Some Ala. Farmers Plant Fewer Crops, Say Immigration Crackdown Drove Away Workers To Pick Them

[amandabeech]

13. When I was a teenager back in the late '60s and early '70s,

many of the younger locals picked fruit and snapped asparagus for spending money.

We were always welcomed because we did a good job. We may not have been as fast as the migrants (who were mostly from Mexico or Mexican-American from Texas), but we picked "cleaner." We had nothing but product in our crates. That meant he (and it always was a "he" back then) got the top price at the cannery. Sometimes the farmer would pay us locals extra to pick the stems, leaves twigs and sometime small branches out of the migrants' crates.

Now, however, the farms have become much larger and the pickers are judged solely on speed, and not on quality. That means locals have to pick fast and dirty like the migrants, and many don't like it. Rewarding speed only in hiring may make managements' jobs easier, but it may not actually be cost effective.

I wonder if this is an issue in Alabama.

Then there is the issue of pay.