| Where the Women Wait, an Unwritten Code Is Revised |
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[28 January 2010 by Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska, The New York Times] For years, every morning, the sight has been the same at Marcy and Division Avenues in Williamsburg, Brooklyn: a crowd of women gatheres on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway overpass amid the din of traffic. They are day laborers looking not for construction work, but for work cleaning houses of Hasidic residents. There were originally maybe 40 or 50. And like many traditions that grow up out of necessity around New York City, this cleaning woman shape-up had certain unwritten codes, accepted patterns that all the women acknowledged, and abided by.The young Polish students speaking fluent English were usually in front; they tended to be employers’ favorites, and they could translate for the others. Just behind them, spread along the overpass fence, stood Polish women in their 40s and 50s, with some even older. Then, at the end of the line, there would stand a few women from Latin America. |