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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

#41

Post by dragonwriter »

decebalus1 wrote: post #18
kingmanaz wrote: post #6

Immigration laws seem likely to be enforced, illegal alien labor scabs self-deport in advance, and wages rise. Not hard to understand.

> illegal alien labor scabs self-deport in advance, and wages rise You know when there was a bug in the codebase so hard to fix and for so many years that developers started building on top of that and considered the bug to be 'not really a bug' but more of a design decision. And then some new hire comes along and fixes it without a deep understanding of the dependencies and breaks existing functionality. And then th…

> Guess what will happen to the price of produce?

Very little, because it's a highly competitive global market and much of what is in supermarkets is already imported. There's a few crops where CA is dominant and where prices would be affected significantly, but the main question would be "what happens to the jobs, and the companies, when labor costs make it impossible to sell their product at a profit".

Jobs aren't a fixed quantity for which wages will rise without limit given a labor supply constraint.

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

#42

Post by striking »

draw_down wrote: post #8
kingmanaz wrote: post #6

Immigration laws seem likely to be enforced, illegal alien labor scabs self-deport in advance, and wages rise. Not hard to understand.

Interesting use of the word "scabs"!

I think the intention was as a synonym for "strikebreaker". Not a particularly nice thing to say, but perhaps better than the meaning you might've first thought of.

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

#43

Post by elithrar »

stale2002 wrote: post #3

Well then obviously wages haven't risen enough. For an extreme example, pay me 200$ an hour and I'll quit my web dev job and do it myself.

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!) more than what an electrical designer or electrical engineer may make - e.g. the ones providing a design, drawings or specifications to the electrical contractors. Many designers & engineers hold their relevant tickets or certs—or could quickly obtain one—in order to be an electrician on these sites.

So why would anyone still want to be a designer or engineer? Quality of life, quality of work (mental engagement), transport/commute, safety, overall career progression, etc.

It therefore does not surprise me that people aren't scrambling to pick fruit for hours per day.

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

#44

Post by rhizome »

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…

~1984 was around the time of the explosion of malls, so there were a lot more non-food jobs for teens after that.

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

#45

Post by PaulHoule »

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 the agricultural workforce throughout the lower 48.

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

#46

Post by Retric »

amyjess wrote: post #31
stale2002 wrote: post #3

Well then obviously wages haven't risen enough. For an extreme example, pay me 200$ an hour and I'll quit my web dev job and do it myself.

If money was the sole determiner of what kind of job you'd choose to work, you'd be in finance, enterprise sales, or medicine, not webdev. There's no amount you could pay me to be a farmer, just like there's no amount you could pay be to become a doctor, a salesman, a lawyer, etc. I'm in tech because I like what I do.

Get stuck on an underpopulated island and gathering food would very much become your day to day job. What your referring to is the diminishing marginal value of money which is a real thing, but we also don't need a lot of farmers so it's not about your job it's about convincing enough people to swap jobs.

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

#47

Post by dragonwriter »

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #36
relaytheurgency wrote: post #13

Farming is one of the most dangerous jobs in the US. There are reasons aside from money that people choose to pursue other careers.

I would think it being seasonal would put a big damper on people wanting to do it: if you can only work 6-8 months a year, what are you going to do the rest of the time?

If you're paid enough in that 6-8 months, whatever you want. Plenty of dangerous, limited season jobs exist—but to attract workers they have to pay really well.

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

#48

Post by kodfodrasz »

anoonmoose wrote: post #34
kodfodrasz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why give them work with decent wages? Just give people what they need: free stuff! Seriously, you were just joking, were you?

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)

Hopefully this opportunity will help those in need.

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

#49

Post by CalChris »

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…

Minimum wage in that era had much stronger purchasing power. 1980 saw its decline.

https://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html

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

#50

Post by kashkhan »

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…

it's better to let teenagers invest in future job skills than past job skills. Sure grape picking would build character, resourcefulness, obedience to bosses and teamwork, but it's got no future. Same thing with fast food jobs.
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