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To raise wages absolutely, workers need to increase the share of the money paid at the supermarket checkout stand that goes into their paychecks. In recent years the price paid to workers for picking a flat of strawberries, for instance, has hovered around $1.50. Each flat contains eight plastic clamshell boxes, so a worker is paid about 20¢ to fill each one. That same box sells in a supermarket for about $3.00 -- the people picking the fruit get about 6% of the price.
According to UC Davis professor Philip Martin, about 28% of what consumers pay goes to the grower. Produce sales from Monterey County alone, one of two counties where strawberries are concentrated, total $4.4 billion.
If the price of a clamshell box increased by 5¢ (a suggestion made by the UFW during the Watsonville strawberry organizing drive of the late 1990s), the wages of the workers would increase by 25%. Most consumers wouldn't even notice, since the retail price normally fluctuates far more than that. Florida's Coalition of Immokalee Workers has used this idea to negotiate an increase in the price paid for tomatoes bought by fast food chains, which then goes to the worker in the field.
Except this scenario applies when there is a glut of labor. All bets are off when you run them out of the country and the food rots in the field. The farmers are NOW in that scenario. We shall see.
Except this scenario applies when there is a glut of labor. All bets are off when you run them out of the country and the food rots in the field. The farmers are NOW in that scenario. We shall see.
You guys still don't "get it". The claim is that the crops can't be picked without illegals when less than 4% of them work in agriculture.
Then add in the almost unlimited amount of visas available for farm workers if the employers file the paperwork, follow a set of rules to include wage and hour laws.
So ask yourself this question: what exactly is the agenda here.
Except this scenario applies when there is a glut of labor. All bets are off when you run them out of the country and the food rots in the field. The farmers are NOW in that scenario. We shall see.
Yet according to the article in the OP this has been going on for ~5years. So despite there not being a lack of illegals coming into the country to work over the last 5 years farmers have been having an increasingly difficult time finding illegals to work.
So if farmers don't want their crops rotting in the field they need to step up their game a little more.
Meanwhile American youth who could be doing the job are doing nothing and eating themselves to an early grave from type II diabetes.
There's a VICE production about Alabama, one of a handful of states with mandatory e-Verify of all employees.. The result was that farmers could not find enough legal people to plant and harvest crops at Minimum Wage. . It focused on a watermelon grower. Legal employees did not finish the day. They then went to state prisons for labor and the inmates could not keep up in the heat and humidity. The narrator gave the harvest a shot and did not last a minute. The harvest was lost.
Big grocers simply switched sources to growers in states without e-Verify. That's what it takes to sell cheap watermelons in America.
$22/hour FOR SOME POSITIONS. I'd bet not the ones picking crops. CA's minimum wage is 15/hr. so 22/hr. I'm guessing isnt all that in CA.
All other articles say wages are mostly below, some at minimum wage. One stated for a full time worker wages could be as high as $30,000/year, half the average in CA.
According to the article in the OP the problem is the illegals are now more educated/skilled and taking better jobs so fewer illegal MEXICANS are wanting those crop picking jobs, not Americans wont do those jobs. Also this has been occurring over the last 5-6 years according to the article.
The minimum wage in California is $10.50 an hour for employers with more than 25 employees, it is $10 an hour for small employers. It will not be $15 an hour until 2023.
And you are wrong..citizens do not want 'those jobs' and requiring e-verify for agricultural labor simply doesn't work. Here is some reading material for you:
"Five years ago, growers in Georgia and Alabama watched helplessly as more than $500 million worth of produce rotted in the fields because there was no available labor for harvest. Both states had passed stringent anti-illegal immigrant legislation. Both quickly rescinded those laws. Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal hastily implemented a program giving probationers offsets in their sentences in exchange for time spent as farm laborers. While the initial response was strong, within days all of the ex-convict labor had walked off the job, preferring a return to their original probation agreements to hard labor on farms and in packinghouses."https://southeastproduceweekly.com/2...rants-looming/
Goodman and Eason are just two of an untold number of Georgia farmers facing millions of dollars in losses as crops rot on the vine due to lack of labor for harvest.Farmers face huge losses over migrant worker delays
I am 100% in favor of e-verify, I think it solves the illegal immigrant problem without a 30 billion dollar wall, but the only way that mandatory e-verify would work is if we also implement a guest worker program. H2A could provide the basis for that but as it stands, it's so cumbersome and expensive that farmers hate to use it and can't depend on it to even provide a tenth of the workers they contract for.
We need immigrant labor. Americans can't put their I-phones down long enough to pick a head of lettuce, let alone a bushel of tomatoes.
Guest worker program, with pathway to citizenship. Anything less and the crops rot in the fields and the price of a BLT goes to 25 bucks.
Good god spot on with this one. And our american kids etc don't want to die in the fields picking our foods as the migrant workers are doing. People just don't think about this whole picture and how much we would lose if we lost these people....Who would clean your toilets?
There's a VICE production about Alabama, one of a handful of states with mandatory e-Verify of all employees.. The result was that farmers could not find enough legal people to plant and harvest crops at Minimum Wage. . It focused on a watermelon grower. Legal employees did not finish the day. They then went to state prisons for labor and the inmates could not keep up in the heat and humidity. The narrator gave the harvest a shot and did not last a minute. The harvest was lost.
Big grocers simply switched sources to growers in states without e-Verify. That's what it takes to sell cheap watermelons in America.
Ah VICE, they're so good at cherry picking. We instituted e-verify in our state and didn't see these problems at all. And yes, we have a decent agricultural sector. So, not sure what's going on in Alabama, but it's not e-verify which caused their issues.
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