Carrboro day laborers struggling to make a living

Chapped hands in the frost of the early morning. Boots stained with old, flaking paint. Faded sweatshirts layered atop too-thin a T-shirt.

Barely warm and rarely hopeful, they await the disappearing promise of an honest day’s work.

On any given day, dozens of men await construction and landscaping work on the corner of Jones Ferry Road and Davie Road in Carrboro.

But there is barely any work to be had in the first place anymore. Meanwhile, town officials continue discussing the possibility of establishing an official day laborers center and passing an ordinance penalizing employers who withhold pay.

For the day laborers, visits to food banks are becoming more frequent, and some men have been returning home after giving up on the possibility of a better-paying job that can support them and their families.

“With the economy the way it is, people aren’t getting construction jobs. There used to be 150 men waiting for work. Right now it’s less than 40,” day laborer Emilio Arceo said in Spanish.

“Some of them have gone back home, some go to the shelter to eat or to the churches that help us. There’s almost no work.”

Day in and day out, Arceo awaits the possibility that someone might hire him for the day. During five hours, about five or six employers might stop by to pick up one or two workers. The town of Carrboro allows day laborers to gather on the corner between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m.

Arceo has been working out of Carrboro for two years. When there’s work, he can get $10 an hour in the United States — a promise that keeps him here to support his family in Mexico: a 7-year-old daughter and a wife he hasn’t seen in the better part of four years.

“It’s sad, but you have to work,” he said.

No work to hire for

As construction companies and day laborers alike await better economic times and warmer, drier weather, the migrant worker on the corner is hit hardest by racial discrimination and the fear of hiring an undocumented worker.

While Carrboro and Orange County don’t participate in the 287(g) program, which gives local sheriffs the authority to put criminal suspects into deportation proceedings, the stigma remains behind hiring day labors without documentation.

“If you are on the street, it’s because you probably don’t have the means to get a job somewhere else,” said Rafael Gallegos, the assistant director of the Chapel Hill & Carrboro Human Rights Center, a social services and advocacy group that works with the day laborers.

Gallegos estimated that about three-quarters of the day laborers are undocumented, but said a loophole in immigration law might allow them to work as independent contractors regardless of status.

John Brisbe is a foreman for Kountry Boys House Moving & Recycling, based in Pittsboro.

Bernardo Morales, a day laborer from Mexico who has worked with Kountry Boys in the past, has Brisbe’s cell phone number saved in his phone.

Morales refers to Brisbe as “mi patron”: Spanish for “employer” or “boss.” Like many, Morales depends on such contacts to get work when he’s not picked up at the corner.

But Brisbe isn’t braving the economic climate much better, and he said he can’t even remember the last time that he went to hire anyone for his boss from the corner because the company hasn’t had enough work.

“Right now we’ve only got two of us actually staying busy,” Brisbe said, though he’s hopeful that work will pick up soon.

“Normally, a couple years ago, I was putting 40, 45, 50 hours a week in easy, and now I’m lucky to get 30 to 35 hours a week,” he said.

Brisbe works for $11.50 an hour and is the sole breadwinner for his wife and four children. Times haven’t been easy for him either.

“A few years ago, it was different. We had a couple guys that we actually picked up … and actually worked for us for quite a while,” he said.

Rich Swain owns Kountry Boys. He said his company hired day laborers from that corner for the last five or six years, but stopped the practice for many reasons.

“They want too much money, they don’t want to pay taxes, they don’t have Social Security cards, and it’s too dangerous to mess with them. They try to get more than a white boy who wants to work for a pay check any day,” he said.

‘No hay ni trabajo, ni nada’

Men like Morales demand $10 an hour because when work isn’t available daily, they can’t get by on any less.

Morales shares an apartment in Abbey Court with two other day laborers. They help each other make ends meet. In one week last month, Morales only got one day of work.

“We feel like a family here. We lend each other a hand when there’s a crisis with work,” Efren Cisneros, Morales’ roommate, said in Spanish.

Cisneros’ wife died in Mexico last November, and he had to take off work for more than three weeks while his roommates picked up the loose ends.

“With $300 a week, some of them are able to pay their rent, eat, clothe and send money home. How do you do that?” Gallegos said. “And they do it.”

Ricardo Lázaro has been in Carrboro for 14 years and has observed the changing climate at the corner.

Selling Mexican food from his own kitchen, he has seen many of the laborers come and go.

“The men out there on the corner right now are the ones who have the real faith,” Lázaro said in Spanish, referring to their resilience and persistence.

“A lot of them have left,” said Gallegos, who said some men have told him that they’re leaving because the pay and the standard of living just aren’t worth it anymore.

“One of the things they would tell you is that, ‘I could come here and starve by myself, or I could go home and starve with my family.’”

A promise unrealized

When Cisneros came to Carrboro four years ago, he came on the notion a friend had given him that he could make $1,000 a week.

“When I came here they told me I could get a check each week,” Cisneros said.

“Yeah, you can earn $1,000, if you’ve been here 25 years and you have the contacts, an employer,” he said.

And things have been worse lately.

The $100 a day he could depend on for a good day’s work is now gone. Too many people, both immigrants and U.S. citizens, are looking for work on contingency, and that has driven down wages.

“It’s a whim,” Morales said in Spanish to describe why friends and neighbors listen to each other about where the best work is.

“A lot of times we come for a different life. I came because a friend told me to come here. He was really excited about it,” he said.

Ricardo explained that part of the reason so many men came to the states to seek migrant and day-to-day work was because of the networks they form among each other.

“It’s a network. I help this person, this person helps someone else, who helps someone else, who helps a whole family, and that’s how the community gets so big,” Ricardo said.

But those who have a few contacts stay, and those who have hopes for the coming months will keep going out to the corner every morning.

All Necleto Lopez has is his faith and his health.

Older and with a care-worn face reflecting years of hard labor, Lopez waits for a truck, any truck, in his Carolina blue sweatshirt.

“If God has given you good health, you just keep fighting ahead."

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.