A crowd of more than 20 men, dressed in paint-splattered jeans and thick work boots, gathered on the sidewalk near the Koreatown Home Depot in the early morning, waiting for temporary job offers to come its way.
As the summer sun rose in the sky on a Friday late June, members of UCLA’s Lambda Theta Phi Latin Fraternity, Inc. gathered to help the men pass the hours. The students served carne asada and cold drinks as part of an outreach event for day laborers in front of Home Depot on Wilshire Boulevard.
The Latino fraternity partnered with the Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles to organize the event and provide free meals and resources to more than 20 day laborers in an effort to draw attention to the struggles of the workers, said Jose Romani, president of UCLA’s chapter of Lambda Theta Phi.
The fraternity was first established on the UCLA campus in 1997, but fraternity leaders have been working since 2011 to reinstate the chapter within UCLA’s Latino Greek Council. The chapter currently has 10 undergraduate members, five of which were present at the event, Romani said.
According to the Central American Resource Center’s website, the center works “for social and economic justice and (promotes) cultural diversity,” particularly within the Central American community.
Day laborers often gather in public places, such as parking lots at home improvement stores, to find construction or landscaping work for the day, Romani said.
For Romani, a fourth-year economics and Spanish and community and culture student, the men were a reminder of the struggles his own father experienced working as a day laborer.
“But (the event) is not just for our parents. It’s (for) our uncles, cousins, and grandparents too,” Romani said.
Many of the fraternity members had relatives who worked as day laborers, and wanted to help other workers who dealt with wage theft, mistreatment and other issues on the job.
The fraternity has held similar events over the past two years, usually hosting one each quarter. The outreach events also help fulfill its community service requirements, which must be met for the group to be recognized as a fraternity.
The Central American Resource Center sponsors the Day Labor Center, which works with laborers to find jobs, as well as classes in basic English, according to Art Zepeda, the coordinator of the Day Labor Center. In addition to the Day Labor Center, the organization provides legal and immigration assistance and free medical care, he said.
The resource center also provides laborers with strategies for exercising their civil rights.
“For these men, the biggest problem they face is wage theft,” he said. “They don’t realize they are being underpaid, or mistreated.”
But for many undocumented day laborers, the separation from their families is more difficult than losing money.
Alex Gomez, 32, of Los Angeles, said he left his wife and three children behind in Guatemala two years ago, hoping to make enough money to move his family up in society.
“There is some work (in Guatemala), but it’s only enough to just survive,” he said in Spanish. Gomez said the center provides him and other workers with jobs on a regular basis.
Romani said the event helps remind him and other Lambda Theta Phi members of the hardships their families went through for them.
“Sometimes it seems like we forget the older generation,” he said. “But we’re trying to serve in any way we can, even if it’s just giving out food.”