Day Laboring

My Own Social Experiment


The drive over the Torrez Causeway is very quiet at this hour on a Monday morning. It’s actually an almost solo adventure at 5 AM. The same is true of downtown Brunswick—the streets being strangely absent of pedestrians and vehicles.

Arriving downtown on the waterfront, I parked our Ford Mustang out of sight down Newcastle Street, hid my wallet under the passenger seat, and hurried along wearing what I call my “yard clothes” including my old steel toed work boots, a faded bandanna on my head, with only my ID, a credit card, and a few business cards in my jeans pocket.

I arrive in front of the Day Labor Temp office at 5:15 AM and a half-dozen men have already gathered, even though the doors don’t actually open until 5:30. As I slowly pace around the sidewalk surveying the crowd, various figures continue to emerge on bicycles and on foot from the gloomy shadows down the street, and a few individuals and groups drive up in autos to park along the curb out front.

About 5:30, as I’m peering through the glass front door of the office, a Blue pickup pulls up behind me and everyone suddenly scrambles to form a line at the front door, openly debating who arrived when and in what order. Surprised by the commotion, I casually wander out of the way of the stampede and drop into the line about where I belonged in the “arrival hierarchy.”

No one complained about my position.

The front door was unceremoniously unlocked and the men quietly filed into the building and formed lines in front of two windows—the “return” window for those working again for the same employer, and the “first time” window for those not lucky enough to be asked back to a jobsite and for people like me that hadn’t worked before.

I had intentionally not shaved for several days, left my flowing hair hanging shaggily out from underneath my bandanna, and I kept my mouth shut as I printed my name on the sign up sheet. I then took a position on one of the five home-made wooden benches in the lobby, leaned back against the wall, and watched as the events unfolded.

I was intent on experiencing a typical day in the life of someone working as a “day laborer.” (This posting is actually Part 1 of my first draft of a freelance human interest article I am writing for publication.)

Although the office opened at 5:30 AM, job assignments did not begin until 6 AM so the first 45 minutes are spent jostling for position in the process. Over the next thirty minutes after the doors open, more new prospective employees arrive, and just before the 6 AM milestone a flood of men and even a few women arrive, boisterously greeting each other and debating their prospects for the day.

To my surprise, almost half seemed to have return opportunities already lined up, even though some lamented that they did not want to be sent back to the same employer

Strangely absent were any Hispanics—the entire group was composed of African Americans and Whites. I found this detail odd since Glynn County has over 9,000 Hispanics in our 78,000 population. Perhaps I’ve tripped over an interesting demographic detail in my first hour “under cover?”

The 6:00 rush began with a half dozen regulars being assigned to a job working on the Colonel’s Island docks. Next came a flurry of assignments of small groups of three and four men going to various jobsites—all return opportunities.

By 6:15 the first non-return job calls are announced, and my name wasn’t among them. I already have an hour invested in the process, not to mention the commute time from St. Simons.

A group of women are sent to the hospital for a post construction clean up job and other groups of two men are dispatched with their assignment “sheets” in hand. One very large gentleman is sent to a local seafood company to work cleaning out the inside of large tanks. Besides wondering how he’ll ever fit through the manway entrance of a storage tank, I’m also desperately hoping that my new employment opportunity, if and when it comes, doesn’t involve uncooked seafood and the inside of any tanks containing same.

I’ll probably decline and go home if it does.

Finally, and much to my surprise, about 6:30 my name was called, along with that of three other men, and I was instructed to approach the window. “Would you mind working for a wood cabinet company out on Sea Island as a laborer today” she asked. Not yes, but HELL yes…I replied (OK, not really, but I was SO relieved that no seafood tanks were in my future.)

By 6:45 I was climbing into a little KIA 4-door with three total strangers and my loaned hard hat and safety glasses in preparation of blasting back across the Torrez Causeway to a construction employee parking area on St. Simons. I could just see my name in the newspaper in the accident description.

From there shuttle busses lumbered the additional four miles across Sea Island Causeway, past the Island’s guard shack, and onto the multi hundred million dollar construction site of the Jones family’s new five-star Cloister Resort complex.

We reported to work in the new hotel ballroom by 7:30 AM—total time invested 2-1/2 hours.

After some initial standing around while the foreman got his bearings with his crew that had arrived a half hour earlier, we were instructed to find brooms and go to work “sweeping” the bare concrete floor of the ballroom.

Reality sank in—I was employed as “grunt” for the minimum wage of $5.75 per hour.

I’ve never made minimum wage in my entire life, but they were paying me for my hands and back, not my brain--not exactly my strongest attributes.

My crew and I raised a dust storm for about two hours, having to live with only two brooms and one dustpan. We took turns sweeping and moving boxes and other crap out of the way, and we probably removed a half dozen bushel baskets of sawdust and other crap out the back door to the dumpster.

(I’m going to break away from my narrative of how the day went now to write about the ending…but let me tell you that I was “busted” by noon when my employer—the cabinet company foreman—figured out that I wasn’t the average day laborer. I’ll also spoil the ending and mention that the Union guys want to hire me as a full time employee…)

Jumping ahead…

We arrived back at the employment office about 3:30, and by 3:45 PM I emerged from the building in possession of a check for 9 hours of work—actually costing me 11.5 hours of my life by the time I returned home.

My total-take home earnings?

$43.65 after taxes.

The sad thing is that I’m luckier than many day laborers, because I have my own transportation if I need it and I have a bank account. None of my three co-workers had bank accounts, so they had to pay 5%-10% of their meager earnings to the liquor store or check cashing establishment conveniently located just down the street from the office.

Want to park your bicycle inside the storage room of the office rather than leaving it outside on the bike rack at risk of vandalism or theft? Pay a $2 fee.

Don’t have a car and need a ride to a job site? Pay a $5 fee each way.

Need a drug test for employment? Pay yet another fee.

And so goes another day in the life of a “Day Laborer.”

You can see how a person working truly in the “laborer” category can find themselves going home with only a little over $30 after giving up nearly 12 hours of your life each day.

My observations indicate that the day labor pool consists primarily of people that can’t or won’t bother to show up for work each day. Several obviously had substance abuse problems. A couple of people were down right frightening to look at.

These aren’t kids either.

Many, unfortunately, are in their thirty’s and forty’s—some even appeared to be in their 60’s—and most have virtually no marketable skills other than the desire to show up every now and then and slave away for eight or ten hours.

F.Y.I. I’m going to work a few more days this week “incognito” in order to gain more story background on my fellow workers and to see how the Union employment angle plays out. Then again, I may get busted out by the employment agency because they might not like me writing about their operations. I asked the Union guys to keep my secret after I admitted who I really was, but you never know...

Heck, I might just take them up on their offer and take a shot at doing some commercial woodwork just for fun and the experience since my Dad left us a wonderful woodshop that he built over in Alabama prior to his death in 1996.

Wish me luck…