Posted on 07/22/2005 8:36:19 AM PDT by Happy2BMe
Uncertain labor market, shortages increase some growers’ worries
Cookson Beecher
Washington State Staff Writer
Southwest Washington berry growers experienced labor shortages so severe this year that some of them were forced to leave thousands of dollars of fruit in the field.
They warn that labor shortages will likely intensify across the state in the coming years if Congress doesn’t pass some form of immigration reform that gives agriculture a legal work force.
According to government statistics, more than half of all farmworkers are in the United States illegally.
Jerry Dobbins, whose farm is near Vancouver, Wash., said that though he’s experienced labor shortages in the past, he has never seen so much competition for workers among farms before.
Camp piracy was common.
“Labor jumped all over the place,” he said. “In one week, I lost 50 workers.”
Generally, when a grower can offer workers housing, the workers will stick with the farmer through the season. But this year, that wasn’t the case, said Dobbins.
While his first picking of strawberries went OK, he ran into problems with the second picking.
“People down the valley without camps kept raising prices for pickers,” he said. “It’s like a totally different labor force. Workers are shopping around looking for the best deal. There’s very little loyalty there for the farmers.”
One of the competing employers was a nearby fish-processing plant, which, when it opened, touted the news that it would be employing people at good wages.
A lot of farmworkers jumped at the chance to make better money.
Another problem is that the tighter U.S.-Mexico border has many illegal workers staying put in the United States, rather than returning home after the harvest season and then running the risk of crossing the border for the next harvest season.
“We’re finding more of the workers staying here for several years,” Dobbins said. “Many of them are finding jobs in fields like construction.”
The labor shortage forced Dobbins to leave a half-million pounds of strawberries in the field.
“That took 100 grand out of my pocket,” he said.
What was especially frustrating about that loss was that it was a good crop with no mold. And because there were some mold problems in the Willamette Valley, Dobbins was expecting to get good prices for the berries.
When it came time to start harvesting raspberries, he had to machine-harvest the crop. That, too, hit his bottom line, since he can get far better prices for hand-picked berries.
He said smaller farms, which generally don’t have machine harvesters, were really hurt by the labor shortage.
Not that he faults the workers for seeking better wages.
“You can’t restrict someone’s right to work,” he said.
But when he looks to next year, he can only imagine that the problem will worsen.
“I can’t see our government backing away from the borders,” he said. “Things will just get tougher.”
Will Thompson, another southwest Washington berry grower, said he also had to leave a lot of strawberries in the field. While last year he got 8 tons to the acre, this year he had a better crop but only got 5 1/2 tons an acre because of the labor shortage.
He said someone from the fish cannery came right out into the field and passed out cards.
In another case, a building contractor drove up and hired one of his workers right on the spot.
While he plans to hire about 30 percent more workers at the start of the season next year to guard against another labor shortage, he doesn’t have much hope that it will work.
“People will still come by and try to get them,” he said.
Skagit County grower Jean Youngquist said that although her farm isn’t suffering from a critical labor shortage at the moment, getting enough labor is becoming more and more of a problem. And she admitted to being worried about the coming cucumber and cauliflower harvest.
“Without immigration reform, we’re going to see the problem get worse every year,” she said.
Like Dobbins, she said that part of the problem is that some of the farmworkers aren’t going back to Mexico at the end of the season.
“They have to stick around and hide,” she said. “During the winter, they get other jobs. Many of them don’t return to farmwork.”
She said that without a program where workers can go back home with the money they’ve earned during the season, more and more workers will leave the migrant stream and enter other types of employment.
“The longer we go without a solution, the worse the problem will get,” she said.
She said an unstable agricultural work force puts the nation’s food security at risk. “People are beginning to realize that we’ve got to have a stable work force,” she said.
Eastern Washington
While Eastern Washington growers aren’t experiencing labor shortages as severe as those in southwest Washington, some of them are finding it hard to find enough workers because workers are jumping to better-paying jobs in other areas of agriculture.
For example, the large cherry harvest is attracting workers away from apple-thinning. Generally, a worker can earn $2 an hour more picking cherries than thinning apples.
Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers’ League, describes the rule of the year as “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
“The real danger is when you have a crop hanging on the trees, and you can’t get enough workers,” he said. “The risk is tremendous. You can only hope and pray that no big rain clouds come over the Cascades.”
Gempler said agriculture is seeing the gradual diminishing of the work force. “People are less confident that they’ll have enough workers,” he said.
In an attempt to secure a stable work force, some growers are building worker housing, doing more advance recruiting of workers, and planting crop mixes that give them a better chance of keeping workers throughout the season.
Gempler warned that when the government begins revving up enforcement – for example, requiring that documents be machine-readable, using biometric indicators for identification and requiring a worker’s status to be verified online – farmers will face the full brunt of a labor shortage.
“That’s when it will hit the farm,” he said.
Like other ag leaders, Gempler said he believes that agriculture and farmworkers alike need a solution to this increasingly tenuous situation.
“We all need a way to win,” he said, citing a temporary visa program as an example.
Jim Hazen, executive director of the Washington Horticultural Association, said that although Eastern Washington isn’t in the fire of a labor crisis this year, he sees severe labor shortages in southwest Washington as an example of a slow burn headed toward Eastern Washington.
He describes this year as an “extremely tight year with a lot of competition for labor.”
“Growers are in a very difficult position,” he said. “They’re not getting the support they need from their elected officials and government appointees.”
He said one of the undercurrents in this is that many workers who don’t cross back over the border to Mexico are pursuing more permanent work.
Fortunately, though, this year’s apple crop appears to be coming on in line with traditional patterns, in contrast to last year’s crop, which came on all at once.
“As we get deeper into the season, we’ll know more,” he said.
Mollie Hollibough, assistant controller at Washington Fruit in Yakima, said workers go where the money is.
“The challenge right now is to make sure we have enough workers for apple thinning,” she said.
Even so, she said, the area is not experiencing a labor crisis.
But she said she has heard some branch managers say they would like a few more workers.
In contrast to last year, when ag employers took out ads for workers, Hollibough said, that hasn’t been the case yet this year.
Lupe Gamboa, who heads Grupo Latino, a Latino advocacy group, said competition for workers is not unique to agriculture. Other professions such as engineering and health care also compete for workers.
“What’s happening in agriculture is that employers were so used to having 50 workers knocking on their door for a job that now when they have to scramble for workers and deal with normal market forces, they call it an acute shortage,” he said.
Even so, he agreed with farmers that there needs to be some kind of normalization program for workers that gives them legal status.
“It won’t be the same as the former amnesty program,” he said. “But it could be some sort of a variation of the AgJOBS bill. After so many years, a worker’s status can be adjusted.”
The AgJOBS bill, which failed to pass last year, has been resurrected and will go before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 26. It would allow illegal immigrants who have been working in agriculture to become permanent legal residents and eventually citizens.
Cookson Beecher is based in Sedro-Woolley, Wash. Her e-mail address is cbeecher@capitalpress.com.
According to government statistics, more than half of all farmworkers are in the United States illegally.
Another problem is that the tighter U.S.-Mexico border has many illegal workers staying put in the United States, rather than returning home after the harvest season and then running the risk of crossing the border for the next harvest season.
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What border are they talking about here? Why didn't I see this on the news or read about it in the newspaper?
ping
I wish that the author would have put the actual wages paid, instead of just noting that cherry-picking was paid $2 more per hour than apple-thinning.
i am surprised it took this long for the illegal employers to take the " i'll go out of business with out my cheap illegal labor" approach
I believe, if memory serves me right....in 1987/88...when we were running the family orchard (Oregon) we paid minimum wage for apple thinning.
I am sure that if he raised his wages he would not be out a hundred grand. Only fooling himself, not me. They would rather let the fruit rot in the fields than raise their wages. Guess who picks up their slave labors medical and education expenses. I will do without my strawberries.
But don't expect any of the Antis to rush out to take these jobs. They won't pick fruit any more than they will stand outside Home Deport and take day labor jobs at $10.00 an hour. They would rather stay at home living off their parents or wives than take a job that involves manual labor.
iopscusa meet bayourod...
"labor shortages so severe this year that some of them were forced to leave thousands of dollars of fruit in the field"
I'm sure there's plenty of labor available if they're willing to pay the right price. Its called competition, and it applies to buying labor too.
How does that help you get a job? You'd prefer no one have the job than a migrant worker have it? That's just plain spite.
Sounds like the growers need a course in Economics 101.
In an attempt to secure a stable work force, some growers are building worker housing, doing more advance recruiting of workers, and planting crop mixes that give them a better chance of keeping workers throughout the season."
Uh, how about paying them more? At some point they may bid high enough to bring in some Americans.
*Anecdotal. Back when I was fighting NAFTA, a local Georgia manufacturer gave me a tour of his small plant. The guy had all kinds of patent plaques on the walls. (He invented the machine that segmented those slices of Mandarin oranges you find in cans.)
He was trying to market his latest invention - one that de-stemmed strawberries without damaging the fruit(!) Tried in the U.S. with no luck, then tried Mexico. No luck there either. Down there he was shown a large room with rows of tables with 10-12 people furiously plucking out the stems, while a guy on the catwalk above was harranguing them to work faster.
The manager candidly told the guy that it would cost more to wash up his machine at day's end that it would to pay his workers. The hook was that while there were a dozen people per table working, only half were getting paid the Mexican minimum wage. Those who were paid had to supply family members free in order to get that crappy job. I would suspect that something like that, albeit on a lesser scale, has been going on in some farming areas in the States.
Here are two absolutely unreconcilable statements...
"They stand outside Home Depot (Circle K, Quik Mart, Lowe's, the corner of Broadway and Gilbert) waiting for someone to pick them up for a day job."
Okay, make up your mind here, is there a labor shortage or a job shortage? Which is it?
BS. No way fruit pickers are making $20 per hour.
It was a pretty glaring oversight to have omitted the waged paid in this article.
No, they need to get off the government teat with all its farm subsidies etc and start being businessmen. The economics lesson will be apparent.
Note that they don't advertise for workers. Well, how do they think McDonalds et al get workers ? If they paid the right money and did a bit of advertising, they'd have a workforce. Note the one guy lost $100,000 rather than offer higher wages.
In the late 1930s my father, as a young teen, picked peaches for a local grower, along with all the other kids. They made .50 per hour plus a basket of peaches at the end of the day, and that was pretty good money in the 30s.
If the money is right, they will come.
What's the difference to someone who won't work anyway?
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