"Hire locals? Will they expect to be paid? With actual paychecks, I mean?"
Posted on 07/14/2017 11:43:36 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Businesses in Bar Harbor, Maine are turning to locals to make up for a shortage of foreign guest workers that normally fill summer jobs in the bustling seaside resort town.
Because the H-2B visa program has already reached its annual quota, Bar Harbor’s hotels, restaurants and shops can’t bring in any more foreign workers for the rest of the busy summer tourist season. Like hundreds of similar coastal resort towns, Bar Harbor has for many years depended on the H-2B visas for temporary workers. The program allows non-agricultural companies to bring in foreign labor if they are unable to find suitable employees domestically.
Now they are coming up with creative ways to attract local labor, reports the Bangor Daily News.
The Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce will hold a job fair Saturday in an effort to recruit significant numbers of workers from the region. Just about every kind of business in the town is looking for help, says chamber executive director Martha Searchfield.....
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
I was in the area a couple of weeks ago, went to a lobster pound started talking to the owner while I waited.
She said many opened late and cried the blues about the visa issue.
Vacationing in Boothbay Haaaaabah this past week. The seasonal work force appears to be mostly locals except for one parking lot attendant from Serbia.
Must go. Our lobstah cal-in order at Robinson’s Wharf is waiting for pickup. Homemade haddock chowda on the side.
Wicked good dinner!
Alas, back to the hot and humid Georgia coast tomorrow. There will be no seeing my breath in the air come Sunday morning.....
What is the market up there for fixers? Ill buy next year if LePage chooses to run
It’s so much harder to look down on the help when they have things like rights.
“if they are unable to find suitable employees domestically”
seems they were not even trying before, just hiring foreigners. now they actually have to do their job and try advertising to locals not just advertising out of country.
Again, I’ve never seen a foreign server at a lobster pound. I only go to ones on St. George Peninsula (my favorite, Waterman’s just shut down last year) so maybe that’s the reason. Certainly never a Brit worker!!
A lot of dumps - I check Zillow all the time for houses up there. Property taxes are very low, though.
If you were going for a degree in hospitality or park and recreation you even got credit for the work.
I wonder if they still do that?
From what I see, unless the class and professor go as a group to a different state or country, you won’t get credit unless you stick very close to home. You would get money though, and in an age of sky high student debt, what is not to love about that?
LOL!!!
Pay decent wages and treat them with respect and you will have employees.
“Locals who should have been working at those jobs in the first place.”
As the lines of American workers made clear when the meat-packing plants were raided in the Midwest years ago: The locals WHO USED TO WORK THOSE JOBS UNTIL THEY WERE REPLACED BY IMPORTED FOREIGNERS.
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