Beginning April 1, the Los Altos-based St. Joseph the Worker Center will merge with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The worker center will "cease to exist as an independent entity," said Elizabeth Keller, executive director of the worker center, "and become a program of St. Vincent de Paul."
That's good news, officials said.
"This is a way for us to provide better service for the workers," Keller said. St. Vincent de Paul, a Catholic charity known for its service to the poor, runs clothing centers and offers food and housing vouchers.
Steve Pehanich, executive director of St. Vincent de Paul, agrees. "Combined, we can provide (for the workers) better service for learning, for working and for improving themselves." He also said the "quality of the volunteers" at the Los Altos center, those who helped get the center going as well as those who volunteer there now, is a huge plus.
St. Vincent de Paul "recently took over management of the day worker center in San Jose. This gives the (Los Altos) center a more regional presence. The issue of day workers is not just in Los Altos and Mountain View, but up and down the Peninsula," Keller said.
There are only the two day-worker centers in Santa Clara County. With the merger they will be called St. Joseph the Worker Centers. "We'll keep our name, but there will be two of us," Keller said.
She will be overseeing both centers. This soft-spoken woman from Barnard College, who spent 10 years in Mexico City serving the poor and another 17 years at Stanford, will step up from her current three-quarter time job in the Los Altos location to full time as Day Worker Services Director.
She's excited about the possibilities.
The Los Altos center, known for its strong ESL program, is "helped by the Mountain View-Los Altos adult ed teachers," Keller said. "We want to help (San Jose) develop their program."
But the San Jose center "has the benefit of the Santa Clara Law School," Keller said, where law students, under the supervision of an attorney, help workers with legal issues.
In fact, "I'm referring a woman (a Mountain View day worker) who wants to start a house-cleaning business," Keller said. She'd like to see the legal services brought to the Los Altos center.
Keller is still not certain where the Los Altos center will be located. "We're working on increasing our capacity and considering a variety of options," she said.
The local center came about originally from the Mountain View and Los Altos communities' response to day laborers, mostly Hispanic men, who were hanging out on street corners along El Camino Real, especially in the area around San Antonio Road and Sherwood Lane.
As their numbers increased, so did complaints from business owners and neighbors, who said customers where intimidated by the large groups hanging out. Complaints to police of drinking and unsanitary practices also increased.
Community members saw a day-worker center as a place workers could go, off the street, and where employers would come. The center could offer training while workers waited for jobs.
A $67,000 grant from the El Camino Hospital Foundation helped the center become a reality in 1996. Now in its second location, at El Camino Real and Jordan Avenue, above the Big and Tall shop, it has been extraordinarily successful.
In February 1999, the center placed eight workers into permanent jobs, said Conrad Heintzelman, a Los Altos businessman and member of the worker center board of directors.
In February the center also served 59 new day workers and 68 new employers; it taught 21 students in morning English classes and 15 in evening classes, Heintzelman said.
As numbers increased at the center, so did workers on the street corners. A typical day might see 50 to 100 men on corners. But even if they all went to the center, they wouldn't all fit.
So the merger and expansion offer new possibilities for these "people struggling to make their lives livable," Keller said.