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CHICAGO_ Local groups gathered for the first time to hold day labor agencies accountable to its em-ployees. Two hundred and fifty people showed up to the March 3 public meeting, organized by the Chicago Day Labor Organizing Project.

The meeting laid out demands to improve the pay and benefits given to day laborers in Chicago. After the meeting, groups also paid a visit to an agency that backed out of the meeting at the last minute. The group invited six-day labor agencies, but only two showed up.

The day labor agency, Tandem, reacted the most to the meeting by agreeing to the most important demand on the table. For the first time an agency agreed to start paying workers from the time they are assigned a work ticket.

Organizing committee members prepared demands based on a drafted Code of Conduct for day labor agencies, including equal opportunity jobs when are dispatched. Often day laborers are discriminated against based on race, gender and age. Groups also contended that agencies must stop deducting from a worker's already low wage for transportation to and from worksite, uniforms, safety equipment which further depletes their already low wages

Other demands include: Community access to dispatch rooms; pay-stub disclosure of company rate of pay to agencies; a worker center mediated grievance procedure and the right to organize. After the meeting, the groups crowded into the Labor Temps offices demanding that they take down the picture of Phil Shana, an organizer for day laborers. The picture included instructions to not hire Shana at the agency. Representatives for Labors Temps said the picture did not exist.

The March 3 event was especially timely, as it came on the heels of news that the day labor agencies have created a new association in Illinois and hired a lobbyist to revamp the state of Illinois Day Labor Services Act, which went in to effect in January 2000. Agencies are pushing to raise the transportation cap mandated by state legislation from the three percent to seven percent of a labor's daily wage.