Assistant Professor of Sociology Gregory Maney Coordinated a study on day laborers and community relations.

A few dozen men wearing work boots and worn jeans, hands stuffed into pockets against the early March cold, waited patiently in a Freeport parking lot for the Spanish translator to read them the results of the study. They, after all, were the subject of the study, and they nodded as the translator read about the conditions they endured as day laborers on Long Island: physical and verbal abuse, threats of arrest, unsafe working conditions.

The report was the result of months of work by Hofstra’s Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy and the Hempstead-based Workplace Project, an immigrant rights group. They surveyed the Hispanic workers who gather on street corners and in parking lots from Glen Cove to Farmingville hoping for a day’s work by construction crews and landscapers. The report was released at a press conference on March 9 at the Worklink Center of Freeport, a community day laborer hiring site.

Coordinated by Gregory Maney, assistant professor of sociology at Hofstra, the study found that how local governments responded to the workers often determined whether the issue divided communities and led to human rights abuses. Efforts to eliminate day labor markets through threats, fines and arrests of day laborers and contractors contributed not only to multiple human rights abuses of the workers, but also to deteriorating community relations. Establishing official hiring sites such as those in Freeport, Glen Cove and Huntington Station protected day laborers from a physical and verbal abuse while also improving community relations, the study found.

“Contrary to assertions by those opposed to day labor markets, the data make it clear that official hiring sites reduce hate crimes and other forms of abuses against day laborers,” said Dr. Maney.

The study team, which also included Professor Elizabeth Campisi from the University at Albany anthropology department, analyzed the human rights impact of local government policies upon immigrant workers in the major day labor markets on Long Island, which, in addition to the three communities with hiring centers included Franklin Square, Farmingdale, Westbury and Roslyn Heights in Nassau County and Farmingville in Suffolk.. The project was funded by a grant from the Sociological Initiatives Foundation, which requires that the research be conducted with a community partner and that the findings be used to inform public policy. The team found that the three communities with the official hiring sites saw fewer instances of physical abuse and contractor exploitation than communities that did not have official hiring sites.