SUMMIT AIMS AT LABORER UNITY.Byline: Cecilia Chan Staff Writer A four-day conference geared toward organizing day laborers nationally and improving their working conditions ended Sunday on a high note. The first-ever gathering of day laborers and labor interest groups from throughout the country was held at California State University, Northridge CSUN offers a variety of programs leading to bachelor's degrees in 61 fields and master's degrees in 42 fields. The university has over 150,000 alumni. It's also home to a summer musical theater/theater program known as TADW (TeenAge Drama Workshop) that leads teenagers through an . The conference included a rally Friday in Agoura Hills, which has an ordinance regulating day laborers that is used as a model by other cities. ``It was wonderful,'' Hugo Lino Fonseca, who worked as a day laborer in San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden , said of the conference. ``We talked about human rights, our rights on the job (and) organizing everybody at the day labor centers.'' More than 50 people attended Sunday's conference. Banners such as ``No Human Being is Illegal'' hung from the walls of the campus' Satellite Student Union. ``The main focus is to have a voice for laborers nationally,'' said Marlon Portillo, program coordinator of the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, . ``To achieve that we have to get together and discuss how to get together. ``We want more respect as human beings,'' Portillo said. ``We have families to support. We have kids to feed. We just want to work.'' The event sponsor, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, represented 18 day laborer groups including those from New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , Chicago, Maryland, Arizona and Oregon. Portillo said there are more than 25,000 day laborers looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. work daily in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. County and about 10,000 to 14,000 of those are in Los Angeles city. There are six established day laborer sites in the county, including one in North Hollywood. In exchange for their inexpensive labor, workers, however, face harassment from police, nearby residents and are paid below minimum wage or sometimes not at all by people who hire them, organizers say. The conference is the first step toward uniting, said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) is an American political advocacy organization. History Following the passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, representatives from Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), Asian . A goal of the conference is to form a national day laborer leadership school, but the details have yet to be worked out, she said. Pablo Alvarado, a Day Laborer Project lead coordinator for CHIRLA CHIRLA Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (California) , said Agoura Hills officials and day laborer group representatives plan to meet and work out a resolution over the city's 10-year-old ordinance. The ordinance, which passed state court challenges, prohibits day laborers from impeding traffic and running out into the streets to solicit work. A coalition of labor activists, represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, have announced they will file suit to fight the ordinance if planned talks to reach a compromise with the city should fail. A similar Los Angeles County ordinance was found unconstitutional by a federal trial judge last year. |
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