Washington cherry growers struggle to find pickers
The threat of federal agents raiding orchards is forcing a labor shortage that has caused some Washington producers to leave cherries unpicked or delay their harvests until fruit gets over ripe, which means they are getting paid less for the fruit at processors.
At least one cherry grower in the Mattawa area has already lost about 300 bins, each weighing between 350 and 400 pounds, said Erik Zavala, a horticulturist and director of field staff for Wenatchee-based Blue Bird Inc., which is a grower-owned cooperative of hundreds of family farms.
“People watch the news,” Zavala said, referring to masked federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detaining persons off the street. “It’s definitely having an impact.
“I don’t care about that stuff. I just know that this is affecting the growers directly whether they are Democrat or Republican or whatever. These growers will lose a lot of money and are risking losing their farms because of a lack of labor.”
There’s your fucking problem. You care about the fucking money, and not about the lives of those making it for you.
I think it's really dishonest for people like this to pretend they are politically agnostic and "don't care about that stuff". They are actively exploiting vulnerable workers with low wages, no benefits, etc. Even if it's not explicit, there's also the implied threat that they could report you to ICE at any time. And that was before this administration's rabid hunt for undocumented people! Talk about a hostile workplace with your boss abusing their power over you. Us Americans not getting cheap crops is the much less important issue...
“I don’t care about that stuff. I just know that this is affecting the growers directly whether they are Democrat or Republican or whatever. These growers will lose a lot of money and are risking losing their farms because of a lack of labor.”
They FOR SURE cared about it when rural/farmers voted overwhelmingly for Republicans/Trump and knew what he was saying. This is 100% FAFO and now it's all crocodile tears "don't care if you are dem or republican" nonsense.
The default response to them should be "you should pick your farm up by the bootstraps and get the crops picked". Or you know... Pay living wages to get citizen pickers? Either way, good luck without all the exploited labor.
Americans cannot afford to do these jobs.
That job won’t pay my mortgage, my bills, support my family, or provide health insurance for us.
And even if it did, jobs like that are seasonal so if by some miracle it did provide all I need, it wouldn’t do it year round and golly, would you look at that, my bills don’t take the growing season off.
At one point I knew someone from a small town in Northern California where most people in the town worked for an industry like this - picking, driving, processing the stuff that was grown (I don’t remember what the crop was). The only people who weren’t directly involved provided services to those who were, working government or retail jobs in the town.
When it wasn’t picking season, most of the town was on welfare.
You made a good case for welfare, basic income, and social security. It gives us the slack we need to produce goods that aren't necessarily profitable all year round, but which we would be worse off without.
Why don’t they find a MAGAt, they love cherry picking.
New gig economy app
Time to cherry pick some workers.
This pleases me. Great news to start my Monday morning.
