Someone needs to start paying attention

There was an editorial in today's NY Times that made me think how lucky I am to have a nice place to sleep tonight.

The editorial talked about a hidden labor camp: "The existence of a hidden labor camp a cell phone's throw from where white-collar professionals take the train to Manhattan is as good a reminder as any of how firmly immigrant laborers are rooted in the suburban soil. It has happened not just on Long Island but also in California, Arizona, the Midwest and the South. The thousands of men filling jobs at the bottom of the labor market are a large-scale economic phenomenon, and no amount of wishful thinking will make them disappear."

There was a conference at Hofstra University in Hempstead last week that spoke of this very subject. The event, organized by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network in California, released an examination of day laborers by the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty at U.C.L.A. The researchers interviewed 2,667 workers in 143 cities. They reported that some workers have education, but often not much, and are cheated and robbed by their employers. They are harassed, intimidated and insulted, and suffer debilitating injuries because of the hard work they do - construction and demolition mostly - and their lack of medical care.

The researchers also found that the laborers are mostly hard-working family men, drawn here mostly from Central America by the promise of jobs that no one else will do.

And the workers make a lot more money here in the United States than in their own countries. That's why they put up with their employers' abuse. That's why they live in labor camps.

And kudos to the National Day Laborer Organizing Network in California and the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty at U.C.L.A. for bringing this issue out into the open.

Someone needs to start paying attention.