By Thom Trybus
One very long overdue and highly beneficial business that Santa Monica should consider welcoming is temporary labor services — those geared towards employing the average service worker and tradesperson. Local employers, such as the hundreds of restaurants who always need an army of dishwashers and prep cooks, would be able to through contracting with them, have some reliable control over the quality and legality of their workforces, and any additionally supplemented temporary work-forces. There would be no regular need to hire someone under the table off of a corner, like many do at 11th Street and Colorado Avenue. That makes the employer and the worker both at fault legally. With a lot of new local construction now going on, especially the main library project at Sixth Street and Santa Monica Boulevard, as well as the many hotels constantly needing documented and reliable service workers, City Hall, many businesses, apartment landlords, and all the private homeowners needing thousands of landscape and maintenance laborers annually, basic housekeepers, and janitors, it makes a lot of sense. Temp services have to keep tax records, and records of a person’s legal employment and personal history. It is a good thing. There are a lot of otherwise hardworking recently unemployed people who would gladly use the services, and many homeless persons on the streets who would, if they had any means to do so, line up early for work at the agencies, (as is successfully done in many other communities) so that at a day’s end of such dignified hard work, instead of receiving a small state unemployment stipend, collect welfare and food stamps, or otherwise daily spend their time hanging out on the Promenade, and as such, to even eat once a day, have to stand in the pathetic line at OPCC for a stale baloney or peanut butter sandwich. Instead of the homeless sleeping in a park or doorway as an illegal now, a lot of these displaced citizens could be able to independently basically house themselves in whatever affordable motel rooms can be found on Lincoln Boulevard and elsewhere. Temp agencies work well in San Diego, where about 60 percent of the male homeless population lines up at 4 a.m. usually for shipyard work, and get work just about every day they can. They are cleaner in appearance and frequently house themselves in a room, reducing the homeless presence on the streets.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 24, 2004. Read the original PDF.