Solis Coffee

Time CONCORD - A team of federal officials erred in a day-labor hiring area used to mean one thing: leave.

This was not the case Thursday morning on Monument Boulevard. Armed with coffee, no handcuffs, investigators from the U.S. Department of Labor caused sharply with the Latino immigrant workers on how to find a job without being exploited.

"We are the federal government, but good," said Paul Ramirez, speaking in Spanish inside the center of Michael Chavez, a gathering place for day laborers. "We are here to help workers."

The unprecedented visit was part of a campaign to save backups of work long-established workers with the most vulnerable and under-paid in the nation, including those who have no right to live in the States USA.

"Documented or not, the law is this: If you work at certain hours, you are owed some money," Ramirez told the small crowd. Met first with apprehension, a native of Brentwood captivated his audience of men from Mexico and Central America as he says tends tomatoes, onions, asparagus and cucumbers as a hand on the ground of California youth. Now, a executioner work rules, he advised what to do when entrepreneurs around the law.

"We already knew some of these things, but now we feel more comfortable, more support," said Gilberto Villanueva worker who came to the East Bay eight years ago in southern Mexico. "It is good that they came."

There was nothing new standards Ramirez


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mentioned: the minimum wage, overtime, sick leave. But none of these people had already heard this from a federal agent. "We have always been very active in the community, but now we're becoming more vocal, more transparent," said Susana Rincon, Bay Area Director of the Agency wage labor and the division time. "Apart this, the message is the same. "

Ramirez made the same speech recently in which workers gather outside a Home Depot in Pittsburg. And it is not just a message for the day, it was delivered Thursday to the China Centre for Newcomers Service in San Francisco.

The campaign, entitled "We can help you," is directed by the Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, a former congressman Southern California who joined the Obama administration early last year.

Solis opened the season Thursday in Chicago with a speech at the Museum Jane Addams Hull-House, an early 19th century labor reform and social movements. She said she has added more than 250 field investigators, bringing the total to almost 1,000 nationwide, about the same at the beginning of the Bush administration.

Investigators did not have jurisdiction over owners who hire day laborers for temporary landscaping, moving and domestic work, but they have authority over contractors who do at least half a million dollars, said Rincon. If workers with a call investigators problem, usually the problems are resolved by telephone within 24 hours, Rincon said. In rare cases, investigators will visit the workplace or to employers before the courts.

Daily "know the laws are there to protect them, but they are not always believe or know they can be enforced," said Mike Van Hofwegen, director of the work of Concord. Van Hofwegen was as surprised as his clients when the team of the Ministry of Labour has called to say they wanted to visit.

"This is the first time we had this type of connection," he said. "Someone asked me, 'Is this something that a fish of April?"

Such a discussion b.