Georgia Survey Finds Farmers Are Having Hard Time Replacing Migrant Workers

[AlphaCentauri]

A study by the Georgia Agriculture Department of the state farm workforce shows that finding legal employees with the skill and desire to do labor-intensive harvesting is extremely difficult.

The reasons, says a report released Tuesday of the study’s findings, include the complexity and expense of government programs intended to help farmers employ guest workers, and the physically demanding nature of many agricultural jobs.

The Agriculture Department undertook the study after Georgia’s legislators passed a measure that targeted undocumented immigrants. The state General Assembly asked the agency to conduct a study of immigration's role in the agricultural industry, which the report described as “the state’s top economic driver.”

Farmers participating in the study said they have suffered roughly $10 million in crop losses because of the law, which many say has driven away workers.



http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2012/01/03/georgia-agriculture-survey-finds-farmers-are-having-hard-time-replacing-migrant/#ixzz1iSINtnA0

[rfranklin]

1. Could it have anything to do with the pay scale?

Just could be.

[OhioChick]

3. That was my first thought, as well n/t

[AlphaCentauri]

6. "with some paying $15 per hour or more"

I guess is not enough

[OhioChick]

7. "with some paying $15 per hour or more"

I'd like to know exactly how many "some" is before drawing any conclusions.

[AlphaCentauri]

8. If it is only one

not filling those positions with a 10% unemployment rate, something must be wrong

[lunatica]

14. Well what do you think is wrong?

I'd say that saying some pay that much is not necessarily true. There are plenty of people who would work under bad conditions to be paid that much an hour. Plenty. Though maybe some people like to think that no matter how much is paid, there is work no white person would do it under any circumstances, including if their children are starving.

Sure. Yeah.
Whatever.

[boppers]

10. "the work is too physically demanding and difficult for U.S. citizens (non-immigrants)" (FTA)

If you're overweight or obese, or otherwise out of shape, it'll take you a few seasons just to get healthy enough to work a field full-time.

That alone eliminates *huge* portions of the available work force... and this is in Georgia, where in 2010, 29.6% of the adult population was obese.

Not overweight, mind you, *obese*.

[Gormy Cuss]

22. It's actually a fairly high number reported at that rate however crew leaders and supervisors

are part of the count. As best I can tell the GA Dept. of Ag asked for numbers of employees by wage level and numbers of employees at different job categories but didn't ask for wages by job category. The report doesn't include the questionnaire so I can't be certain but there are no crosstabs of wage by job category.

It's also possible that some of the highest wages were paid for very short term work (e.g. crops which must be harvested over only a few days.) I read only snippets of the report and they may have part timer wages separately and I missed it.


http://www.agr.georgia.gov/AgLaborReport.pdf

[hedgehog]

33. It might also be for $15 per hour, but with a mandatory 60 hour week!

Oftentimes there is a very narrow window for planting and harvesting.

As noted elsewhere in this thread, every farmer in America is in competition with every other farmer in the world. There was an attempt to improve working conditions here in New York State, but it was dropped when it was shown that the new law would force farmers here out of business. You can't sell your produce when your labor costs are double what everyone else's are.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

36. There are usually quite a few caveats to making $15 per hour

For the ones I've know about the higher pay starts at the top overseer, and is contingent to how much is harvested per day by their crew overall.

The pay for those harvesting is most often by how much you haul in either individually, or sometimes in your family/crew group per day.

To be fair this could be dealt with differently in Georgia for all I know.

[ixion]

2. Well, they got their wish

and now they're living with it.

[hedgehog]

34. I think it was the non-farmers of Georgia who got their wish.

I don't think they realized how dependent local farms had become on immigrant labor.

[ixion]

41. Perhaps, although that would be atypical. Georgia is primarily small towns, and small towns tend

to be 'red', as it were.

The 'liberal' part of Georgia would be Atlanta. Once outside the city limits, you're in redneck heaven.

[Fumesucker]

49. The city limits of Atlanta are only a small fraction of the metro area..

Indeed, the population of Atlanta city is only 420,000 while the metro area is nudging five million.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_metropolitan_area

[dkf]

4. Maybe they aren't trying hard enough.

[rfranklin]

5. Maybe they should sign up for retraining...

I hear you can get a government loan for those training schools. No jobs just a lot of training.

[boppers]

11. Manual labor, not much training needed.

Picking a strawberry, for example, is easy. Picking 5 a second, for 12 hours a day, while bent over, in the sun, in 100 degree weather, is where these jobs are.

[csziggy]

46. Actually, knowing how to pick fruit properly and quickly is not that easy to learn

I've never picked strawberries, but I have picked oranges, You can't just yank the fruit off the trees - if you plug the orange, it will go bad before it will make it to market or even to the juice processing plant. There is a particular twisting motion that must be learned to keep from plugging the fruit.

Fortunately, I never had to pick oranges for a living - I would have been billed for the number of fruit I plugged! We own a couple of groves - Dad helped Granddad plant them when he was a boy. We'd pick oranges to ship to relatives up north for the holidays.

The last batches of strawberries we bought were obviously carefully picked - every berry had a cap of leaves on the top with the same length stem above them. The only damage to the strawberries was from being packed in the little cartons - the berries were beautiful with no bruising.

With something as delicate as strawberries, that has to take some practice!

Each kind of fruit and vegetable has different techniques for proper picking. In Georgia there are a wide variety of crops and the pickers cannot afford to specialize - they have to know how to pick any crop they might be hired for.

Add to that the horrible working conditions you accurately describe, and the jobs are even harder. As much as the poor pay and the unfit condition of many people who need jobs, I bet the farmers are having problems find people who know HOW to do the jobs properly.

[SpiralHawk]

25. Georgia Republicons need to pull themselves up by their own damn clodhoppers

[bluestateguy]

9. Then raise the pay

You love the free market so much, then that's what you do. Raise the pay and willing workers will come out of the woodwork. I guarantee it.

[boppers]

12. Willing != able.

Though, that doesn't entirely defeat your premise, but it does point out that workers are not interchangeable... you have to be able to do back-breaking manual labor, in horrible weather.

You can apply here:
http://ufw.org/_board.php?mode=view&b_code=org_key_back&b_no=7147

[peacebird]

13. That also bumps up against the average Joe wanting to spend less at grocery. The cost of berries

Would go up to pay for workers wages and average Joe would buy the cheaper imported berries....

[bluestateguy]

18. Those average folks voted for the people who wrote the law

And if they are such supporters of the law, they should be willing to pay for the costs of having that law on the books.

[peacebird]

19. I agree totally, but i doubt they thought of the consequences.

[Dreamer Tatum]

26. So let me understand this FULLY.

American = deserve a "living wage" to harvest, presumably a multiple of what the wage is now.

Migrant worker = will work for whatever the job pays, and tough shit.

You're saying that people who voted for the law shouldn't have rocked the boat of cheap produce?

And here I was thinking everyone deserves a living wage! Now I see you meant a living wage for 'MURKINS only.

Right.

[peacebird]

44. Wow. You totally misinterpreted what i wrote. I believe all workers deserve a living wage.

And also that paying a living wage to people to work on farms means the cost of that produce will go up so the owner can still get a profit.

No where did i say that non-American workers deserved lower pay.

[Charlemagne]

40. and they wont think of them

They will just buy the cheap berries without a second though.

People complain about their job getting outsourced to china. But I bet you cant guess where they shop?

[peacebird]

45. Exactly!

[lunatica]

15. This story is full of shit

When you're poor and your family needs food, sacrificing yourself for their benefit is universal.

I'll bet the conditions and the pay aren't even worth it, although the people hiring will claim they are.

I say good. Suffer the consequences of your fucking racism. It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of voters.

[RebelOne]

28. We Georgia voters had no say in this. So don't blame it on us.

From the article: The Agriculture Department undertook the study after Georgia’s legislators passed a measure that targeted undocumented immigrants.

[JoePhilly]

30. Who picks your legislators?

I'd assume that its Georgia's voters.

[calimary]

37. Touche.

How do you think those Georgia legislators got into those positions in the first place? Just who is it who watches Pox Noise and listens to limbaugh and falls for the short-attention-span, bumper-sticker, sound-bite, dog-whistle campaign blather and votes for short-sighted, selfish schmucks like this?

These representatives didn't just arise, magically, out of thin air. They weren't just designated by God, or Zeus, or whoever made the Mayan Calendar, or whatever.

[JoePhilly]

39. Exactly ... although ...

It could be that these legislators RAN on a totally different platform ... and then did THIS ... but I seriously doubt that.

[Hotler]

16. I wonder if the farmers and their own families are out there picking?

What about neighbors helping neighbors get their crops in. Maybe they should stop bitching and pull themselves up by their own boot straps.

[Tikki]

17. Maybe the churches and their members should organize....

'picking bees' or 'crop raisings'.


Tikki

[cap]

20. Where's the $50/hour?

McCain was offering $50/hour.

I wonder if they are enforcing labor law on these farms?

Speaking of which, how's Georgia doing with child labor?

Or are they going for prison labor on the farms?

[cap]

21. Oh this just gets better

According to the article, The farmers want very hard work at minimum wage.

They also don't like using the federal labor system and want to do word of mouth....so, just maybe they can bypass federal labor standards.

Oh, they tried prison labor... Great! I bet most of those prisoners were African Americans who had relatives who remembered sharecropping

[Brickbat]

23. Boo fucking hoo.

[calimary]

35. No kidding. Chickens coming home to roost on Georgia farms.

I'm looking around, within myself, trying to find some sympathy. Not meeting with much success here.

[riderinthestorm]

24. I've always wondered why areas like Georgia, Alabama don't harvest at night

Here in IL, it's common for farmers to harvest at night (if you share a combine for example, that farmer only has it a certain number of days and must harvest within those days, even at night).

I've definitely done it especially when it's been 110 in the daytime hours - I'll take a LONG nap in the hottest part of the day and work overnight.

I believe the farmers in these hideously hot climates would get more potential employees if they'd consider a moving truck with lights, and equipping each worker with a headlamp, and having them start after dark when it's MUCH cooler.

[raccoon]

27. Not necessarily much cooler. IME, growing up in lowcountry SC, it doesn't cool off much at night

in the summer. Go to a higher altitude, and it cools off more at night.

[riderinthestorm]

32. Perhaps, but even the lack of that intense sun beating down must help?

I can tell you from personal experience that picking crops in 90 degrees sure beats 105, and while it's not comfortable, it's far better at night without that damn sun. We've had a few miserable summers here in IL and we almost never harvest during the day anymore. We just plan on it now.

I'm just thinking aloud here. Perhaps it's a cultural thing? Like I said, in the Midwest where the farming operations can be many thousands of acres, and even used combines can be more than $200k, it's common with equipment sharing that you see harvesting happening at night with lights.

[raccoon]

42. Yes, I'm sure it would help. Picking crops in 90 degrees would probably kill me.

I don't think people do harvesting in SC at night, but having never been a farmer, I don't know for sure.

[workinclasszero]

29. They are not paying good enough wages and benefits apparently

Ever heard of unintended consequences teabaggers?

[lunatica]

31. I bet that law gets repealed, just like Prohibition got repealed out of the Constitution.

Suffering $10 million in losses is really bad for everyone.

[Charlemagne]

38. Reap what you sow

[Lone_Star_Dem]

43. Or not, as the case may be.

My apologies, I couldn't resist.

[Gringostan]

47. "average” US citizen doesn’t want to do migrant work

There are so many reasons why the “average” US citizen doesn’t want to do migrant work – migrant being the operative word. Pay, working conditions, lack of benefits, etc. are all part of the equation; but you can’t get around the migratory nature of the work. It’s not a 9 to 5 commuter job – you either get on the road or you don’t get paid.

[Yo_Mama]

48. I think this is bogus

First, apparently farmers aren't using the programs set up to get legal immigrant workers.

Second, I live in a rural county in GA. I don't know anyone who considers it demeaning. Half the professionals I know have spent some time in the fields, if only on a family farm. This report seems to be talking about a Georgia I don't know in a galaxy far, far away. I once closed a pretty big deal when I hopped out and started forking hay with a farmer. This is a cultural thing that runs pretty deep in us. This report only makes sense if you live in NYC. I'm quite sure they WOULD consider it demeaning.

I smell the scent of BS in the sun, and it ain't pretty.

[Fumesucker]

50. I spent many years working around Atlanta...

Not picking crops but doing construction..

Yes, there are plenty of people in this area who think manual labor of any sort is demeaning, I ran into them regularly.

[UTUSN]

51. R#22 & K n/t

[pampango]

52. Guess which party and faction were the force behind Georgia's immigration legislation?

The answers: republicans (who control Georgia's legislature and governorship) and teabaggers (who control the republican party in the state).

I hope they are enjoying the fruits of their labor. They wanted people of color (Hispanics, this time) to leave the state and it worked.

Some of the Hispanics who left were undoubtedly here illegally but most were motivated to leave both by the anti-Hispanic sentiment associated with this teabagger legislation and by the desire to keep mixed families (some members who are citizens or legal immigrants, others who are illegal immigrants) together.

Of course, the "family values" party could not have foreseen the possibility that Hispanic families might prefer to stay intact and move from the state rather than to split up so that some of them could continue to enjoy "Georgia hospitality".