How Will the Alabama Immigration Law Play Out?

Let the market dicate the price.

If they are going to start paying $100/hour to pick potatoes, I am gone!!!!

The market will find the right balance.
 
You used to could make a decent living as a framer, a roofer, ceramic tile installer, painter, etc. in this country and plenty of folks would welcome such work were it available and paid a living wage. I don't know if tomato pickers ever made a decent income but it's honest work and they should be paid well. The thing overlooked in all this is that just because a job is hot and sweaty doesn't mean it's unskilled labor and and anybody can do it. You can't readily go from a lifestyle that includes litte sustained exertion into putting in eight hours as a harvest laborer. I remember back in the day, I made a good summer income stacking hay on trucks and then restacking it in the barns. Paid by the bale and pretty greedy, I made three times as much per hour as friends working in grocery stores or other available jobs for kids 16-18. A few friends tried working with me. Not many liked it enough to keep doing it even for the money. A lot of kids that looked muscular and fit weren't up to working in the heat all day.
 
I saw where one farmer was offering $2 for every 25lb box of potatoes picked. It doesn't take much to fill up a box with 25lbs of potatoes. There are a lot of potatoes under a plant and they've already been turned over by a tractor. So I think you could make pretty good wages per day, the problem is nobody wants to work a full day at it. It's back breaking work. You would think they could use prison labor and recoup some of the money tax payers shell out for their care. I guess that makes too much sense.
 
thanks, FNLights, now I can't get the work-labor scenes from Shawshank out of my mind.
wink.gif
 
Honest to gosh I don't know much about picking industrial quantities of tomatoes. I've never picked more than a bushel in a day. but if it's like stacking hay, anybody can do 300 bales in a day. It takes some skill and stamina for a two-man crew to do it for ten hours in a day and put 1,200 bales neatly stacked in the barn. I imagine if tomato picking is productivity based, you'd have guys making $30 a day and guys making $120. The guy who make $120 is in shape, knows what he's doing and doesn't mess up a lot of product and deserves to be well paid. Anybody who works hard deserves decent pay, especially for a seasonal job.
 
FNL -- Depends on what you have to do with the 25 pound box. Fifty 25 pound boxes would pay me what I made stacking hay as unskilled labor in 1975. Inflation adjusted I guess you'd have to do about 150. And $10,000 back then would buy a really nice new car.
 
What BS
There is a visa that allows UNLIMITED numbers of LEGAL agriworkers
UNLIMITED LEGAL agri workers for as long or as short a time as you need them

employers who complain they can't find legal workers are lying. They mean they can't find ILLEGAL workers.

Obey the laws and hire as many legal agri workers as you need .
 
Giovanni's linked article points to a harsh reality that will be associated with every step of getting our fiscal house in order. There will be an adjustment period that will be tough. As a country we will just have to work out way through it.

In the recent Mortgage Crisis, it drove me crazy to see the government working so hard to avoid foreclosures. Why? That is a market system at work. If people buy more house than they can afford, this is what happens. Let the market work and make homes more affordable for everyone.
 
This sums up America in a lot of ways.

I respect the fact that Crockett worked hard in the hay fields and made some money. Lots of us have had hard jobs when we were young. They sucked but we did it.

I did a quick check and there are about 450,000 unemployed in Alabama and over 150,000 collecting unemployment benefits. Does it not seem silly to have articles about people hiring while the atate pays out unemploymrent to so many?

I'm not advocating that the unemployment should stop either, but ill bet a lot of those folks could work some days in the fields to supplement their money.

I dont think it is a matter of money. People just dont want to work in a lot of cases. Places like tomatoe farms will never pay an hourly wage as there is too much trouble to determine who is working hard and who isnt. They pay by the production. It is the only way to do it. You can make the equivalent of $12-$15/hour usually in these jobs. How much do some of you think is a fair wage anyway?
 
How much more are y'all willing to pay?

The frost is coming in and there are still tomatoes on the vine.

Sweet potatoes are also at risk.

But at least we got the illegals out and opened up these jobs for real Americuns.
 
Any threats of higher food/goods prices need to balanced against expenses for bi-lingual government, social services and emergency room costs.

And, if you have open jobs and people on unemployment..it should be a no-brainer.
 
So what are we being told here? Let the illegals in or no more food? F that! Follow the damn laws. Cut the unemployment if there are that many jobs available. Get the tit out of the mouth and tell those people that there are jobs.
 
GJ's article pretty much backs up my point that picking tomatoes rapidly and expertly requires some skill. I think given the exertion, the fact that it's seasonal work and you have to get to remote areas to do the job points out the difficulty in recruiting. If experienced guys are only making $15 bucks an hour, then people lower on the learning curve aren't making enough to justify the effort, unemployed or not. I know if wages get too high, it might kill the business. Not a lot of stockmen with a lot of cattle have barns full of 70 pound hay bales. Unless it's Alfalfa or other really valuable hay they put it up in giant round bales and handle 'em with hydraulics. But a man or boy has to eat and earning $5 bucks an hour won't pay for the gas to get out there, the food a man needs to work hard and cleaning your clothes after a day's work.
 
I think the paradigm “Americans won’t do the work” may have some truth. Our illegal immigrants don’t have the social programs to fall back on, so they either take the work or starve. I’m not sure how much our social welfare programs (like unemployment) provide, but I have a feeling staying at home all day with your kids is a better option at half the rate of pay. If you don’t have to go to work, you don’t burn as much gas, car isn’t as critical, don’t have to pay for child care, and enjoy more leisure time. I would predict many of those back breaking jobs would get gobbled up if we quit extending the unemployment benefit.
 
Oh - and I grew up on food stamps... I would eat better when mom was on food stamps than when she had a job as a waitress. The jobs were really just 3-6 months stints to keep the benefits coming in.
 
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