and staff. The program loses jobs and creates further instability in worker’s already precarious lives.

-Type of program. The San Francisco Day Labor Program is worker-driven – the policies of the program are decided by the workers at their weekly meetings. The program also believes that workers have the right of choice – they can choose to use the program or they can choose to seek work on the street. Programs in other areas have worked with the police and passed no-solicitation ordinances which force workers into their programs, creating condescending environments in which the workers are not allowed agency in their own lives.

The Program is required to submit a detailed monthly report to the city reporting on its work and the quantity of workers sent out. While most job development agencies find work for around ten people a month, the Program dispatches hundreds of workers every month. The Day Labor Program has been completely in compliance with its contract with the city and has exceeded its goals for dispatching workers to jobs, giving references to shelters and in other service areas.

How can you support?
1) Mail or e-mail a support letter (sample below) to the Mayor’s office: Willie L. Brown, Jr., Mayor
City Hall, Room 200, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, San Francisco, CA 94102
Telephone: (415) 554-6141 TDD: (415) 252-3107 Email: damayor [at] sfgov.org
Please fax or e-mail a copy to Elly Kugler at the Day Labor program as well, so we can keep track of how much support the program is getting: fax 255-7593 or address 474 Valencia St. #295 SF, CA 94103

2) Pass this information on to other non-profits, community groups, unions, politicos, and concerned city residents.

3) Come to the protest/rally on July 15th at 10am on the steps of City Hall.

We greatly appreciate your support on this urgent matter!

*****************************

Sample letter:

Dear Mayor Brown and Office of Community Development:

As a community member and as an ally to workers and immigrants, I respectfully demand that you leave the city’s Day Labor Program funding with La Raza Centro Legal and that you halt the open bidding process which has been initiated.

During the time in which the Day Labor Program has been under the auspices of La Raza Centro Legal, the program has succeeded in tapping into new sources of employers, has instituted a women’s collective for female workers, has prioritized hiring current and former day laborers as staff people, has obtained a membership in the San Francisco Food Bank, and has sent thousands of workers to jobs, among many other accomplishments. The sudden and unexpected open bidding process which the city has initiated interrupts the Program’s continuity and ignores the high level of services that the Program consistently provides. It also appears to be blatant retaliation against the workers for their recent Father’s Day protest at City Hall.

The Day Labor Program receives funding from the city in order to run a hiring hall and assist the workers with skills development and basic survival needs. The Day Labor Program staff spends the vast majority of its time dispatching jobs, seeking out employers, finding trainings for the workers, giving references for clothing and shelter, and assisting workers with unpaid wages and other problems. The Program also receives funding from other sources which is specifically earmarked for leadership development and community organizing with the workers. In community organizing, workers are given a space to make decisions and take action around problems which affect them. The SF Day Labor Program works hard to provide both top-notch services and opportunities for worker organizing and empowerment. This balance of service and organizing is a nationally recognized model which is utilized by dozens of organizations which are connected through the National Network of Day Laborers.

If the city truly cares about serving the day laborers instead of seeing them as a political threat, it will terminate the open bidding process. An open bidding process is a terrible idea because it breaks the Program’s continuity and mangles the carefully formed relationships of trust and accountability that the Program has with workers and employers. It takes years to find the appropriate resources to serve primarily undocumented, very low-income, monolingual workers. It also takes years to develop appropriate job development strategies for the unique employment situations that the day laborers face. The Program needs to be in the same hands for a lengthy period of time without having to spend its limited resources struggling to maintain funding.

That the mayor’s office chose to put the program up for public bid immediately after a worker protest which took place at city hall is blatant retaliation. Instead of attempting to honestly deal with workers who are working to make a difference in their lives, the Mayor’s Office is treating these workers and their program as a political threat which must be silenced.

____________________________
Name and date

_____________________________
Address