Day Laborers
DLOC continues its campaign to demand DOL investigation of wage and hour complaints from low-income workers, and enforcement of labor law at day labor agencies.
The Day Laborers' Organizing Committee (DLOC) was established in 2000 by a group of 18 homeless day laborers and supporters, to collectively address the poverty wages, unsafe work conditions, and instability of day labor in Cleveland. DLOC leaders share the belief that day laborers deserve to be paid fairly for their labor and to be treated with respect. DLOC uses grassroots organizing; coalition-building with social service agencies, churches and unions; day laborer leadership development; and legislative campaigns to win better working conditions and wages, and more job stability within Cleveland's day labor industry. In January of 2004, DLOC became a project of the East Side Organizing Project (ESOP), allowing the group to learn from ESOP's successful grassroots community organizing over the last eleven years.
Accomplishments
In its first three years of operation, DLOC prompted Cleveland's Salvation Army to ban temporary labor agents recruiting in their facilities; initiated and testified at Cleveland City Council hearings on abuses in the day labor industry; built a partnership between day laborers, organized labor, churches, and non-profit advocacy groups that launched one of few alternative day laborer hiring halls in the nation; and helped draft a municipal day labor ordinance, which would regulate temporary agency conduct on pay and work conditions. DLOC accomplished all this with consistent day laborer involvement and without any paid staff members.
