Crops rotting in Ga. without immigrant workers

[Armchair_QB]

Yeah, they could pay $40 an hour and I wouldn't do that ****.

Thanks to allergies, I got out of a rite of passage for many Indiana teens -- detasseling corn. A bus would pull up to my high school to take a bunch of kids to a farm to rip the tassels off, because if they don't come off, it'll gum up the combine. My brother did it, and every day he came back burnt, with cuts all over his arms. To detassel, you sit in the back of a moving truck and yank the tassel. For eight hours.

That was a staple of growing up in Iowa too. Had a lot of friends who did it and, for a teenager, it was good money.

 

[Azrael]

The vast majority of American workers cannot.

Will not.

Really it's both. Me, I'm not seperating will from ability. To do this work, a person has to have both.

A decent salary buys a lot of will.

But it doesn't buy physical ability. Crop work is extremely demanding physically. You may have the desire to earn $10.00 an hour picking crops but if you can't handle it physically you won't last long.

21% of migrant workers are women.

And I'm guessing that in those states with a more, um, flexible understanding of compliance, there are still plenty of kids who do the work too.

docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:jOhjkai7Y48J:www.ncfh.org/docs/fs-Migrant%2520Demographics.pdf+migrant+worker+demographics&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjwTn5YaM6Pj1ux1Sw142RxEzv2e9SyL2CRyY2ZAQablZHX9IVwXp5-oF87in0lHqmlLf1HLMLQoOI1VrnXG6AoiPqc_Vchlnnns7eIny83PFt1Ve05nCUWWK12eWURT1GreInC&sig=AHIEtbQgsyvlNusZh6gwItLrrzO7AqoNQA&pli=1

 

[cranberry]

The vast majority of American workers cannot.

Will not.

Really it's both. Me, I'm not seperating will from ability. To do this work, a person has to have both.

A decent salary buys a lot of will.

But it doesn't buy physical ability. Crop work is extremely demanding physically. You may have the desire to earn $10.00 an hour picking crops but if you can't handle it physically you won't last long.

All you're suggesting is that there is a smaller pool (market) of people from which to choose for these jobs, which should increase the value of the service they offer. There are thousands and thousands of employers who offer physically demanding work and are able to recruit strong, able-bodied and willing workers. The secret is that they compensate the workers fairly.

 

[Bob Cook]

Yeah, they could pay $40 an hour and I wouldn't do that ****.

Thanks to allergies, I got out of a rite of passage for many Indiana teens -- detasseling corn. A bus would pull up to my high school to take a bunch of kids to a farm to rip the tassels off, because if they don't come off, it'll gum up the combine. My brother did it, and every day he came back burnt, with cuts all over his arms. To detassel, you sit in the back of a moving truck and yank the tassel. For eight hours.

That was a staple of growing up in Iowa too. Had a lot of friends who did it and, for a teenager, it was good money.

Definitely, it was more than I made at the car wash, which had its own miseries. But I didn't crawl home in pain and exhaustion every night, at least.

 

[Armchair_QB]

The vast majority of American workers cannot.

Will not.

Really it's both. Me, I'm not seperating will from ability. To do this work, a person has to have both.

A decent salary buys a lot of will.

But it doesn't buy physical ability. Crop work is extremely demanding physically. You may have the desire to earn $10.00 an hour picking crops but if you can't handle it physically you won't last long.

All you're suggesting is that there is a smaller pool (market) of people from which to choose for these jobs, which should increase the value of the service they offer. There are thousands and thousands of employers who offer physically demanding work and are able to recruit strong, able-bodied and willing workers. The secret is that they compensate the workers fairly.

Well yeah. I was only addressing the fact that it's not an easy job.

 

[Bob Cook]

The vast majority of American workers cannot.

Will not.

Really it's both. Me, I'm not seperating will from ability. To do this work, a person has to have both.

A decent salary buys a lot of will.

But it doesn't buy physical ability. Crop work is extremely demanding physically. You may have the desire to earn $10.00 an hour picking crops but if you can't handle it physically you won't last long.

They'll be able to buy from a much larger pool of willing and able people if they were willing to pay what the work is worth.

The vast majority of American workers cannot.

Will not.

Really it's both. Me, I'm not seperating will from ability. To do this work, a person has to have both.

A decent salary buys a lot of will.

But it doesn't buy physical ability. Crop work is extremely demanding physically. You may have the desire to earn $10.00 an hour picking crops but if you can't handle it physically you won't last long.

All you're suggesting is that there is a smaller pool (market) of people from which to choose for these jobs, which should increase the value of the service they offer. There are thousands and thousands of employers who offer physically demanding work and are able to recruit strong, able-bodied and willing workers. The secret is that they compensate the workers fairly.

The issue with farm work, too, is it's seasonal and temporary. So it's not only a matter of accepting the pay, but also accepting that you're never going to live in one spot. For most people, that's an unfathomable idea, particularly if you have a family.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

“They wanted that $10.50 an hour without doing very much,” he said. “I know people with college degrees, working for the school system and only making 11 bucks.”

Sounds more like the free market is telling him he is paying too little for the work he wants done.

That's an oversimplification. The pay is a small part of this equation, and you can't take that quote about the pay without the context of this graph:

Six hours was enough, between the 6 a.m. start time and noon lunch break, for the first wave of local workers to quit. Some simply never came back and gave no reason. Twenty-five of them said specifically, according to farm records, that the work was too hard.

Are they more likely to stay if you pay them $12 per hour instead of $10.50? Maybe. But the truth of the matter is no matter what the pay is, they still have to be able to do the work. The vast majority of American workers cannot.

They are more likely to stay if you pay them $20 an hour.

How much are you willing to pay for an onion?

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Fwiw, GQ had an article about migrant farmhands this month.

http://gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201110/illegal-immigration-issue-blueberry-fruit-farmers-gq-october-2011

 

[Boom_70]

Fwiw, GQ had an article about migrant farmhands this month.

http://gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201110/illegal-immigration-issue-blueberry-fruit-farmers-gq-october-2011

The migrant farm worker look is in with the tight economy.

 

[Iron_chet]

FWIW I would hazard a guess that I am one of the few people on the board who has actually worked as a farm worker.

I was completely broke living in Australia and could not get a job but did not want to go home.

I picked watermelons, cantaloupes, peppers and grapes.

It is physical work but not something that you have to be especially physically fit to do. I saw lots of larger folks doing it, one even said it was agreat way to lose weight.

For me it was the sheer boredom and mindlessness of the work rather tha the physical demand that drove me nuts.

I worked 3 weeks straight, 6 days a week and then left. My motivation for getting a better job before my holiday work visa ran out had increased immensely.

 

[Blitz]

Yeah, they could pay $40 an hour and I wouldn't do that ****.

Of course you wouldn't and good for you.
You are college-educated with quicker access to white-collar work.
That doesn't mean there aren't a ton of lazy, uninspired people in this country who a.) didn't make a choice to participate in the readily-available, learn now, pay later higher education avenues we have in USA, and/or b.) don't want to get off their asses and earn some honest money
All they want to do is ***** and moan about how bad they've got it, and they damn sure don't want to get up every day and go to work.

 

[novelist_wannabe]

I was talking to a friend this afternoon and he posited that Americans have largely deemed these jobs as beneath them. I've not seen or read anything that contradicts that sentiment.

A thought about the hourly rates: If you make the rate hourly rather than piece rate, then the workers will almost certainly be less productive. Pay them $20 an hour, and they'll want to make the work last as long as possible. Pay them a piece rate, and they'll try to get it done as fast as possible.

 

[Point of Order]

“They wanted that $10.50 an hour without doing very much,” he said. “I know people with college degrees, working for the school system and only making 11 bucks.”

Sounds more like the free market is telling him he is paying too little for the work he wants done.

You hear this all the time from employers when they get people who don't want to work. It's always about lazy workers, when the real problem is not valuing employees. Does the employer have good benefits, sick leave, offers work clothes so workers don't have to use their own? Oh, it can't be the poor boss, who is just trying to do his part to help America.

True

 

[Point of Order]

Lots of good points here. To me the bottom line is that we need to get these very issues out in the open and address them in an honest and comprehensive manner. Just targeting migrant workers without consideration for the downstream consequences is not going to work. The simplistic "Build the dang fence" tea party crowd now gets to figure our how they want to operate in the real world.

 

[Ace]

Lots of good points here. To me the bottom line is that we need to get these very issues out in the open and address them in an honest and comprehensive manner. Just targeting migrant workers without consideration for the downstream consequences is not going to work. The simplistic "Build the dang fence" tea party crowd now gets to figure our how they want to operate in the real world.

Ironically, it would be cheaper to build the fence using undocumented workers.

 

[Jake_Taylor]

Lots of good points here. To me the bottom line is that we need to get these very issues out in the open and address them in an honest and comprehensive manner. Just targeting migrant workers without consideration for the downstream consequences is not going to work. The simplistic "Build the dang fence" tea party crowd now gets to figure our how they want to operate in the real world.

Ironically, it would be cheaper to build the fence using undocumented workers.

Can't they just stand on the south side of the fence as they work?

 

[JC]

Yeah, they could pay $40 an hour and I wouldn't do that ****.

Of course you wouldn't and good for you.
You are college-educated with quicker access to white-collar work.
That doesn't mean there aren't a ton of lazy, uninspired people in this country who a.) didn't make a choice to participate in the readily-available, learn now, pay later higher education avenues we have in USA, and/or b.) don't want to get off their asses and earn some honest money
All they want to do is ***** and moan about how bad they've got it, and they damn sure don't want to get up every day and go to work.

Do you make 40 an hour?

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Alabama's racists finding out just how expensive racism is:

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/alabama-anti-immigration-law-self-deportation-movement

 

[novelist_wannabe]

Since this thread got bumped, I'll tack this on: The appellate court will delay a ruling until a SCOTUS ruling on the Arizona law.

http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-politics-elections/court-to-rule-later-1368578.html

 

[Point of Order]

In a perverse sense, I think these laws have been good because there is no better way to get enough people to appreciate the need for comprehensive immigration reform than to let the most virulent opponents have a little taste of reality. Might actually wake folks up to the complexity and real life consequences at stake.