shapeup

1. (slang) a gathering of labourers, where employers hire them for day jobs.Examples: "Even with all that prosperity there were bindle stiffs who didn't do so good: so he and the others dropped into a saloon, got a hundred bucks worth of small change, stepped back into the cab, drove over by the shapeup, that's what they said it was, a shapeup, and they threw money to the guys, laughed when they scrambled for the small change, niggers and wops, some poor yids, and some Americans too: they scrambled on the pier, scraping up a hundred bucks worth of nickels, dimes and pennies."; "Then I got work as a janitor. They had shapeups, like on the waterfront."; "From Henry James's "look in" on Italians, Jews, and others, to muckraking travelogues of immigrant neighborhoods, to serving as guinea pigs in the development of intelligence tests, to shapeups outside factories in pursuit of work, to inspections on entering the country, immigrants were repeatedly scrutinized, tried, examined, and ranked against other races."slang

2. (by extension) A regular meeting by a criminal organization in which jobs are assigned.Examples: "Worse, he required his men to attend weekly shapeups at his social club on a busy street in lower Manhattan."broadly