By Linda Taaffe

Photo by Joe Hu, Town Crier

A group of local day workers gathered along Jordan Avenue in Los Altos last week for something other than employment. About 50 or so workers volunteered their time Wednesday and Thursday mornings to landscape the front yard of a day-care center across the street from the former St. Joseph the Worker Center, as part of a self-organized community service program.

Worker Gonzalo Garcia, who helped organize the project, said he and the other workers wanted to give something back to the community. Los Altos Garden Supply donated the sod, tan bark, plants and other materials needed to renovate the yard. The workers provided their services.

The presence of day laborers in Los Altos has divided the community since St. Joseph the Worker Center closed last October, pushing hundreds of workers into the street to seek employment. Day laborers said they have had to defend their right to be present in Los Altos against those who say the workers are not part of the community.

Day workers say they are just as much a part of the community as others in the area.

“We are the ones who pick the fruit that you eat. Our brown hands clean your houses,” worker Maria Marroquin recently told the Los Altos City Council.

But some residents oppose their presence, saying most are here illegally and are profiting more than others by not paying taxes, while taking advantage of public services.

John Rinaldi, a Mountain View resident who is helping the day workers establish a new worker center, said St. Joseph the Worker Center peacefully coexisted in Los Altos next to the day-care center and other neighbors.

A group of workers has filed a lawsuit against the city of Los Altos to repeal an anti-solicitation law laborers allege is aimed at preventing them from gaining work.

Day-care operator Elba Diaz said she was delighted when the workers told her they planned to fix up her yard.

“The yard was very ugly. It was very hard for me to do all of the work myself,” she said.

Diaz has had a long association with the day workers, who had used the worker center across the street to meet employers prior to its closure. She is accustomed to the group of day laborers who congregate in front of her Jordan Avenue home each morning looking for employment. The Los Altos resident said she doesn’t mind the workers in front of her house, where she operates a day-care center.

“They have been good neighbors,” she said. “Some people are picky and don’t like it, but the (laborers) need to work.”

Others disagree, saying the laborers block sidewalks and have negatively impacted the neighborhood.