Each day, about the same number of workers gather at convenience stores at University Boulevard and Piney Branch Road in Silver Spring as use a taxpayer-funded center run by immigrant advocacy group CASA of Maryland a half-block away.
During the first nine months of 2007, CASA reported serving between 50 and 80 workers most days — while at least that many waited at an Exxon station and 7-Eleven store nearby.
The day laborers who choose to look for work on the street say their reasons are simple.
Some accused CASA employees of playing favorites and giving work to people they knew best, but most said CASA staff were good people and they just preferred to be on their own. Since CASA policy is to provide jobs on a first-come, first-serve basis, those who look for work in the nearby parking lots said they stand a better chance of finding jobs outside the centers if they sleep later.
“Everybody has an equal chance of getting picked out here,” Jorge Cabrera, a Silver Spring resident originally from El Salvador, said in Spanish in the 7-Eleven lot.
Others said CASA was a victim of its own success: The parking lot at CASA’s Silver Spring location is often packed with the vehicles of people pursuing a variety of CASA services, from obtaining identification cards to attending financial literacy programs. Some day laborers said employers tell them they prefer to avoid the hassle associated with CASA and pick up workers when they pull in for gas or coffee in the morning at the 7-Eleven and Exxon.
“There isn’t enough parking for them to leave their trucks or even enter the center’s lot,” Avelino Lima, a day laborer originally from Guatemala looking for work in the Exxon lot, said in Spanish.
Documents obtained by The Examiner show that CASA workers cross the street several times a week to make their pitch to day laborers about using the facility. The center is heated, has staff to record job placements and lawyers ready to pursue employers if they don’t pay workers.
Managers at the 7-Eleven and Exxon station said they don’t have problems with the day laborers in their lots and haven’t had reports of them bothering customers.
Ali Roble, a manager at the Exxon station, said he’s had problems with some area transients hanging out in his lot drunk, but the 40-50 men he estimates who look for work there are different.
“They’re just here to work,” Roble said.
Patrick Lacefield, spokesman for County Executive Ike Leggett, said the centers “manage and regularize what had been a gathering that was impacting residential and commercial areas” and called the program a success.
“We can’t force people to use the center. Obviously lots of people are using the center of their own free will,” he said.
Manuel Rivera, a Silver Spring resident originally from El Salvador, said he went to the 7-Eleven instead of in the county-sanctioned center because of the church vans that he says deliver food to the workers in the store parking lot.
“I get breakfast here every day,” he said in Spanish.
