In Williamsburg Immigrant Woman Line Up for Day Labor

In Williamsburg, commuters on the busy Brooklyn-Queens Expressway are oblivious to the scene unfolding on an overpass above them of immigrant woman line up for day labor. The work at stake is $8-an-hour housecleaning, and those vying for a day's scrubbing, mainly for Chasidic homemakers, stand in a crude ascending hierarchy of employer preference: Mexican and Central American women in their 30's at the back, Polish immigrant women in their 50's and 60's in the middle, and young Polish students with a command of English at the head of the line.