I thought I'd talk a little bit about what it was like to hire day laborers. There was very little on the Internet, so I had trouble figuring out where to find people and how much to pay, so I was a bit nervous.
Here's the answer: it's pretty straightforward. A lot of places, including Maryland, have day laborer centers, where workers can wait in a comfortable place, and where the center can supervise the agreement made between the workers and the employer. USE THESE. They are safer for you, but more importantly, they are safer for the workers. A lot of my friends were worried about me having strange men working in my house, but the truth is that (for the majority of the time) the employees are far more likely to be taken advantage of. Employers hire workers, and then simply refuse to pay them. This happens even to legal workers, and while not paying people is illegal, it is hard to get it enforced all the time.
That also brings me to another point - many of the workers can legally work in the US. It depends on your location, but people choose day labor for a variety of reasons, even if they can work other places. When you go through a day laborer center, the center has verified the identity of the employer and workers, and if the employer acts unethically or the worker doesn't do the work agreed to, the center won't work with them again.
Lastly, as far as I understand it, verifying a person's employability is not your job. You're not supposed to hire someone you know is working illegally, but that's it. This made more sense to me when I recalled that no one verified my working status when they hired me to babysit as a teenager; it's the same thing.
The center and some internet sleuthing helped with the rest of the questions. How much to pay? The center had a minimum hourly wage for painting. How to communicate? I took a Spanish-speaking friend when I went to the center, but after that we made do with my pidgin Spanish and their slightly-better English. Lunch? It's mostly expected that the employer will provide that, so we had pizza and pot roast. Apparently I make a mean pot roast.
All in all, it was a great experience. I got to meet two interesting people, my house has much less fake wood paneling visible, and the painting job was (I'm sad to admit) better than I could do myself.
4 comments:
I never even thought about using day labor. That was very interesting and good to know. I can think of many things we have coming up in the future that might be good for the use of day labor. And as I do a decent job with pot roast, I'm pretty sure that will cut the mustard too!
A new experience for you - I don't think there is the equivalent set-up in the UK, but it makes a lot of sense for all parties concerned.
I noted you did not comment on the quality of their work compared to that of your mother!
Just curious.
You know it's okay to pay other people to do things for you. Thanks for sharing though, we do not have day laborers in Amsterdam that I know of either.
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