
          Living the Day Labor Life
          By Williams, RandallRandall Williams
          Vol. 10, No. 5, 1988, pp. 7, 20
          
          Earlier this year, the Southern_Regional_Council
published a lengthy investigative and analytical report of the growing
temporary manual labor industry. Workers in these "labor pools" are
among the least protected and most poorly rewarded persons in the
U.S. labor force. The SRC report, entitled Hard Labor: A Report
on Labor Pools and Temporary Employment, contained first-hand
accounts by many unemployed and homeless men who rely on labor pools
for their meager existence. One such worker is Wade Wagner, who was
interviewed in Austin, Texas, by Randall Williams. Wagner's edited
comments follow. To obtain the complete forty-eight-page report, with
illustrations and a statistical appendix, send $10 to the SRC, 60
Walton Street, Atlanta, GA 30303.
          Monday, I had the flu. It took me till Tuesday to feel like going
outside and getting a job. Wednesday, I get up and go out there about
8 o'clock. I worked about three hours yesterday. Trimmed trees. A
contractor came through that I had been helping all along. I made
about 16 bucks. That's it up to this point. And I was standing around
over there at Salvation Army when you came up. That's been my week.
          All I did was go in, get a shower, get something to eat. Actually,
that diet, sometimes you have to eat food to satisfy your hunger but
actually didn't satisfy the taste buds at all. I got me a shower, and
then a guy came through about 8 o'clock, and said, was anybody
interested in going to church? And I said, I might go. "Will they
have any refreshments?" And he said, "Yeah, I'm quite sure they
will. I can't say definite, but they usually have
refreshments. Sometimes we have used clothes and things, too." So
about four of us jumped in this van and went and had services. And
then after service, they didn't bring any refreshments, so the church
guy brought us back and on the way he stopped by a chicken place. So
we all had chicken. Had a pretty nice time of it.
          The Salvation Army can be okay. It can help a person because when
people are living in the streets, and they have been living under
normal conditions, you always like to have a change of clothes. At
least every two days, you want to get out of 'em and change. But
anybody that has lived normal like that, they're going to find out, if
they're living in the streets, they can only carry what they carry in
a bag. So therefore, you have to leave your bags, and they find that
very hard to do. You know, in a safe place. And then going over here
and taking a shower, where they're going to sleep [at the Salvation
Army], putting back on the same clothes they got out of, that they've
been wearing two or three days or longer, actually it's not going to
do you much good to take a shower.
          Another place you can stay is the labor hall's bunkhouse. There's a
guy that sits there in the office. You go in to the window and pay
your rent. They assign you a bunk. If you are a regular you can get a
regular bunk assigned to you.
          It is definitely adequate. I ain't going to say it's spic and
span. But it's clean enough. The linens are clean. It's sanitary. It's
safe. Well, actually, anytime you have a bunch of men together, you'll
always going to find some disturbances. Somebody may have too much to
drink, start a fight. Normally it's just fists, but there has been
some stabbings in the past. But usually everybody gets along fine. You
can come and go as you please. Stay out all night if you want. No
curfew. TV is usually off by 12 but sometimes they leave it on all
night. You can play cards. You can gamble. You can have alcohol.
          But getting back to the Salvation Army, in the dorm I was in, there
was probably close to a hundred.
          I got up and ate breakfast--about 4:30 they woke us up. Actually, I
tried to eat breakfast. It was oatmeal and to tell you the truth, I
couldn't quite eat it. Even from a child I never could eat oatmeal. So
then I walked over on Sixth Street to this 7-11 store and 

had myself a good cup of coffee. Then I walked down on Second Street. It was real cold. Everybody was not going to get work. So then I walked back down on Seventh Street to the
labor hall. But there wasn't much going on this morning.
          Most days are routine like that, if you can come up with enough to
eat and get a place to sleep. Going back to what makes people happy,
everybody likes to eat the best food that they could possibly get,
like meat, vegetables, you know, an adequate diet, a nutritional
diet. There are places where you can show up and get food. It might
not be real tasty and it probably ain't got that many vitamins but
it'll get something in your stomach.
          With my cheap labor, I mostly have enough to cover coffee,
cigarettes and food. What else do we spend money on? Everybody could
probably get all the outside clothes--pants, shirts, tee-shirts--that
he could humanly possibly carry around. He wouldn't have to spend his
money on that. Buying a car is completely still out of anybody's
income bracket. Bus fare is fifty cents, costs you a dollar to go
round trip anywhere around town.
          I don't know any program that's going to cover any medical
expenses. I've been lucky. I've had flus and colds, but--Eckerd Drug
has been my doctor, what with buying cough medicines, aspirins.
          You asked about recreation. Well, we used to shoot backcourt ball
down at the bunkhouse. I used to jog up to last year. There's a track
by the riverside, real nice. I used to jog but I found out my diet was
not sufficient to jog, so therefore I was going to do more body harm
by trying to jog on malnutrition than I was going to help. I like to
go to movies but I usually don't have the money. There's a dollar
movie over on Red River and fellows go over there if they have a
dollar. Otherwise you can't go. If you got in a card game and won $25
or something like that you might do it. But if you want to go to
Antone's, or a club with entertainment, if you like blues, and I am a
blues fan... I've been trying to get there but I never can afford the
$20 it takes.
        
