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Wages rise on California farms, Americans still don’t want the job

latimes.com

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Re: Wages rise on California farms, Americans still don’t want the job

#111

Post by AlexandrB »

ABCLAW wrote: post #67
PaulHoule wrote: post #45

The story is not too different for dairy (and other) farms in Upstate New York. Most agricultural jobs pay a few more dollars an hour than the minimum wage, but they are much harder jobs than minimum wage jobs. It is one thing to wake up early morning to milk the cows if you own the farm, it is another thing to do it for other people's cows. I don't know about Alaska and Hawaii, but illegal aliens are a big part of t…

Has anyone here even worked a minimum wage job?? A few dollars an hour above the baseline isn't enough to compensate for the long term health and career advancement penalties you'll be taking. These are terminal career positions; they don't get better. Hauling apples and hay isn't going to get you a spot at a tractor design firm. Pay people enough to make a decent, comfortable life and you'll have workers. The CoL/wa…

> Hauling apples and hay isn't going to get you a spot at a tractor design firm.

Of course not. This is a change in required qualifications and education, not just a move up the ladder.

I don't know about agriculture jobs, but in food service your career prospects were to go from flipping burgers to managing/supervising/leading others who are flipping burgers (at increasing scale - store, regional, national, etc). While it's not as nice as any kind of engineering there is a way forward there. Of course moving up like this gets competitive because of the sheer volume of people "at the bottom" hoping to move up.

Re: Wages rise on California farms, Americans still don’t want the job

#112

Post by Animats »

PaulHoule wrote: post #45

The story is not too different for dairy (and other) farms in Upstate New York. Most agricultural jobs pay a few more dollars an hour than the minimum wage, but they are much harder jobs than minimum wage jobs. It is one thing to wake up early morning to milk the cows if you own the farm, it is another thing to do it for other people's cows. I don't know about Alaska and Hawaii, but illegal aliens are a big part of t…

Milking is becoming automated.[1] Milking robots are production, not experimental technology, with at least four manufacturers. This video is amusing, showing the cow's view of meeting robotic milking for the first time.

Milk cows want to be milked, to relieve the pressure. So, given the freedom to use the robotic milkers any time they want, they get milked about three times a day. Milk production increases a bit. The cows are tagged and monitored, so any cow with a problem is quickly flagged.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_Q1LoxK5mE

Re: Wages rise on California farms, Americans still don’t want the job

#113

Post by zeroer »

kodfodrasz wrote: post #48
anoonmoose wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt they were joking. The homeless need homes more than they need jobs.

It is hard to determine which is needed more, as a home has costs, loosing a job leads usually loosing a home. I believe both are equally important, and this is kind of a snake biting its own tail problem, as without a home it is very hard to get a job. (Although I can imagine someone living in a car temporarily in mild weather conditions, it would be impossible to survive a winter that way here in Central Europe) Ho…

> loosing

It's spelled "loosening", btw.

Re: Wages rise on California farms, Americans still don’t want the job

#114

Post by dragonwriter »

datatan wrote: post #81
dragonwriter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No. Californians don't want the jobs. Americans live in more than just CA Yes, but if they wanted the jobs, they'd come to CA for them. > I know a lot of people in CA find this hard to believe but there is a whole world outside of Sillycon Valley. Most people in California—who are, after all, themsleves outside of Silicon Valley, which is a small piece of the state—are well aware of that.

> Yes, but if they wanted the jobs, they'd come to CA for them. CA is facing a mass exodus right now. Why on Earth would anyone willingly move there with costs being what they are? I left 10 years ago and will never go back. I can earn just as much with a cost of living being half of that in any number of states. > Most people in California—who are, after all, themsleves outside of Silicon Valley, which is a small pi…

> CA is facing a mass exodus right now.

No, it's not. It's facing a slowing rate of inward migration, but it still has net inward migration, not an "exodus" at all, much less a mass one (and a lot of the slowing is part of the national net out-migration of undocumented immigrants—the only a mass exodus involved—offsetting in-migration of others.)

Re: Wages rise on California farms, Americans still don’t want the job

#115

Post by PaulHoule »

ABCLAW wrote: post #67
PaulHoule wrote: post #45

The story is not too different for dairy (and other) farms in Upstate New York. Most agricultural jobs pay a few more dollars an hour than the minimum wage, but they are much harder jobs than minimum wage jobs. It is one thing to wake up early morning to milk the cows if you own the farm, it is another thing to do it for other people's cows. I don't know about Alaska and Hawaii, but illegal aliens are a big part of t…

Has anyone here even worked a minimum wage job?? A few dollars an hour above the baseline isn't enough to compensate for the long term health and career advancement penalties you'll be taking. These are terminal career positions; they don't get better. Hauling apples and hay isn't going to get you a spot at a tractor design firm. Pay people enough to make a decent, comfortable life and you'll have workers. The CoL/wa…

Funny enough, many Mexicans who come to work in the U.S. plan to earn enough money to start their own farm back home.

There are quite a few young people who would like to own a farm, often not farmer's kids. It would be almost impossible to "make it" as a farmer without getting experience in the biz in one form or another.

Re: Wages rise on California farms, Americans still don’t want the job

#116

Post by orf »

kingmanaz wrote: post #98
orf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

inaccurate and pretty stupid actually.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker Educate yourself.

In random American colloquialisms? No thanks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scab

Re: Wages rise on California farms, Americans still don’t want the job

#118

Post by nradov »

CalChris wrote: post #58
elithrar wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? Here's a real example: you can work as an electrician on a mine site here in Australia on a fly-in, fly-out ("FIFO") basis. Typical rosters are 11/3 (days on/off), 2/1 (weeks on/off), etc. You work through weekends when you are on, and often do ~12-13 hour days. Food is good, beds aren't bad, Internet connectivity is 'passable' and the weather is extremely hot. Many of these jobs pay (substantially!) mo…

A buddy did a job not unlike that. He worked for Schlumberger oil in AIDS infested Africa. He came back addicted to quinine and debt free. --- To the downvoters, I meant no disrespect but it was a fact. It was AIDS infested Africa. Entire villages were wiped out by a disease. That didn't matter because there was oil to be extracted. We heard less if at all about it here. But we got the oil.

Quinine isn't addictive. Although I suppose one could become addicted to the gin part of Gin and Tonic.

Re: Wages rise on California farms, Americans still don’t want the job

#119

Post by gmarx »

greedo wrote: post #28

When I was younger, I worked at a McDonalds in SoCal. Almost all the employees were white teenagers. The managers were white as well. We didn't make much, just a bit above minimum wage, but we were all mostly high-school students or college students working in the summer to pay tuition. This went on until around 1984 or so, when it became much harder to hire this demographic. It wasn't as cool to work at fast food, a…

This change occurred in my town as well at about the same time. How do you know you are getting cause and effect right? I always assumed that after the amnesty in the first Bush administration it was just easier/cheaper/better attitude to get mexicans and the restaurants stopped hiring the high school kids. I don't think those jobs were ever considered cool for the high school kids but money is useful

Re: Wages rise on California farms, Americans still don’t want the job

#120

Post by temp-dude-87844 »

There is always a desperation factor: how badly the worker needs the income from a particular job's wages to get by, or in come cases, support their entire family.

Farm work is seasonal, physically exhausting, hazardous to health, requires long hours, offers no long-term advancement, and the job sites often vary and are far away.

One only need look at the EU, an advanced economy that (mostly) offers freedom of movement across its diverse constituent states, to see how legal workers from less prosperous areas travel to more prosperous areas to perform skilled manual labor. In the EU's case, the internal economic disparities are often severe enough that the marginal utility of increased income to be gained elsewhere is very high, therefore internal migration is commonplace for blue-collar work.

In the US, this (mal-)adaptation is largely absent and is relegated to a few high-risk, high-income categories of manual labor, e.g. oil field roughnecks, Alaskan fishing; and to the similarly time-intensive long-distance truck driving. The phenomenon of a family's primary income-earner relocating elsewhere, leaving the family behind to perform a standard day's shift of blue-collar work is commonplace elsewhere in the world, but among non-immigrant legal US residents.

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