Though, the idea that fruits and vegetables would rot without immigrant labor is wrong. They would just get a lot more expensive.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) February 9, 2017
Actually, I don’t think the farmers in the following articles are idiots — they’re just ideologues. To the point of religious obsession. Sure, superior people like us are motivated by monetary rewards, but you can’t expect dumb minimum-wage workers to respond to such refined incentives!…
From the NYTimes, another sad story of Trump supporters who took him seriously-not-literally — “California Farmers Backed Trump, but Now Fear Losing Field Workers“:
MERCED, Calif. — Jeff Marchini and others in the Central Valley here bet their farms on the election of Donald J. Trump. His message of reducing regulations and taxes appealed to this Republican stronghold, one of Mr. Trump’s strongest bases of support in the state.
As for his promises about cracking down on illegal immigrants, many assumed Mr. Trump’s pledges were mostly just talk. But two weeks into his administration, Mr. Trump has signed executive orders that have upended the country’s immigration laws. Now farmers here are deeply alarmed about what the new policies could mean for their workers, most of whom are unauthorized, and the businesses that depend on them.
“Everything’s coming so quickly,” Mr. Marchini said. “We’re not loading people into buses or deporting them, that’s not happening yet.” As he looked out over a crew of workers bent over as they rifled through muddy leaves to find purple heads of radicchio, he said that as a businessman, Mr. Trump would know that farmers had invested millions of dollars into produce that is growing right now, and that not being able to pick and sell those crops would represent huge losses for the state economy. “I’m confident that he can grasp the magnitude and the anxiety of what’s happening now.”…
Dude, the old man can barely grasp how to work a light switch. You think he cares about your troubles, now that he’s sitting in the Oval Office (possibly in the dark)?
Many here feel vindicated by the election, and signs declaring “Vote to make America great again” still dot the highways. But in conversations with nearly a dozen farmers, most of whom voted for Mr. Trump, each acknowledged that they relied on workers who provided false documents. And if the administration were to weed out illegal workers, farmers say their businesses would be crippled. Even Republican lawmakers from the region have supported plans that would give farmworkers a path to citizenship.
“If you only have legal labor, certain parts of this industry and this region will not exist,” said Harold McClarty, a fourth-generation farmer in Kingsburg whose operation grows, packs and ships peaches, plums and grapes throughout the country. “If we sent all these people back, it would be a total disaster.”…
Or then again, you could study the LATimes‘ explanation of “How this garlic farm went from a labor shortage to over 150 people on its applicant waitlist“:
… Christopher Ranch, which grows garlic on 5,000 acres in Gilroy, Calif., announced recently that it would hike pay for farmworkers from $11 an hour to $13 hour this year, or 18%, and then to $15 in 2018. That’s four years earlier than what’s required by California’s schedule for minimum wage increases.
Ken Christopher, vice president at Christopher Ranch, said the effect of the move was immediately obvious. At the end of last year, the farm was short 50 workers needed to help peel, package and roast garlic. Within two weeks of upping wages in January, applications flooded in. Now the company has a wait-list 150 people long.
“I knew it would help a little bit, but I had no idea that it would solve our labor problem,” Christopher said.
He said the farm has been trying, without success, to draw new workers since 2014. Human resources frantically advertised open farm-labor positions, posting help-wanted ads online and urging employees to ply their networks for potential recruits. Nothing came of it….
What, people can be successfully recruited in a tight labor economy if you offer them more money?!? Somebody alert dead Baron Keynes!
Baud
Fuck ’em.
Wilson Heath
Flavor Flav’s got problems of his own.
LibraryGuy
Every news story on this topic in future should link to this article. Every single one.
But this: “I knew it would help a little bit, but I had no idea that it would solve our labor problem,”
These business geniuses, people who try to make small and large businesses succeed every day, have to actually see with their own eyes that raising wages = more and better workers. Like an umbrella maker, a master who makes the best, strongest, most beautiful umbrellas, has to have someone show him how to open one of the damned things.
“So that’s what that’s for!!”
amk
you reap what you sow.
trollhattan
If you drive down-Valley per the giant signs everything is Pelosi and Boxer’s fault, everything. Screw these guys and their subsidized federal water and their idiodic almond orchards and their ironic freedoms.
Mart
What Thom Hartmann says, want to get rid of those without papers, start with frog marching the CEO of Cargill into jail for hiring them. Of course that will never happen.
Frank in midtown
Don’t worry Comrades, the invisible hand will provide. Amen.
khead
MSNBC had a town hall meeting scheduled for Monday with Bernie and the hometown folks. My FB feed is telling me it has been canceled due to “a logistical issue with the venue”.
My Truth Hurts
“I knew it would help a little bit, but I had no idea that it would solve our labor problem,” Christopher said.
Oh gee what do you know? Paying people decent wages is actually a good thing for everyone. Herpty derrrrrrrp.
Corner Stone
What a fucking titan of industry. He’s a gottdam genius, I am telling you.
XTPD
@khead: Unlike Anne, I don’t consider Wilmer a fraud – I think he sincerely considers these events as an opportunity to spread the left-populist message – but I do agree that he’s been a mostly ineffective leader with a pronounced race/class myopia.
Al Franken should’ve been VP.
germy
I could be wrong, but don’t they want to build more “for profit” prisons and lock a shit-ton more people up for drug offenses and loitering? Isn’t it their plan to use prison labor for farm work?
Baud
@XTPD: I assume based on the lack of news that his debate with Cruz over Obamacare was uneventful.
Uneventful is my gold standard these days for just about anything.
? Martin
So Oroville Dam overtopped a few hours ago.
The good news:
1) Workers did a shitton of prep in the last 3 days for this, clearing trees and other sources of debris that could flow into the river, including adding boulders and concrete to minimize erosion.
2) The flow of water over the emergency spillway is relatively light, will probably go up a bit through the day and then decline. Water flow into the lake is constantly dropping, but water levels don’t rise uniformly – it actually takes time for the water entering the lake to affect the height at the other end.
3) The Feather River (which the dam empties into) is below flood stage near the dam, so it can take the water for a little while.
The bad news:
1) The Feather River farther downstream and the Sacramento River which it joins, are at or above flood stage due to other sources. This won’t help that.
2) They’re supposed to get more rain next week.
3) It’s warm, so the snowpack that they built up is melting
4) The damage to the dam won’t be able to be repaired until summer. The damage is MASSIVE.
5) The erosion from the broken spillway has clogged up the river between the spillway and the dam, which means they can’t run water through the power plant. They can do without the power, but that was a safe way to remove water from he dam that they’ve lost for now. They have to decide whether to shut off the spillway to try and clear that section, or continue to lower the level of the lake before the next storm hits. I’m guessing they’ll do the latter being the more predictable result.
So, looks unlikely anything more catastrophic will happen in the next few days, and they should get an improving state of things perhaps as soon as later today. But check back on Wednesday or so when the rain starts back up. With all the damage I don’t think they can remove water fast enough to get ahead of this next storm. I think they will have a real crisis on their hands.
schrodingers_cat
@Frank in midtown: Invisible hand is going to slap them across the face.
Corner Stone
Frustrated metal fabrication shop owner Genius X had this to say recently:
“Don’t tell me about a lack of jerbs! I gots two dozen jerb erponings rawght naow for welders! It’s just that nobody wants to work anymoar. Theys lost the spirit of hard werk me and my pappy had when he founded this company!”
Fantasy Reporter: “Genius X, how much are you offering to pay for the open positions that require 10+ years of experience and multi-functional skillsets?”
Genius X: “Well, I can barely make a profit at it, but we are generously handing out these jerbs at $10 an hour! Lazy bums!”
Baud
@Corner Stone: They must have hired an MBA.
lollipopguild
@Baud: You are being shrill.
Corner Stone
See ya, Harold.
laura
Sacramento’s Art Street installation (at Broadway & 3rd, and free!) Has over 100 exhibits. One of the most interesting is by the historical society and focuses on an are of old town including a labor neighborhood of bars, boarding houses and details the living conditions for migrant labor of all kinds including, but not limited to migrant labor. Itinerant living in all its glory.
It’s a must see if your in the area!
Also, are any Sacto Jackals planning to go to Harlow’s tomorrow night for the indivisible show? 5 bucks and all manner of resistance and music. 7 seconds and the Californios is enough to get me and the Mr. There. Come on, let’s meet up!
schrodingers_cat
[email protected]
Why the Keynes hate? His work provided a theoretical template for the New Deal and similar experiments that presented a bulwark against the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century. Abandoning those insights is what gave us Reagan and Thatcher and now Brexit and the nightmare on Penn Ave.
Corner Stone
Look around, Marchini. That is exactly what is happening. Nice vote you got there, asshole.
Baud
@Corner Stone:
“If they would rather fail,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus water usage.”
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I read it as the opposite.
The Lodger
@Frank in midtown: Invisible hand? Are you quoting Triumph the Comic Insult Dog again? (He can’t see the hand, but he can tell you where it is.)
Peale
@Corner Stone: yep. See ya. I’d feel bad for them if they had been trying to do more for their undocumented workers, like advocating for their naturalization. But it’s really not my concern if I have to go through a few years of $10 peaches to prove a point.
@germy: I find it hilarious that two years ago, these people were out of their minds with fear that 12 year old Guatemalan children were an invasion of thugs, yet they’d be calm if adults wearing orang jump suits were wandering around the fields.
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
To be fair (ahem), it was a safe bet in California. These farmers knew that Hillary was going to win the state, so they thought they could do their whiny little protest vote for Trump and still benefit from having a Democratic president. Whoops!
Mike in NC
“Total disaster” seemed to be one of Trump’s favorite phrases, along with “FAKE NEWS”. He should trademark that stuff.
AliceBlue
@Corner Stone:
As Gomer Pyle used to say “Surprise, surprise, surprise!”
Baud
@Mnemosyne: They forgot to tell their Midwestern friends about the plan.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
I think CA has been phasing out for-profit prisons here — it’s one of the stances that Kamala Harris took. I don’t see CA Democrats going back on that.
rikyrah
@Baud:
That is how I feel
gene108
I take Trump at his word that he will work to deport 10 million people.
As far as farmers are concerned, what are they going to do? Vote for Democrats?
At worst a few will sit home. The rest will dutifully vote Republican, no matter what.
And Trump and the rest of the GOP know they have a captive audience.
rikyrah
@Corner Stone:
The arrogance in not taking Dolt45 at his word…????
Feebog
These A-holes in the central valley know that most of their farm hands are undocumented. They pay them crap and try to cheat them out of that. If ICE wants to deport millions of undocumented workers they can simply start in the fields of Bakersfield and work their way up to Sacramento. While they are at it they should arrest every single one of these farmers and confiscate their land under asset forfeiture.
rikyrah
@gene108:
As they go to the poor house….Never their responsibility for voting in the people who sent them there
scav
Funny — it’s as though Alabama in 2011 was in an alternate universe where similar laws of economics don’t apply. Alabama immigration: crops rot as workers vanish to avoid crackdown. Ah, the savvy home-spun ‘Mercan business brilliance strikes agin.
rikyrah
@Feebog:
What Feebog said????
? Martin
@germy:
Not here in CA. We’re trying to eliminate the use of private prisons. We probably have a couple more years before we can get the state prison capacity in balance with the prison population, but the plan is to end the use of private prisons after that. We’re under a federal order to address prison overcrowding, so we can’t just end their use abruptly.
We have a few state prisons with farm operations, but they aren’t private.
Baud
Any farmer that loses money is going to demand compensation from the federal government.
? Martin
Jerry Brown asks Trump to declare parts of California a disaster area.
This will be a good test of Trump’s ability to put vindictiveness ahead of national interest.
XTPD
@Baud: The guys over at the now-actually-left-liberal New Republic seemed to like his performance. I see Anne’s point, but I think Hanlon’s Razor applies here (and also that if the farther-left didn’t prize butthurt so much then Wilmer’s primary behavior should’ve been at worst as much of a factor as the PUMAs were).
Corner Stone
” I never thought the weasels would rip off *my* face!”, said the farmer who voted for “Weasels Ripping Off Your Face Party 2016”.
The Lodger
@scav: Alabama is the test bed for ideas too shitty to try out in Texas.
Peale
Interesting facts of the farm labor pool. For the most part, it isn’t very mobile. And it’s not as big as I thought it was. So yeah, rub away a few hundred thousand undocumented laborers and the farmers will be in quite a bind.
pamelabrown53
@XTPD: #11
Maybe Wilmer isn’t a fraud but I think “populism”- be it left or right-is the province of demagoguery. Wilmer’s nativist minions aided Trump by focusing on trade and especially, TPP Those of us who wanted to discuss the broader implications were shut down and denigrated as “neoliberals”. Now we have, an America that is too much bluster while ceding all to China. If you can plausibly offer a scenario where Wilmer’s vision works, I’d be happy to engage.
As a result, we now have the US withdrawn from TPP, with China poised to be the main, if not only arbiter. If you can plausibly tell me how this ends well for the USA then we’ll talk.
trollhattan
@? Martin:
“Trumps Katrina”
Lucky us.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
@Corner Stone:
This is my old printing company to a T. They want self-starting multitaskers to do everything but won’t pay for it.
Peale
@Corner Stone: a century ago, Sinclair Lewis wrote about these characters in Main Street n, and they haven’t changed one bit.
XTPD
@pamelabrown53: I actually voted for Clinton in the primaries and always thought she’d be a more capable president that him (and FWIW consider the points you raised fair game for debate). I was just discussing where Wilmer would fall regarding intent.
Iowa Old Lady
@Baud: I don’t know what triggers the payment of federally subsidized crop insurance, but around here, any farmer with sense has it.
schrodingers_cat
Early Valentine’s Day gifts for my favorite jackals;
Part I of my review of DS9’s Emissary
and Caturday Kitteh.
Frankensteinbeck
Steaming bullshit. His message of cracking down on brown people appealed to this Republican stronghold, like all the others. Racists assume, time and again, that they will magically benefit from shooting themselves in the face, if the same bullet hits the Other. They only freak out when they hear the bang. Witness Kentucky.
pamelabrown53
@XTPD: @XTPD: #50
Okay. What do you think was/is “Wilmer’s intent”? So far, I’m seeing leftist populism which I abhor.
XTPD
@pamelabrown53: Leftist populism also, but sincerely held as opposed to being primarily a grift.
Keith P.
Gary Busey saw this coming a mile away.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady: If it doesn’t cover this situation, it soon will, and retroactively.
Yarrow
Those must be the grapes of wrath.
Yutsano
@Baud: Crop insurance is for when a farm loses crops to a natural event or disaster. They’d be really hard pressed to get a company/the government to pay for a disaster of their own making.
Another Scott
@Baud: Yup. USDA:
The rugged individualists who grow the food are in a tough business, but the federal government has its big, beautiful mitts in the market and they benefit from it in lots of ways, even if they don’t get a direct check from Uncle Sam. Gutting the federal government is going to hurt them, too.
People who reduce everything to Taxes and Regulations don’t really understand how complex the world is and how they benefit from a national system that is relatively (and ideally increasingly) fair to everyone. Farmers who only vote based on T&R and who subsequently go out of business don’t have much sympathy from me…
Cheers,
Scott.
humboldtblue
@Mnemosyne:
It’s not that we use them in the state it’s the fact the Brown has shipped about 10k to out-of-state for-profit prisons because of the federal order to lower the prison population.
dm
@XTPD: I don’t want to make anyone’s knees jerk, but there’s a claim here that he raised more money directly for other Democratic candidates in 2016 than any other politician. I can’t find any other corroboration for that claim, which is just a clever throw-away line used to conclude an article on something else. Poking around some more, I see that up until April 2016 he was concentrating on his own campaign, then started small, backing four candidates for state legislatures around the country. There might also be some fudging going on there (I think Hillary’s campaign was giving money to the DNC, and not directly to candidates, which maybe should be included in the balance), and the person paraphrased might just be repeating something they’d heard, and not something there’s concrete evidence for.
SiubhanDuinne
@? Martin:
Trump will probably say that since the storms started before he took office, they’re Obama’s fault, and that he, Trump, has no obligation or responsibility. Except he’ll say it in a tweet.
Aleta
They’d better get busy and send regular payments to his protection racket ‘2020 campaign fund.’
Calouste
The president of the European union said in an interview that the nominee for American ambassador to the EU shouldn’t talk about stuff he doesn’t know anything about, and that he isn’t sure the EU is going to accept him.
ThresherK
@pamelabrown53: I can’t speak to Wilmer but I have seen FB feed entries with “Elizabeth Warren could have stopped the oligarchy by campaigning for Wilmer. Yet she persisted.”
This is as fkked up as the R’s annual MLK was really a conservative festivites.
Aleta
Seen in the NYT: A woman who came from Mexico as an infant (works legally and pays taxes, etc.), checked a “citizen” box on a registration form and voted (Romney). Thought she was eligible and voted 2014 (registered and voted R). Got confused and was honest with authorities. Just sentenced to 8 years for 2 felony convictions. Five kids I think. Will be used to support R’s ‘massive fraud’ claims. ETA To be deported when they are done using her I guess.
? Martin
@Corner Stone: You might be misreading that a bit. There are about half a million farm workers in CA, and the jobs do require a fair bit of training. Most of those workers are undocumented.
The problem isn’t so much that they don’t want to replace undocumented with documented labor. The problem is that the loss of half a million trained workers can’t really be replaced out here. That’s not to say there they don’t like the low wages, etc. but that can probably be overcome a lot more easily than the wholesale loss of trained workers.
Ella in New Mexico
In addition to this, read an article this morning regarding the fears of tech immigrants losing their work visas and how Canada is happily setting itself up to benefit from their flight from Silicon Valley to Vancouver. They’re all too happy to take them in and start making the big bucks those companies will lose.
How soon before we find out that part of the plan for securing a permanent Republican Dictatorship in America included destroying the economies of predominantly Democratic States like California by taking away their immigrant labor force?
Of course, it will hit other places, too, but they’re already Republican so they’ll just fall in line. But California, for one, has the economy of a small nation fueling it’s progressivism. Take that away and who knows what twists could turn there….
JDM
1. Note that if you can’t get workers, the obvious, logical, reaction is to raise the wages and/or benefits offered.
2. Note that it took the Gilroy garlic people TWO YEARS to figure that out.
3. Note that since they, alone amongst these Trump-supporting agro owners, figured it out, they are the smartest of that bunch.
Two years!
rikyrah
@Aleta:
I just read that story ???
Brachiator
I would be curious to know not only how many of these people voted for Trump, but how many contributed to his campaign.
Anyhow, these people are bullshitting. Raising wages would not drive most of these outfits out of business or see food prices rise to crazy levels.
I wonder what wage level would cause more US citizens to go work in the fields?
Interesting, though, that the Labor secretary nominee is against increasing the minimum wage.
However, I do see the other side of this. I see companies cutting back on full time hires, cutting back on overtime, eliminating positions, and in a few cases, moving out of California to escape higher wages.
Major Major Major Major
@pamelabrown53:
I have a friend whose opinions I recently stopped paying attention to who is far enough up his own ass to the left that he thinks it’s super great trump dumped the TPP, I asked him this exact question and usually-talkative him muttered something about America is not the world and changed the subject.
Corner Stone
@? Martin: I don’t think so. I recently watched an episode of a TV series where grape pickers are paid $.06 a pound for what they pick. So they can work as long as they can see and get .06 a pound for the product. Obviously people with a few days of experience are going to pick more produce. But it’s not really all that difficult to coach up someone to cut and pick grape bunches. It’s just hard fucking work not many want to do.
scav
@Ella in New Mexico: Anglophone Agriculturalists everywhere seeming a little dim: Decline in EU workers hits UK agriculture, Lords inquiry told
“National Farmers Union labour survey highlights sharp decline in availability of seasonal EU workers following Brexit vote”
Watching the fallout and reorg in the tech industry in the US and the financial sector in the UK might also prove illuminating / amusing. Consequences in stereo.
pamelabrown53
@XTPD: #55
I have 0 idea what you’re trying to say. Are you saying that left wing populism is better because it lacks the grift?
Brachiator
@? Martin:
I’m not seeing that the illegal aliens could not be replaced with US citizens. The training could not be that specialized.
? Martin
@Brachiator: It’s not. Of course they could be trained, but it would take several years for them to get the experience in place. But California barely has enough unemployed to take half a million jobs, and most of those people would need to move, which most are unlikely to do even for a $15/hr job.
So, the solution to the problem would inevitably be to import workers. Why not just make these workers into citizens instead? That’s actually what the farm owners would prefer.
Aleta
@JDM: And possibly shows a difference in how the other owners view costs. Gilroy decided that reducing the hassle of labor shortage, posting jobs, new hires is worth lowered profits. Others would rather keep the pressure on their personnel managers (I’ll bet they pay them less than Gilroy does, or contract the hiring out) to get maximum profit.
Ryan
Oval Office (possibly in the dark)?
I much prefer the image of him roaming the residency in a bath robe. It’s very reminiscent of Nixon, albeit at a much accelerated pace. Even money the NFL season runs longer than Lord Dampnut’s reign.
? Martin
@Corner Stone: No, it is hard work. But most grape picking operations also guarantee a minimum daily wage that works out to minimum wage * 8 hours, even if they work fewer than 8 (due to weather, etc.) If you pick more, you earn more. The farmers do this because they’re trying to operate in the grey area between state and federal law. If they have undocumented workers, the state won’t care so long as they are meeting the spirit of state labor laws, treating the workers well, paying the equivalent of minimum wage. Their goal is to make the state agencies happy while avoiding the feds entirely.
And the farms routinely run shortages of workers, so there is upward competition for workers. It is rare for farms to pay below minimum wage and many pay a bit more. For more skilled work – pruning, animal care, etc. they pay quite a bit more because finding people that can return season after season is hard. Obviously it would be better if they were all documented, but the farm owners generally agree with that as well. They don’t like living in that grey area and the additional costs of hiring these same workers as legal workers isn’t very much at this point. What they don’t want to do is lose these particular workers and try and find people like me to fill them.
Aleta
I have a question about organized labor in the CA growers businesses. If undocumented and migrant workers are replaced by permanent residents/citizens, will there be more opportunity for workers unions? Or is that prohibited regardless?
Aleta
@Ryan: Will deliver a guaranteed laugh at the opening of any comedy sketch.
Thru the Looking Glass...
That’s got to be one of the funniest lines I’ve heard since Drumpf took office…
Can y’all say “FIVE DOLLAR AVOCADO?”
Brachiator
@? Martin:
Bullshit. Where are you getting this from?
I agree that part of the problem is logistical, a point you could emphasize more. The work is seasonal, and worker provided housing would not be acceptable to many citizens, while non-citizen workers are more willing to put up with it.
I also agree that there are higher skilled jobs and a reliable pool of workers is necessary, but again there is no reason that this could not be citizen workers as well.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Yarrow:
And given Trump’s personal history, probably the gropes of wrath, too…
hovercraft
Fuck em all, he told you, you thought nah he won’t fuck us he’ll fuck everyone else, now he’s fucking you too and you want sympathy? You deserve everything you get you selfish assholes.
Tokyokie
I grew up in Bartlesville, Okla., former home of Phillips Petroleum, and a town that went about 3-1 in favor of Goldwater in 1964. But back in the 1980s, when T. Boone Pickens and Carl Icahn made their runs on Phillips stock, my right-wing mother was absolutely convinced Reagan would step in and stop them and save the town. I told her that a Republican would represent the interests of a single corrupt billionaire over those of 20,000 Republicans every time. I was right about Reagan and the rest of the GOP. Now Conoco-Phillips is based in Houston, and the town has gone severely down-market. And for maybe a week, my mother harbored doubts about her political beliefs before going all-in again on the likes of Jim Inhofe.
? Martin
@Aleta: California is not a right to work state. Unions are good here.
But the farm workers have a kind of informal unionization. Workers aren’t usually hired individually but as crews. That’s why the piecework model works better than people think. A crew might be 20-50 workers. They work as a team and they typically share wages. So per CSs rate above of $.06 per box, that’ll be for the whole crew which will break the wages down in various ways. Seniority is part of it, etc. So it’s a bit closer to how fishing boats give workers a share of the haul.
So a farmer isn’t usually hiring a person, but a team, and that team has pretty decent bargaining rights. The farmer will have a good sense of how productive the team will be, and the crew will look out for each other. Someone’s kid is sick, they usually still give them a share and let them take care of the kid. In a lot of cases the crew are all related or from the same town, etc. They look out for each other. They have less need to unionize, and it’s hard for them to unionize around locals because they move around. The UFW didn’t have locals partially for this reason.
Its going to be hard for the farmworkers to more properly form unions here for two reasons:
1) the migratory nature of the work makes it difficult/impossible to work up into leadership. Without a way for workers to become leaders in the union, you get a serious disconnect between leadership and membership that is as great as the disconnect between farm owner and worker.
2) the farmworker unions in the 70s got a lot more invested in supporting the boycotts than the workers. It was easier for them to organize and maintain the boycotts than to support the workers who had no work because nobody was buying the crops they would pick. So there’s an additional level of mistrust between farm workers and unions here. That’s why they organize as crews and use that as a form of collective bargaining. If they get to a farm and conditions aren’t good, they refuse to get off the bus as a crew. There’s a ton of local, small scale strikes all the time here. They might last an hour while the owner offers them more money, or brings in more water/bathrooms/shade, etc.
Brachiator
@Thru the Looking Glass…:
This is where things get interesting. Mexico, not the US, is a huge source of avocados.
cosima
@Tokyokie: The company that my husband & I worked for was bought by Phillips. One of our co-workers was forced to transfer (or lose his job) and came back telling stories about being accosted at work by people asking had he found a church yet. Total stepford territory. I never had to go there for any reason, but my husband did — he said it was depressing. He particularly disliked the sharp sort of wrong-side-of-the-tracks that existed in the town — nice houses on one side, close to tar paper shacks on the other.
Fortunately we no longer work for them, so near-zero likelihood of going there for us. (please please please)
Berto
@pamelabrown53: ,
Boo-fucking-hoo. China’s going to own us because we turned down patent extensions, a rigged investor-state dispute settlement system, and the lack of enforcement of labor and environmental regulations.
Oh, the humanity!
Ruviana
@SiubhanDuinne: Well done, but a little too coherent!
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Brachiator: Yup…
Heard recently about Mexico working to increase avocado exports to Japan & Canada… so w/ potentially less Mexican avocados coming here, and US growers having a harder time finding help…
Original Lee
Back during the Reagan recession, when The Smart Folks thought that limiting the numbers of migrant workers would help the unemployed get jobs as farm laborers, crops really did rot in the fields. Despite the unemployment rate in SW Michigan being well over 20%, not very many people were willing to come out and work for a pittance, especially not for stoop labor. Tree fruit picking, corn tasseling, and grape combing did a bit better, because they paid better, but harvesting tomatoes and strawberries does not pay well until you develop the speed. Most of the unemployed permanent residents gave up after a day or two because they realized that it would take more time than they wanted to spend to get fast enough to make more than $10-$15 a day.
If they start rounding up undocumented farm workers, expect many farmers to cash in on crop insurance rather than pay working wage for U.S. citizens, which means shortages of a lot of tasty stuff.
Emma
@Berto: Jesus on a Harley. With people like you on our side we are worse screwed than with Republicans.
? Martin
@Brachiator: People that have done the work and studied the industry.
The fact that it is seasonal contributes to the problem because workers need to be skilled on a wide number of different crops, and that takes multiple seasons. Picking strawberries doesn’t sound hard, but you need to know what’s ripe and what’s not. You’ll weed as you pick. You need to know how to pick quickly without burning yourself out, killing your back or legs, etc. And you need to know how to carry/pack produce without damaging it. There’s definitely a technique to these things. How many hours of doing this do you think that guy has to do it that fast and accurately, and without chopping his fingers off, and without injuring his back badly enough he can’t work the next day? And he can’t do that year round because it’s seasonal work. He’ll do that for a few weeks and then go do another crop with the same efficiency, and so on.
And it’s not to say that citizens can’t do the work, but the issue (as with so many things) is the transition. I could probably learn to do that. It would probably take multiple seasons – maybe 5 or 6. So a few years. What do the farms do for those years while a bunch of people like me bumble through the job? My productivity would probably be less than half of that guy’s for quite a while. Either the farmer is paying now 2-3x as much in wages just to make up the productivity – at least for a while, and possibly more just to entice citizens to do that work. Now, I’m not opposed to this approach, but people need to appreciate that produce will cost more, even once citizens are trained, and they need to appreciate that there will be a lot of other secondary consequences to this – including CA farmers maybe changing crops to accommodate this new model and crops that people like get way more expensive because supply dries up, and including them rushing to automation because the transitional costs are so high that they rise to meet the capex needed to buy some big machine that can do the same work.
So the real consequence of this shift might not be more low-skill jobs for Americans but fewer low-skill jobs for everyone, and more high-skill engineering jobs to build and maintain the machines. Eventually, that’s where we’ll find up, because wages only have upward pressure on costs while technology generally has downward pressure, and sooner or later those cross over.
This notion that eliminating migrant workers will lead to an equivalent number of citizen jobs is utter fantasy. There are certainly valid reasons for wanting to do it anyway, but the labor consequences are far from what people think they will be.
sukabi
@ThresherK: at this point I’m going to suggest that the folks that are continuing to push this kind of bullshit are cashing in on the paid troll / fake “news” gravy train…they are paid provocateurs.
Berto
@Emma: <
Relax. I hate the Republicans way more than I hate the Democrats.
But go ahead. Defend those things, without saying, "Yeah, but Republicans…."
? Martin
@Brachiator: Avocados are a bit special. They are extremely frost intolerant, so there aren’t many places even in CA where you can grow them. Mexico is their natural climate. CA throws off somewhere around 200K tons per year, and the best climate for avocado tends to also be the best climate for upscale homeowners. It doesn’t have a great future in the US.
Tokyokie
@cosima: Growing up there in the 1960s was weird, but I didn’t realize how weird it was until I left town. Pretty much everybody I knew was the offspring of a professional of some sort: engineer, chemist, lawyer. And I thought my family was solidly middle class, never realizing that we were far better off than that. But I grew up with assumptions about other groups that were complete right-wing fantasies, and though I had started questioning the beliefs before I left town for school, I hadn’t quite yet gotten to the point of assuming that if I learned it in Bartlesville, then it almost certainly was wrong. (And, looking back on things, I realize having a good friend (and eventual college roommate) whose mother was a Holocaust survivor with the most dismissive laugh I’ve ever heard helped me appreciate that other, better points of view existed.)
Nobody with whom I associated in high school returned there after college. And I haven’t been there since my mother’s funeral, and have no present plans to go back. You’re fortunate that you have to need to do so either.
bemused
@Tokyokie:
More and more, I think they act like cult members. And if it wasn’t the GOP that hooked them, they would have found another cult to join.
? Martin
@Tokyokie:
That’s probably the biggest problem facing the Trump voting communities. They are so closed and stifling that once you get a taste of college, and see the broader world and the opportunities available, you just can’t see going back. These towns are hemorrhaging entire generations of residents in the worst ways – the most motivated and capable are the ones that leave.
jerri
Here is what happened in Ga when they passed their immigration law.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/06/georgias-harsh-immigration-law-costs-millions-in-unharvested-crops/240774/
Around this same time AZ passed a immigration law and the entire cantaloupe industry disappeared.
pamelabrown53
@Berto: #99
NO. Emma and I will not “relax”. Your comments signal that you’re a binary person: black or white. Not only do you position yourself as a close minded ideologue, when I click on your user name, I’m blocked at learning anything about you.. Subsequently, you don’t just get to denigrate me with a “boo fucking hoo”.
Original Lee
@Corner Stone: It’s also a speed/skill thing. Having done it myself, I can say that $0.06/pound is reasonable if you have the experience, but it’s brutal if you don’t. The grapes being picked are table grapes. Grapes for wine and juice are harvested mechanically. So you have your special clippers and your work gloves and your special bag to put the bunches in, and you reach up into the vines to clip the bunches. You have to clip the stem near the main vine, so that new growth will sprout next season. The vines are generally strung 6-7 feet high, and the grape bunches are generally somewhere 4-6 feet off the ground. You have to cradle the bunch with one hand and clip with the other, and then you gently lay the bunch in the bag that’s slung around your shoulders. After a while, you need to empty the bag into a crate, because the heavier the bag is, the slower and more carefully you move. You have to be careful moving the grapes from the bag to the crate because you don’t want the grapes to be crushed or bruised. The crates have holes all around to drain moisture and juice from crushed grapes, so if you’re too rough, you lose weight. Depending on the farm, your crates could be labeled and a tractor comes by with a flatbed trailer to pick up your full crates and leave you more empty ones. Or you have to load up your crates on the flatbed and take them to be weighed. If the former, you have to trust the folk with the flatbed not to shift grapes from your crates to someone else’s crates, and you have to trust that the weighers will put your chits against the right account. If the latter, you lose time every time you take your crates to be weighed, but you’re there with your crates the whole time and can be in a better position to track your chits and dispute the take-aways. Some farms will pull bunches that aren’t pretty enough from your crates before weighing the crate, and then weigh the blemished grapes separately for a lower price (IME 2-3 cents a pound). Also, some farms are “pick clean” farms, which means you have to get every bunch on your row whether it’s ripe or not, and there are deductions from your pay if you miss a lot of bunches. I’m leaving a lot out but don’t want this post to get too long.
karen marie
@khead: What the fuck is the senator from Vermont doing holding a “town hall” in West Virginia? I’d say the location is the “logistical issue.”
Anne Laurie
@schrodingers_cat: No, I think Keynes had the smart ideas — these nimrods should’ve listened to him sooner!
cosima
@Tokyokie: Yes, we are both lucky to have escaped our red states/towns/cities — as I noted in a different thread, when a person leaves that and is fortunate enough to go to a place where people share their (blue) value system it’s like a weight is lifted off of your heart & soul. My parents have been able to live in a little privileged bubble that’s allowed them to overlook the horrors of living in a very red state, but I wish for them that they’d given the idea of moving a chance, the opportunity to find more like-minded people. They are locked in to a social circle that is so corrosive and awful. Ah well.
I, at least, am free, and have a 26-yr-old daughter who is a social warrior living in VT, and another daughter, younger, who will be one as well, though probably not living in VT (since she’s been born & raised in the UK).
laura
@Aleta: it would likely result in labor union growth. The difficulty would likely remain that growers would continue to fight recognition, and first contract.
Berto
@pamelabrown53: <
Sorry, not sure how to share more about me through my user name. I'm a bit new to this stuff.
I was going to assume you supported GWB's Iraq War, because he only invaded Iraq, and not Ireland and Canada too, but in the spirit of not thinking in black and white, i'll instead ask how progressive causes are advanced through any of the three points I mentioned.
——-
Also, I'm tired of the BS about pushing for progressive causes being like wishing for a pony. On the one hand, I'm told it doesn't help to make the progressive argument or push for progressive legislation, because it's a waste of time, energy, and resources, because "the votes aren't there". On the other hand, there is nothing but praise for John Lewis' Congressional sit-in to protest the nations gun laws. I appreciated it, but where are the admonishments to Lewis of the "fat lot of good that did?"
Aleta
@? Martin: Very interesting. Thanks. Is the price per box or pound set by the farm owner, or does it fluctuate with the yield or the regional harvest the way it does for workers in some fishing and blueberry operations ?
sharl
@Baud: I didn’t watch the Cruz-Sanders debate myself, but this seemed to me a pretty thoughtful analysis. It’s authored by Charles Gaba (twitter), who Mayhew/Anderson has cited here on a number of occasions. End of his piece:
Aleta
@Tokyokie: In Bartlesville were there many votes against T ?
Another Scott
@Corner Stone: Yup.
NY Mag:
Nobody could have predicted!!1
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
Aleta
@? Martin: Do you think the people in charge of the dam are more worried than they are letting on? The first time you mentioned the dam their statements (the ones I read) seemed nothing but reassuring, and last night what I saw from the local government seemed similar. Is there any public argument?
Aleta
@Another Scott: Are they stopping any people on the street or public transport for ‘random’ checks (skin color)? Entering businesses for random checks? Or is all of it according to registered addresses for felons, and they then take others in the home who are not felons?
Another Scott
@Aleta: Horse’s mouth. Specifically, 2 page .pdf:
It sounds like things are under control, but I’m reminded of the Teton Dam.
Um, by that point, it’s far too late…
The Oroville Dam is probably fine (Teton failed on filling, and Oroville has been there ~ 50 years), but it is certainly being stressed. And the spillways are going to need rapid and comprehensive repairs.
Cheers,
Scott.
MG
@germy:
If we think the CEO class is above slave labor (for our own good) we’re probably mistaken. It’s all shareholder value and magical “free” markets, not free people, Freedom is for the right sort of people.
Another Scott
@Aleta: I’ve got no personal knowledge. The NY Mag piece says:
Still more at the NY Mag link above.
It’s probably safe to say that the National ICE Council and many of its members are quite happy to get out there and “show them what’s what”, etc., etc. :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
@Aleta:
Get twenty engineers in a room and you get seventeen different options. The public pronouncements will be somewhere in the middle.
Water flowing to the lower Feather River is a fraction of the historical records and levees have been improved since the last floods, so the current flood warnings to downstream residents are likely reasonable. Keep the car packed anyway. Damage to the various structural components won’t be known until the releases are halted, perhaps weeks from now. Luckily, nothing threatens the main dam but the emergency spillway area is under intense scrutiny because we’re learning on the go while it’s spilling. IIUC debris is preventing use of the powerhouse and that’s a key reason for the emergency spill. Unknown how and when that can be resolved.
Gindy51
@Original Lee: Nope, crop insurance is only good for things like hail (a stand alone policy since hail can ruin all of your corp) or “Multiple Peril Crop Insurance (MPCI) MPCI policies must be purchased prior to planting and cover loss of crop yields from all types of natural causes including drought, excessive moisture, freeze, and disease. Newer coverage options combine yield protection and price protection to guard farmers against potential loss in revenue, whether due to low yields or changes in market price.” That’s directly from the federal website.
Not having enough workers to pick your crop because you are too cheap to pay them or the thing deported them is NOT covered.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
They had a surprise 5.7 quake there in 1975, 7 miles from the dam, just to make idle conversation.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: Hey, it’s California! Earthquakes and vast swings in flood/drought come with the territory! Whadaya expect?!
:-/
Fingers crossed.
Cheers,
Scott.
Boatboy_srq
@Corner Stone: Something tells me that between the Christopher Ranch and Nathan Deal experiences, idiots like this one ought to learn something. But that presupposes they can learn.
Boatboy_srq
@Corner Stone: it’s not happening yet in the Central Valley or Napa or Gilroy (just metro L.A.) so clearly it isn’t happening.
/s
Aleta
@Another Scott: Thanks. Also just saw this which gives an official answer, which is ‘not random, not buses, not on streets.” I had remembered that the DEA checks train passenger lists for probable suspicion to question people. I know this is different, for now, but they are hunting through felony records for names.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@? Martin: Thank you for these updates. My thesis is on flooding (not from dams, and about the CRS program) but I’m interested in flood risk from dams and how people perceive their risk.
Also, too, this is something the folks looking at the dam at Buckeye Lake here in Ohio should pay attention to.
Aleta
@trollhattan: Good explanation. Thanks.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Problem is that when they move out of CA (actually when they move any large company anywhere) they find that the only way to find enough trained employees is to pay more than the prevailing wage in the area and they still have to import workers from somewhere else, be it another state or country. Plus the cost of relocating and the possible business interruption. The only time this makes sense is when the original location is way too small or too out of date, say a 40 yr old automotive plant in Detroit, moves to another state. They would have had to stop production, tear down the old plant and rebuild and that’s considering if they had enough usable property at the original location. So moving may just be more economically feasible. But how many of the really productive workers would want or could leave SF for say SC?
A second part of this is that a lot of businesses don’t really understand what those labor costs mean to their business. It’s a large chunk that goes out regularly but when you cut it back or stop paying it, the outcome suffers badly. A lot of owners/CEOs only see the out flow, not what it pays for. That’s why it took the farm in Gilroy 2 yrs to figure out that their labor problems where of their own making, ie paying too low of wages. There is an equilibrium that can be obtained to wages/output and many companies have no idea that this exists. This is harder in some industries because of lack of training/skill sets required for some types of work but in a nation of over 300 million it isn’t impossible to have enough people with the skills, but it may be impossible to find enough people with the skill sets/training required per the offered pay level.
J R in WV
I want to apologize. I’ve not been posting much lately, because after I type the post, it is much too negative and bitter. So I either erase the text, refresh the page, or mark the post deleted after I post it.
No one needs my bitter hatred weighing them down. I will try to do better.
We are having a good life, individually. So far. Last night I made crab cakes and steamed broccoli, with a mustard remoulade. Tonight I’m doing fresh oysters, and scallops for the wife, who isn’t into oysters. Night before last, seared sashimi grade tuna. So that’s all good.
Another Scott
@J R in WV: Not necessary, IMhO. You haven’t been over the line here.
Lots of bad things are happening, things that many of us could see coming if the election turned out the wrong way, … It’s infuriating.
(sigh)
Your dinners sound great. Enjoy your time with your sweety, and be with us to fight back against the horrible, brain-damaged, and totally counter-productive policies that they’re trying to force on the country.
Hang in there.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mike G
Duhhhh, nobody else would know that planting crops is an investment because they’re not businessmen. Farmers like this guy gambled their livelihood on that Trump was only jawboning when he talked about deporting their workforce. Seriously, is this guy allowed to cut his own meat?
Tokyokie
@cosima: I think my high school class produced 20 or so Merit Scholars, and I don’t know that any of them still live in Oklahoma, let alone Bartlesville. Because of the preponderance of college grads a generation or so ago, the public school system was surprisingly good, but even those who attended college in state figured out that unless they preferred to work in extraction industries, the state didn’t have much to offer.
J R in WV
@Another Scott:
Thanks, Scott. I deleted most of the worst ones, to protect everyone’s delicate fee-fees. At 4 am, not too many will see a post if it only lasts 4 minutes. Thankfully.
ET
When the history of the Trump presidency is written it is going to be littered with the corpses of farmers like these and others who paid the price for their idiot votes.
John M. Burt
@LibraryGuy:
Like an umbrella maker [who claims to be] a master who makes the best, strongest, most beautiful umbrellas, has to have someone show him how to open one of the damned things.
FTFY.
Original Lee
@Gindy51: Not getting your crop in because Immigration has made off with your workers does, though, unless they’ve changed the rules since the 1980s. It’s not a natural disaster or an Act of God, but a number of my neighbors were able to make the case and got paid.
cosima
@Tokyokie: Do the Con-Phil staff there use public schools for their children, I wonder? Would be an interesting thing to study — children of highly educated (or at least educated) oil folk, where do they go to school, how do they perform vs children of others in Bartlesville. One of our two daughters was educated primarily (throughout her entire pre-uni years) with the children of oil folk (due to the places we lived), and our other we’ve made a determined effort to keep *away* from them, by living as far from them as possible, whilst still being in the industry. Our youngest is the sunniest & sweetest kid on the planet (seriously, no idea how many times I’ve had people ask me ‘is she always so happy?’), and I attribute a lot of that to having kept her outside of the over-privileged bubble of oil kids.
Our oldest has been very happy to be away from red-state-AK, and hopes never to live there again.
joel hanes
@Emma:
I don’t know as much about the TPP as I should, but I did study the “IP” provisions.
Berto’s characterization of that section was not inaccurate.
I have spent my entire adult life working in an industry that absolutely relies on copyright, trade secret, patent, and trademark protection, but some parts of existing US law (largely the DMCA) are wrong-headed over-reach, and as far as I’ve been able to determine, the TPP contained an attempt to apply similar bad ideas to international trade.