Posted on 05/18/2006 9:58:40 AM PDT by areafiftyone
Cyndi Smallwood is looking for a few strong men for her landscaping company. Guys with no fear of a hot sun, who can shovel dirt all day long. She'll pay as much as $34 an hour.
She can't find them.
Maybe potential employees don't know about her tiny Riverside firm. Maybe the problem is Southern California's solid economy and low unemployment rate. Or maybe manual labor is something that many Americans couldn't dream of doing.
"I'm baffled why more people do not apply," Smallwood says.
President Bush is not. In his speech to the nation Monday night, he referred to "jobs Americans are not doing," echoing a point he has been making for years. To fill these spurned jobs and keep the economy humming, Bush says, the U.S. needs a guest worker program.
Otherwise, the logic goes, fruit will rot in the fields, offices will overflow with trash and lawns and parks will revert to desert.
Countering that view, opponents of a guest worker program say that Americans would find the jobs more enticing if there wasn't foreign competition to swell the labor pool and push wages down.
Smallwood is ambivalent on immigration reform, saying demands for immediate citizenship by those who entered the country illegally are offensive. But without a guest worker program, she says, her company probably will not survive.
"To get workers, you have to steal them from other companies," the 54-year-old entrepreneur says.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I believe her. There are lots of Americans who are willing to do physical labor, just not enough.
She's probably taking about all of the wanna be actresses and actors out there in LA. No dirty jobs for them!
a load of crap. the work will get done as the balance of labor shift. It might take a while and the prices will fluctuate wildly for a while but the work will get done and by Americans to boot.
ping
This story smacks. It just doesn't sound right. I live in the middle USA where many jobs are still in the $7-9 range. $34.00 for yard work? Something doesn't sound right with this story.
Lets see... 34*40*52 = 70,720 Pre-Tax
Where do I sign up?
This has to be BS. Even in CA.
$34/hr is a good wage all over this country.
Is she claiming everyone else single manual labor job there already makes more than that?
I do not believe her either. 60k+ a year to do yardwork and she cannot find people?
Seventy grand a year to shovel dirt? Lying bit**.
Kinda' like McStain and his "you won't work for $50/hr if I offered it... not for a whole season"
Laura Ingraham smoked out this story early AM.
The story is a crock.
Hell, if I were a college student right now, I'd jump at a job like this... keep in shape, get a tan, and make some great money.
Some people just have the wrong concepts. It's all in the marketing, really.
Yea I can't believe the pay its more than what I make an hour here in NYC.
$34 a hour to shovel dirt?????? Riverside? Beverly Hills or Malibu, maybe, Riverside, doesn't compute.
Is she living in the middle of Compton or something?
Cancel some of the overly-generous generational welfare "rights", and I'm sure you'll be suprised at what Americans "won't" do.
Probably $34 a day.
See post #12
Stroy was a crock
Her company is called Diversified Landscape Management. Try there.
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