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

[Elegiac]

Well I doubt migrant farm workers are being beat with a cane...in any case I am not trying to depict migrant farm work as some sort of utopia, I'm sure there is a reason people aren't jumping for those jobs.

People in rural areas are often too poor to move to where better jobs are and schooling costs money. The poor often avoid debt at all costs (on one hand, this is wise of them but on the other hand, financial aid for an apprenticeship/job training program/degree is a worthwhile investment that yields a significant ROI as long as you get training in something useful).

Well, sucks to be them. They voted against the candidate in favor of job retraining initiatives.

[Deleted]

Obviously, if Americans still aren't taking the jobs, the pay is insufficient to keep up with the cost of living in the area.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But of course, Capitalism will fix this. Wages will continue to rise until firms can attract workers. That how it works right? Capitalism will save us all?

Right?

/tap /tap

Is this thing on?

That's actually what will happen.

That entrepreneur is either going to hand out something better or face the start of April undermanned.

[Celista]

That's actually what will happen.

That entrepreneur is either going to hand out something better or face the start of April undermanned.

What's really going to happen is that we're going to pay more for produce.

- - - Updated - - -

Well, sucks to be them. They voted against the candidate in favor of job retraining initiatives.

Yeah, well. People in general seem to demonstrate a lack of critical thinking skills.

[majesta]

The market for the agriculture goods is so tight in terms of profit they cannot afford to pay higher wages and in a lot of cases the farmers want to pay higher wages. The whole good riddance attitude towards farms is hilarious. Sure we can just import food from other countries. What do we do with the land, one of the most fertile regions in the USA? Build more houses on it. Oh yeah, that's what is happening because there is more profit in it than farming at this point.

Sure the free market can just raise the price of goods, but then imports most likely will be cheaper because the rest of the world with exceptions doesn't play the same minimum wage game that the USA and other countries play. That will just kill off farming here once more. There is also a metric ton of goverment regulations on farming as well and when combined with decades of bad goverment policy in the state the whole thing is a mess.

As for the jobs people, like my family, used to do those jobs, but then cheap labor came in and the wages never did really increase over time as they naturally would have. In addition there was a lot of government not enforcing labor laws, business noticed and started taking advantage of cheap illegal labor. Similar thing is happening in the construction industry right now in the state.

The whole thing is one big mess.

[therayeffect]

The market for the agriculture goods is so tight in terms of profit they cannot afford to pay higher wages and in a lot of cases the farmers want to pay higher wages. The whole good riddance attitude towards farms is hilarious. Sure we can just import food from other countries. What do we do with the land, one of the most fertile regions in the USA? Build more houses on it. Oh yeah, that's what is happening because there is more profit in it than farming at this point.

Sure the free market can just raise the price of goods, but then imports most likely will be cheaper because the rest of the world with exceptions doesn't play the same minimum wage game that the USA and other countries play. That will just kill off farming here once more. There is also a metric ton of goverment regulations on farming as well and when combined with decades of bad goverment policy in the state the whole thing is a mess.

As for the jobs people, like my family, used to do those jobs, but then cheap labor came in and the wages never did really increase over time as they naturally would have. In addition there was a lot of government not enforcing labor laws, business noticed and started taking advantage of cheap illegal labor. Similar thing is happening in the construction industry right now in the state.

The whole thing is one big mess.

I'd say it's a lot less 'good riddance to those regular farmers!' and instead more 'good riddance to those rich free-loading cheap fucks!'. Farmers get subsidized and almost every farmer nowadays is the owner of a huge corporate-sized land. I don't think people are cheering the suffering of your 'Ma and Pa' type of farmers. They're talking about the industrial-sized megamoney farmers who couldn't give less of a shit about their workers and who probably make way more money than you think (I'm talking millionaires).

[Macaquerie]

Americans are working longer hours with stagnant wages and cubicles feel like depressing cages. Of course not all offices are like that, but I can see why some would prefer fresh air + exercise with their workday. "Backbreaking labor" likely depends on the labor conditions at the farm in question and the overall health of the worker. I've had friends and boyfriends who did work on organic farms during college, they all loved the experience.

"Whereas most people in other countries try to avoid it at all costs because they are horrified of being trapped in that life with no prospect for upward mobility" not everyone is looking for upward mobility. I don't understand conservatives' circle jerk over coal and manufacturing jobs, manufacturing in particular sounds particularly soul-sucking. I bet all of those Indiana manufacturing employees making $7 an hour + West Virginia coal workers would take almost any other job in tech or the renewable energy sector if they were offered a retraining program.

You can't conflate playing sports with doing manual labor. Whatever you do to stay in shape, you're choosing to do it because you enjoy it, and you can stop at any time if you get tired or hurt. Working long hours in the sun day after day just to put food on the table is an entirely different matter. There's a reason that most farmers and workers in poor countries aren't built like athletes or bodybuilders, but instead appear rather scrawny to our untrained eyes. Mexican laborers don't generally look all that impressive physically, but their bodies are much better suited to farm work than a bunch of gym bros, especially given that they are likely operating off of pretty shitty diets given their limited budgets.

[Deleted]

I'd say it's a lot less 'good riddance to those regular farmers!' and instead more 'good riddance to those rich free-loading cheap fucks!'. Farmers get subsidized and almost every farmer nowadays is the owner of a huge corporate-sized land. I don't think people are cheering the suffering of your 'Ma and Pa' type of farmers. They're talking about the industrial-sized megamoney farmers who couldn't give less of a shit about their workers and who probably make way more money than you think (I'm talking millionaires).

Just to continue from here, US farms are usually 1100 acres or bigger. French farms are on average 130 acres large.

Practically all US farmers are "large land owners" by European standards.

[Nadiru]

What's really going to happen is that we're going to pay more for produce.

Those two things can both happen, naturally. Which is good: Having an industry lower its prices through the labor of what amounts to a permanent underclass is ethically and morally bankrupt. I imagine it's even worse for people in the tech sector, H1Bs are prime targets for abuse because they don't provide any necessary function, they're just cheaper cogs in the development wheel.

[May90]

I worked on a beach in Virginia in the summer in 2010 for 3 months. It is a bit to the north from central California, and the job was a living hell. I imagine farm work is even worse, and the Central Valley... Screw this.

[Aggrophobic]

This problem will fix itself in a few years.
Wages will keep going up untill farm owners can't pay them (or rather, what they produce gets too expensive and people won't buy it) and they'll move over to more automation, less people are needed, prices drop and so on.

Or, you know... You can buy cheap produce from Mexico. It'll be a fun twist if Mexico actually would benefit from Trumps "America first".

[Macaquerie]

Honestly, I feel like the whole cheap labor argument is very toxic to society, because what we're effectively doing is making ourselves feel better by claiming that, even though illegal immigrants are much harder working and better at coping with adversity than we are, we are still BETTER than them because they could never do our jobs, but we could easily do their jobs if only they paid well enough to be worth our time. And the result is that we become complacent, convinced of our innate superiority, rather than trying to compete by improving our skills and productivity. We might just be talking about blue collar work for now, but education in the third world is rapidly improving and it won't be long before most white collar office jobs are out of reach for the average American.

[turboether]

America does have a problem with vilifying lower/middle class work. The American Dream has driven the thought they are lesser people who don't deserve good pay for their hard work. The bottom line is that if you take away all the immigrant workers from the current system, the farmers will have to pay a lot more than $16 an hour to fill those demanding positions with Americans. This is why more and more seek to put a high early investment in automation rather than pay people a decent wage for the work they do.

[Wildtree]

America does have a problem with vilifying lower/middle class work. The American Dream has driven the thought they are lesser people who don't deserve good pay for their hard work. The bottom line is that if you take away all the immigrant workers from the current system, the farmers will have to pay a lot more than $16 an hour to fill those demanding positions with Americans. This is why more and more seek to put a high early investment in automation rather than pay people a decent wage for the work they do.

That thread is a click bait.. Or misleading.
There is no such thing as good evaluation about the wage. 16 bucks is a decent pay in some places, and in others you couldn't even pay your rent with it.
The OP is about Cali, which is a high income/high living expenses state.
Of course someone from say Alabama, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota or any other low cost state, might be puzzled about the notion that 16 bucks aren't enough for ppl to sign up for the work, since in their states 16 bucks get you a long way. Just not so in high cost states.

F.e. The property prices in California are 10+ times higher than in say Iowa or Nebraska.

[Wyrt]

Farm work is really awful, back breaking work. Of course most people don't want to do it, regardless of pay. The sooner it's automated the better.

[Wildtree]

Farm work is really awful, back breaking work. Of course most people don't want to do it, regardless of pay. The sooner it's automated the better.

and often just a few weeks

[Wyrt]

and often just a few weeks

Yeah, that too. It's by no means a permanent, full time job. You pick the plants and then you have to go find another job. Means you get no benefits from it either.

[Macaquerie]

In many locations production simply does not generate revenue per labor hour to cover anything more than those wages. Practically speaking, this means those businesses are simply not a going concern; they have managed to turn over a profit by exploiting specific conditions that were temporary. More importantly they did not spend enough to raise the value of their production so that the profit margin could survive such a change. Poor business should go bankrupt, it is in the interest of the economy that it does.

Farms that only use seasonal labor however are different. THe differential in cost of living between the US and Mexico or other points south should be allowed to generate a profit for these farms and allow for people from those states to make a better living back home. I dislike the notion that it is slave labor; it may be by US standards but it is a better deal than they got back home otherwise they would not risk coming. What would be ideal in my opinion is for a more robust framework to allow for seasonal workers and seasonal visas so that there is a clear incentive for both workers and employers to work under the framework.

There is something fundamentally fucked up with the system that doesn't seem to have a clear solution. All of the money that immigrants send back to Mexico actually hinders their development, since it discourages them from making smart investments in education and infrastructure in favor of focusing on the lucrative flow of remittances from up north. More than that though, over time it has created this mentality on both sides that Mexicans are just this permanent servile race who have no other role but to do demeaning tasks for whites, which makes productive relations difficult. I imagine the reason many whites think of Mexico as an enemy nation is because if anybody treated them the way that they treat Mexicans, they would certainly be out for blood.

[Dontrike]

I'd love a $16 + benefits farm job that allowed me to both lose weight, get stronger, and earn a ton of money doing something honest. Even in CA that amount of money isn't bottom of the barrel and is a hell of a lot better than my job that's $9 in Ohio and my boss owing me $350 with $1300 being owed over 1 1/2 years with ZERO benefits past having a carpool.

[Macaquerie]

That really is up to the Mexican government to solve though. If anything NAFTA gave them the means to overcome the inherent disadvantage of competing with a far more advanced state. You cannot place the burden on the US. Until this differential is overcome though, it is advantageous for both sides to make use of it. For those workers, those jobs provide far better funds than anything back home and I sincerely doubt the working conditions are worse than they'd be IF they could find a work at home. For the US, they can keep an industry that is not sustainable in the longterm in its current form alive just a little longer until they can transform their way of doing business (either with automation or with marketing).

The economic gap will slowly but surely close over time, but the cultural gap is a different matter. On the surface of it, it is rather ridiculous that there is such a stark divide between Anglo and Latin America, given that it's ultimately based on some 500 year old rivalry between a pair of tiny and distant former colonial masters, both of which are becoming increasingly irrelevant in global affairs. The degree to which we simply REFUSE to learn each other's languages despite the obvious economic benefits this could bring really are embarrassing.

[Spectral]

One of the things that's pretty funny to watch is how people's attitudes shift based on what policy is being discussed and what they're enthusiastic about. When it's a discussion of a $15 minimum wage, many proponents take the tack of "if your business can't handle it, you have a shitty business model and deserve to go out of business". When it's an actual market-based increase in the cost of labor (rather than application of government force), some of the very same people are very concerned that these jobs will go unfilled - we must import cheap labor to do it!