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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

#91

Post by itchyjunk »

"Trump’s border crackdown is supposed to help U.S. citizens. For California farmers, it’s creating a desperate shortage of help." (Disclamer: I am an immigrant whose paper work is still ongoing)

From the article, it seemed like at least for some their business model was questionable. If the only way to be profitable is to rely on illegal immigrant or non-competitive wages (one of the farmers mentioned could only stay profitable at $8/hr but it seems anything above $10/hr seems unprofitable. "Wineries paid $700 for a ton of grapes, and Klein could make a solid profit paying $8 an hour, the minimum wage.") than you're better off growing something else anyways. (almond and olive trees in this guys case). Even if there was a way to get visas to get labor, the cost of application and transportation might still prevent some of these low margin farms.

Googling shows that other manual labor type jobs in Napa valley [1] seems to be $17+ and often offers training + transport. Seeing as how grapes seems to be used in wine industry, wouldn't the wine industry pay more for the grapes as supply dwindles and make it profitable again?

If I could go work at a farm during summer to save some money for my college, I would consider it. But looking at cost of living/risk involved/ lack of benefits for season workers/ pay, it doesn't appear to be worth it.

So, yes, preventing people willing to work and make it work from doing so it not a good solution. But the narrative that Americans would never work on a farm given the choice is also not true, imho. I've met plenty of white Americans who would like to do it, but lot of the work seems to be seasonal.

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

#92

Post by nkrisc »

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.

That may have worked in the past, but now we have the option of robots that can do the work and maintain margins long before wages raise that* high.

*Yes I know it's a hypothetical number.

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

#93

Post by rogerbinns »

hkmurakami wrote: post #68
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…

Any insight into what does In n' Out does differently? They seem to continue to attract that demographic.

They don't have franchises like the other chains. That is also why their rollout seems slow. This means the boss is the company, not a franchisee who will have their own way of doing things. They then make a reasonable effort of benefits for their employees: http://www.in-n-out.com/employment/restaurant.aspx

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

#94

Post by __jal »

If it weren't for the human suffering involved in all this, I'd be laughing at the farmers, who are simply getting what they asked for[1]. Well, do I still find it funny, but in a much darker way.

I still think the answer to all of this is to call the Republican bluff, and just continually push E-verify any time anti-immigration nonsense comes up. Demand universal E-verify use, hit recalcitrant employers really hard (jail time, or at least business-crippling fines), and send the ICE thugs currently tormenting immigrants who try to speak out after the employers.

If nothing else, it would be amusing to listen to Ryan explain why he's suddenly soft on "illegals"[2].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/us/california-farmers-bac...

[2] There is no such thing as an illegal human.

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

#95

Post by dragonwriter »

datatan wrote: post #83
dragonwriter wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we get the unemployed Midwesterners into Napa Valley? Just a thought: Government loans with low interest, delayed and income-contingent repayment, and forgiveness after a set period of on-time payments for relocation expenses for unemployed adults with job offers outside of their own immediate area. Getting people to where the work is good for the public fisc, good for employers, and good for the people invo…

Why is the first instinct of every Democrat/Liberal to have Government subsidize everything? If the wages and cost of living were there people would come. Solve the problem, don't subsidize it and create more problems. Absolutely insane.

> If the wages and cost of living were there people would come

People who lack assets may not be able to afford to move, even if the wage/CoL balance would favor a different location discounting moving costs. Facilitating that through targeted lending (especially if the recipient would otherwise be drawing public benefits) is win/win/win: good for the government/public, food.for.the employer, good for employee.

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

#96

Post by edblarney »

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?"

Produce prices will rise - and surpluses will get distributed from the middle/upper classes to the working class and ease inequality.

'How to share the surpluses' is one of the most difficult problems in any society.

'The best' way is usually to let market forces take effect without some kind of non-market intervention.

Well - if we didn't allow businesses to 'cheat' using non-market intervention of undocumented labour - guess what? A good chunk of inequality problems would go away.

And it would also drive automation and towards other efficiencies - which is good.

The very same people who are concerned with inequality are the very same people pushing the fundamental driver of inequality which is undocumented labour, which wipes out the only little bit of leverage that working class people have.

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

#97

Post by dashundchen »

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.

I don't mean to be overly sensitive, but I can't help but think there's a more appropriate way to state your point without calling all of Africa "AIDS infested" - if HIV/AIDS is even relevant to the story.

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

#99

Post by DanAndersen »

dropit_sphere wrote: post #74

Status, status, status. Another way to think of it might be: How much would I have to pay you for you to walk around with a small amount of shit on your forehead all day? We have somehow gotten ourselves in the position where manual labor relegates one to be a social untouchable. This means that anyone with a shred of self-interest gets out ASAP, which means the political power of labor is disproportionately weak in…

The "everyone should go to college" attitude is a big contributor. Once our society got this idea that having everyone do the 9-to-5 40-year office career as an ideal, and started measuring the quality (and funding) of high schools based on how many students go on to college, you start getting career advisers telling students about how they should all be going into debt because "you don't want to be like those icky dumb construction workers right?". Then the market gets flooded with bachelor's degrees which are little more than an expensive status symbol to most.

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

#100

Post by rbcgerard »

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.

That may be true, but markets can take a while to balance, there are frictional costs associated with switching jobs, and you may need internal migration to happen to fill these jobs etc.
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