In case you had the impression (like from the two articles below this) that immigrant day-laborers are exploited and hurt (or killed) on the job, you were right.
More than half of day laborers in the Washington area have been cheated out of their wages and one in four has been harmed on the job, according to a study being released today that tries to sketch a portrait of the informal workers.Turns out employers generally assume that they're all undocumented and afraid to complain.
The study is based on the experiences of 476 day laborers in the District, Northern Virginia and Maryland, who were interviewed last year by a team affiliated with the University of California at Los Angeles. It depicts the typical worker as an industrious Latin American man who earns $991 a month.
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One-quarter of the day laborers reported suffering an injury or illness related to their work that required medical attention. A majority said they had not received any type of safety training, although many said they did dangerous jobs.
Oh, that explains it.
