Labor pool law will die in 1997

Advocates for poor angered that homeless may not be protected from abuses by operators

Web posted December 1, 1996

By Lawrence Viele
Morris News Service

ATLANTA - Advocates for the poor are outraged that a law regulating labor pools, a major source of income for the homeless, is about to go out of effect without ever having been enforced.

``Nothing ever happened and that's truly unfortunate,'' said state Rep. Georganna Sinkfield, D-Atlanta, the law's author and chairwoman of the House Children and Youth Committee.

Georgia Labor Commissioner David Poythress has never tried to get funding to enforce the statute.

``I don't think it's the smartest thing to do with the money. This does not have much return,'' he said.

Labor pools, the homeless complain, keep people trapped in the cycle of near-indentured servitude.

Workers often do back-breaking work that no one else wants to do, homeless advocates say. For the work, their minimum-wage pay can be docked for safety equipment, transportation, lunch and lodging. The deductions make it impossible to escape homelessness.

That frustrates Robert Ferrell, chairman of the Atlanta Union of the Homeless, a group that lobbied to get the regulations approved. Mr. Ferrell, who was once homeless, alleges that the people he represents are taken advantage of by labor pool operators.

``We think this is where people get stuck on a merry-go-round,'' Mr. Ferrell told a House subcommittee on the homeless recently.

Other advocates around the state agree, such as the Rev. Micheal Elliot, who runs the Union Mission in Savannah and said he has steered nearly 2,000 working homeless from the labor pools and into better jobs.

``Poythress needs to come spend a couple of nights in a homeless shelter. There's a section of his constituency he's not aware of,'' the Rev. Elliot said.

Mr. Ferrell thinks the General Assembly passed a law three years ago to placate activists.

``It is my belief that they never intended to fund the bill,'' he said.

The law, passed in 1993 by the General Assembly to regulate labor pool operators, is scheduled to sunset at the end of the 1997 legislative session because it was never funded.

Mr. Poythress contends his department needs at least $300,000 to investigate and regulate the transitory labor pool operators, who often come in from out of state to set up shop. The department has never asked for the funding required by the law for the statute to remain in effect.

That ploy - passing a law but not funding it - is used to get activists off the back of lawmakers, who know the statute will never be used.

Ms. Sinkfield argues she went to too much trouble to write the bill and get it passed for it to die now. But she said budget constraints might prevent her from pushing hard for funding during the 1997 General Assembly session, even though the $300,000 is small change for state budget-writers.

Also unfortunate, she said, is the shifting attitude of the labor department.

Though two department employees were sent to help Ms. Sinkfield's committee draft the bill, Mr. Poythress doesn't support it.

``Trying to regulate and control something that is that transitory would be enormously expensive,'' Mr. Poythress said. ``The bill was not met with a lot of enthusiasm.''

The commissioner argues homeless advocates such as Mr. Ferrell have shaky charges against labor pool operators and questioned whether there is such a thing as working homeless.

``They paint a horrible picture,'' Mr. Poythress said.

``In my view, most homeless people don't work ... that's not part of their culture,'' Mr. Poythress said. ``There are a lot of assumptions that don't stand close scrutiny.''

Warren Nelson runs a temporary service agency for industrial workers in Hapeville, Ga. His company pays employees daily, provides workers compensation coverage, safety equipment and charges a dollar each way for transportation, less than public transportation.

The labor pool operators usually drive by ``catch corners,'' around town, pick up how ever many men are needed for work, and pay them cash at the end of the day - with none of the proper state or federal paperwork filled out, Mr. Nelson said.

Often such employers use illegal aliens, Mr. Nelson suspects.

``The companies don't want to show on their records that they are using these people,'' Mr. Nelson said.

Mr. Poythress has no estimate of how many labor pools operate in Georgia or how many people they employ.

``I really don't know who or where to go,'' for that information, he said. Mr. Poythress might if he enforced the labor pool regulation law about to sunset.