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Wages rise on California farms. Americans still don’t want the job

Dittohead not! said:
I myself worked farm labor jobs at one time, and I'm still not 100 years old. Yes, citizens did work farm labor jobs at one time. It hasn't always been illegal labor.
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Please. Migrant labor from Mexico following the harvest has been a staple of farming for decades and decades. It was done legally and was controlled. This fact is well established DN. Don't attempt to rewrite history.

The fact is, the LAT attempted to equate farm labor, actions to address illegal immigration, and citizens not taking the jobs, as some test of President Trump. It total BS, but absolutely typical of the mob who destroyed the LAT.
 
ocean515 said:
Please. Migrant labor from Mexico following the harvest has been a staple of farming for decades and decades. It was done legally and was controlled. This fact is well established DN. Don't attempt to rewrite history.

The fact is, the LAT attempted to equate farm labor, actions to address illegal immigration, and citizens not taking the jobs, as some test of President Trump. It total BS, but absolutely typical of the mob who destroyed the LAT.
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Sorry, but that's just wrong. Migrant labor hasn't always been from Mexico. There was the bracero program, but than ended long before anyone heard of Trump.

You did notice this part of the OP article:

Already, fewer Mexicans had been willing to risk border crossings as security and deportations escalated under the Obama Administration. At the same time, Mexico’s own economy was mushrooming, offering decent jobs for people who stayed behind.
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Not everything is about Trump.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Yes, I knew that.
But, if the law were to be enforced against hiring illegals, and if the illegals were to come back with legal status, then they wouldn't be so inclined to work for crap wages.
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Good.
 
Aberration said:
What for? When the wages rise high enough people will want the jobs. Especially if you took away their government checks.


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You see, the thing is no one is taking away government checks. Some people talk about taking them away, but no one is doing it. Anyway, do we really want to go back to the Grapes of Wrath?
 
Vox said:
1. Wages going up. Good. Need to get them higher.

2. Too many illegals still infesting U.S. Bad.

Trump is in the process of fixing #2. Good.

Wages will get higher as illegals are removed.

This problem took a hundred years to develop.

It will take a while to fix it.

:2usflag:
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Just one part of the equation you're missing, of course. As wages go up, so does inflation and the cost of the goods produced, those costs being passed onto the consumer. Low paying farming jobs will always be low paying farming jobs, in relation to inflation and cost of goods. Basically, all those illegal immigrants that you guys are so desperate to be rid of keep your food costs down and your inflation lower, while doing jobs that apparently American citizens aren't interested in. Interesting times.
 
OlNate said:
Just one part of the equation you're missing, of course. As wages go up, so does inflation and the cost of the goods produced, those costs being passed onto the consumer. Low paying farming jobs will always be low paying farming jobs, in relation to inflation and cost of goods. Basically, all those illegal immigrants that you guys are so desperate to be rid of keep your food costs down and your inflation lower, while doing jobs that apparently American citizens aren't interested in. Interesting times.
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What you outline is a BAD situation, not a good one.

Workers SHOULD be paid more and if that means consumers pay more--that is only fair.

I'm fine with paying more for produce.

:2usflag:
 
Vox said:
What you outline is a BAD situation, not a good one.

Workers SHOULD be paid more and if that means consumers pay more--that is only fair.

I'm fine with paying more for produce.

:2usflag:
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Careful, you're starting to sound like a socialist... ;)

I hear you, I'm just adding in the bit you were missing. And I agree, workers should be paid better. But if you want to pull out the cheap labour without having a plan in place for those that will be left behind in the sudden inflation, you're trading one problem that currently has an up side with another that will hurt felt directly by far more Americans, unless proper planning is used. Not everyone can afford to pay more for their groceries given current state...a price spike would put a lot of people at risk. Just ...ahem...food for thought.
 
OlNate said:
Careful, you're starting to sound like a socialist... ;)

I hear you, I'm just adding in the bit you were missing. And I agree, workers should be paid better. But if you want to pull out the cheap labour without having a plan in place for those that will be left behind in the sudden inflation, you're trading one problem that currently has an up side with another that will hurt felt directly by far more Americans, unless proper planning is used. Not everyone can afford to pay more for their groceries given current state...a price spike would put a lot of people at risk. Just ...ahem...food for thought.
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I do care about the poor people who can't afford to pay more......but, ya know what?

Most of them are eating at MacDonald's anyway.......they live where grocery stores are far away and a cheeseburger and fries for a couple of bucks is the best food deal they can get.

We have a long, long way to go to make America great again and the fact that a tomato might cost a little more is the least of our worries.

Appreciate your polite comment, though......and the food joke.

:2usflag:
 
If you doubt my compassion.......

My father worked beside Mexicans for a number of potato harvest seasons in the Red River Valley.

I come from poverty.

:2usflag:
 
I got to wondering just how much the cost of harvesting crops actually adds to the cost at the grocery store. I found this:

The cost of manually harvesting fruit represents nearly 25 percent of the total cost to produce and deliver fruit to the gate of a processing plant.
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but, that's just the price paid at the processing plant. How much is that?

I typed in "price per ton of ... and the word "grapes" came up, so, OK, grapes:

Grape prices per ton
District 3 and 4: Sonoma and Napa Napa County, or grape District 4, earned the highest average price of $3,691 per ton, followed by Sonoma County in District 3, which had an average of $2,249 per ton.
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So, using the highest price of 3,991 per ton, the cost of hand harvesting would be 25%, or $922.75, which works out to 46 cents per pound.

I haven't bought grapes for a while, so I had to look up the cost and found this:

I was at Walmart this morning.* And I was happy to see they had grapes at $1.08/lb which is a great price for grapes – and I just ate some they are fantastic!* Grapes were hiding at my walmart – they were hard to find.
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and you can get a free tank top, but that's an aside...

So, given those figures, in that particular example at least, the cost of hand harvesting works out to just under 43% of the final cost to the consumer.

Of course, other produce probably has a different percentage, and the cost of harvesting wine grapes that go into that $40 bottle of Chianti will be a much lower percentage, but anyway, it does appear that harvesting crops that have to be harvested by hand adds a significant amount to the final cost of some produce.
 
Dittohead not! said:
You see, the thing is no one is taking away government checks. Some people talk about taking them away, but no one is doing it. Anyway, do we really want to go back to the Grapes of Wrath?
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I think a lot of people could benefit from a work ethic learned from manual labor.


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Aberration said:
I think a lot of people could benefit from a work ethic learned from manual labor.


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I agree.
Which is why we should sentence non violent criminals to so much hard labor, and not to so much time spent in a cage. They'd come out a lot better equipped to return to society.
 
OlNate said:
Just one part of the equation you're missing, of course. As wages go up, so does inflation and the cost of the goods produced, those costs being passed onto the consumer. Low paying farming jobs will always be low paying farming jobs, in relation to inflation and cost of goods. Basically, all those illegal immigrants that you guys are so desperate to be rid of keep your food costs down and your inflation lower, while doing jobs that apparently American citizens aren't interested in. Interesting times.
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The pro-illegal claim that produce prices will skyrocket if farmers have to pay higher wages to hire Americans is malarkey.

Page not found | The Seattle Times
You might assume that the plentiful supply of low-wage illegal workers would translate into significantly lower prices for the goods and services they produce. In fact, their impact on consumer prices — call it the "illegal-worker discount" — is surprisingly small.
The bag of Washington state apples you bought last weekend? Probably a few cents cheaper than it otherwise would have been, economists estimate. That steak dinner at a downtown restaurant? Maybe a buck off. Your new house in Subdivision Estates? Hard to say, but perhaps a few thousand dollars less expensive.
The underlying reason, economists say, is that for most goods the labor — whether legal or illegal, native- or foreign-born — represents only a sliver of the retail price.
 
This is one thing I have moved hard to the right on in recent years....there are so many young people who are absolutely positively sure that they are too good for a long day of hard work.

I had no idea.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Yes, I knew that.
But, if the law were to be enforced against hiring illegals, and if the illegals were to come back with legal status, then they wouldn't be so inclined to work for crap wages.
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Not really. A Mexican "sheetrocker" makes $250.00 a month in Mexico. They can make $11.00 - $17.00 an hour here regardless of their status working under a "bull" who stacks them up 10 deep in some small house. They have very few expenses other than their food and clothes and send the majority of their money back home where they can live like kings. The bull decides what each and every one of the crew will be paid and how fast they will work. If one of the young Mexican's decide to break ranks with their crew and work directly for a American contractor, the Mexican bull will have them beat down and kicked out on the street.

The American born sheetrocker simply cannot afford to live off the same type of money that the Mexican Bulls pay their crews. The bulls and their crews have have displaced many other trade workers in the same way.

American workers used to make a decent living doing roofing, sheetrock, painting, masonry, flooring etc. etc. but the Mexicans whether legal or illegal have simply displaced them with low paid crews. These were jobs that many Americans were happy to have. Local governments and developers turn a blind eye to the situation.

Mexicans do not need to pick fruit any longer, and that is why the farmers are having a hard time because they pay Mexicans crap wages compared to the money Mexicans can make in stealing construction jobs.

If you think I am lying, come over to Virginia Beach and I can drive you around to 15-20 construction developments and introduce you to 20-30 Mexican crews who I know personally. 30-75% of the members of these crews are here illegally and will do just about anything "their bull" tells them to out of fear of being tossed out onto the street. I am meeting a Mexican "knockdown" crew this morning to spray texture in a "flippers" house I am doing work for.
 
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ocean515 said:
Farm workers is the sob story the pathetic LA Times uses as the test of President Trumps immigration policies and jobs?

No wonder the LAT is failing. More confirmation of why I stopped taking it 15 years ago.
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I think its laughable that the LA times said labor dried up as Obama tightened the border.Anyone who has been paring attention for the past several years and not an illegal alien butt kisser knows that is false.
 
jamesrage said:
I think its laughable that the LA times said labor dried up as Obama tightened the border.Anyone who has been paring attention for the past several years and not an illegal alien butt kisser knows that is false.
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That's what makes the LAT the pathetic TP that it has become. They just make stuff up and throw it out like it has some relationship to the truth. Just another cog in the fake news apparatus the left uses to manipulate it's followers.
 
RetiredUSN said:
Not really. A Mexican "sheetrocker" makes $250.00 a month in Mexico. They can make $11.00 - $17.00 an hour here regardless of their status working under a "bull" who stacks them up 10 deep in some small house. They have very few expenses other than their food and clothes and send the majority of their money back home where they can live like kings. The bull decides what each and every one of the crew will be paid and how fast they will work. If one of the young Mexican's decide to break ranks with their crew and work directly for a American contractor, the Mexican bull will have them beat down and kicked out on the street.

The American born sheetrocker simply cannot afford to live off the same type of money that the Mexican Bulls pay their crews. The bulls and their crews have have displaced many other trade workers in the same way.

American workers used to make a decent living doing roofing, sheetrock, painting, masonry, flooring etc. etc. but the Mexicans whether legal or illegal have simply displaced them with low paid crews. These were jobs that many Americans were happy to have. Local governments and developers turn a blind eye to the situation.

Mexicans do not need to pick fruit any longer, and that is why the farmers are having a hard time because they pay Mexicans crap wages compared to the money Mexicans can make in stealing construction jobs.

If you think I am lying, come over to Virginia Beach and I can drive you around to 15-20 construction developments and introduce you to 20-30 Mexican crews who I know personally. 30-75% of the members of these crews are here illegally and will do just about anything "their bull" tells them to out of fear of being tossed out onto the street. I am meeting a Mexican "knockdown" crew this morning to spray texture in a "flippers" house I am doing work for.
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And you don't think those Mexican construction workers would demand better if they could?
 
jamesrage said:
I think its laughable that the LA times said labor dried up as Obama tightened the border.Anyone who has been paring attention for the past several years and not an illegal alien butt kisser knows that is false.
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I was wondering just when someone would point out that the article doesn't fit the false narrative that illegal immigration stepped up under the Obama Administration, but is being ended under Trump.
 
Dittohead not! said:
And you don't think those Mexican construction workers would demand better if they could?
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Then there wouldn't be any need to hire them given the fact that many offer false ID's and drivers licenses that pose a risk to the contractor.

The bulls run the Mexican work force and they dip into each workers pocket weekly.
 
RetiredUSN said:
Then there wouldn't be any need to hire them given the fact that many offer false ID's and drivers licenses that pose a risk to the contractor.

The bulls run the Mexican work force and they dip into each workers pocket weekly.
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and if only legals could be hired without risking a huge fine, then the situation would change.

Which is why the entities who profit from illegal labor are determined to make sure that the status quo doesn't change, and why the Trump administration is determined to build a wall instead of enforcing real immigration reform.
 
End welfare checks for able bodied Americans and they will be more willing to find jobs
 
Dittohead not! said:
and if only legals could be hired without risking a huge fine, then the situation would change.

Which is why the entities who profit from illegal labor are determined to make sure that the status quo doesn't change, and why the Trump administration is determined to build a wall instead of enforcing real immigration reform.
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Legal aliens can be hired legally.
 
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