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A new fight has emerged on the day labor front in Chicago, where the Day Labor Organizing Project (DLOP) is fighting to keep a strong version of a proposed city ordinance that would severely limit discriminatory actions taken by the many day labor agencies across the city.

In late October, the DLOP beat down attempts to pass a gutted version of the proposed ordinance at License Committee hearing on the ordinance at City Hall. In a press conference and in two hours of testimony at the hearing, members of the DLOP and its ally, the Project's Watchdog Committee, established abuses by day labor agencies as the framework for the debate around the ordinance.
Members of the Day Labor Organizing Project
protest outside of Ron's, one of Chicago's
most notorious day labor agencies.

One after another, DLOP members provided two hours of bilingual testimony on the reality of human rights abuses by day labor agencies.

"This ordinance is so important we have to get it right," warned DLOP member and veteran day laborer Dennis McFarlane.

McFarlane and fellow Committee members repeatedly hammered on putting back the toughest points back into the ordinance, including:

l An anti-discrimination requirement that day laborers maintain records on age, race, and gender in dispatch and issue work application receipts to all daily applicants;
l A ban on all non-tax deductions;
l Mandatory provision of safe transportation to the worksite at the agency's expense
l A testing program to push compliance with all workplace and civil rights laws.

Father Mike of the Watchdog Committee warned the aldermen that, "many of us in the community have constituents who experience these abuses, so we are going to push you to really do something."

Numerous church and community leaders, including volunteers in neighborhood meal and shelter programs, spoke of the cost to the community of renegade day labor operators. The DLOP's effort to define real issues was even supported by 'insider' testimony by managers of a non-for-profit temporary agency, which confirmed that client companies of day labor agencies regularly make racist and sexist work orders, which almost all day labor agencies comply with.

At the hearing, the presiding alderman abandoned all attempts to defend the weak version, calling it a 'draft' and proclaimed their commitment to real reform.

The push for community groups to accept a watered-down ordinance began a few days prior to the hearing, when Mayor Richard M. Daley's office presented a weak 'substitute ordinance' which removed almost all mention of the DLOP's substantive reforms. Instead the ordinance included 'filler' regulations that focused on trivial matters, such as the relative temperature of dispatch rooms and management offices in day labor agencies.

The DLOP rejected pressure from Alderman Billy Ocasio, the ordinance's sponsor, to accept this as a "foot in the door." The DLOP has been focusing on the Humboldt Park area of Chicago for the past 18 months, one of the hubs of Chicago's day labor industry, which includes Ocasio's ward. Over the summer the DLOP worked closely with Ocasio to strengthen and adapt Atlanta's day labor ordinance to conditions in Chicago.

The DLOP is currently following up with aldermen from the hearing and are seeking a meeting with Daley's office.

The DLOP has restarted direct action against day labor agencies once more to promote public awareness and political pressure on the issue of day labor abuses in Chicago.

"We're going to stay with what worked to get this whole ordinance debate going in the first place - direct action and press conferences," McFarlane said.