Farmers screwed themselves.
The U.S. government is allowing farmers to fill thousands of jobs with foreign 'guestworkers.' The conditions are hardly hospitable -- but those who speak out can be sent straight back home.
www.motherjones.com
In fact, study after study of the H-2A program concludes that there’s actually a surplus of agricultural labor, not a shortage. “Unemployment and underemployment are endemic among farmworkers,” says one Labor Department report. “Even at the seasonal peak in September, one-third of farmworkers are still not working in U.S. agriculture.” In studies and congressional testimony about the program, the General Accounting Office also dismisses the idea of a labor shortage. “Agricultural employers in most of the United States have had adequate supplies of labor for many years and continue to do so,” the GAO reports.
The agency acknowledges that some regions do experience local shortages, but notes that those might be alleviated “with fairly modest wage increases.” Instead, H-2A enables farmers — from small operators to corporate giants employing more than 600 workers — to effectively circumvent the free market, paying guestworkers as little as $6.39 an hour rather than raising hourly wages to attract U.S. workers. “A lot of farmers say, ‘I advertised for 300 jobs and no one applied,'” says Thom Myers, a farmworker advocate in Raleigh, North Carolina. “But what about the guy who runs a hardware store who has the same argument? What about the guy who runs a restaurant? If this was any other industry, the government would say, ‘Hey, raise your pay until the supply and demand curves cross.'”
Rather than pay market wages, H-2A growers have instead developed a litany of schemes to ward off domestic workers. In Idaho, the Snake River Farmer’s Association urged its members to write backbreaking job descriptions to discourage Americans from applying. “Irrigators or pipe movers is a great job description because no one wants to move pipe,” explains an association handout. Farmers in other states have turned away U.S. residents for being a few minutes late for interviews, or for not knowing the fine points of federal labor law. In North Carolina, the Growers Association says it hires domestic workers after a simple five-minute phone interview — but state officials describe the process as intentionally inefficient and even hostile. “They go out of their way to discourage local workers from seeking employment,” Lee Albritton, a former job-service employee, wrote in a memo to his supervisors. In 1999, the state found jobs on non-H-2A farms for 12,700 domestic workers. By contrast, on H-2A farms, the state found jobs for only seven workers.
To further discourage U.S. workers, growers often refuse to provide migrant crews the same kind of transportation they offer H-2A workers. “Farmers know that unless there’s travel money involved, no large number of domestic workers will get to the job site,” says Greg Schell, an attorney at Florida’s Migrant Farmworker Justice Project. “If they send a bus to the Rio Grande Valley or Belle Glade, Florida, they can get thousands of experienced farmworkers. But without a bus, the job may as well be on Mars.”
In any case, automation is coming along just fine. Most illegals aren't doing farm work, they're taking jobs away from American whites, blacks, and latinos.
twitchy.com
www.usdairy.com
