Alabama immigration: crops rot as workers vanish to avoid crackdown (Guardian)

[struggle4progress]

The day before harsh new laws came into effect, Brian Cash had 65 Hispanic men picking tomatoes. Now he has none
Alabama immigration: crops rot as workers vanish to avoid crackdown
Ed Pilkington
guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 October 2011 14.58 EDT

Brian Cash can put a figure to the cost of Alabama's new immigration law: at least $100,000. That's the value of the tomatoes he has personally ripening out in his fields and that are going unpicked because his Hispanic workforce vanished literally overnight.

For generations, Cash's family have farmed 125 acres atop the Chandler mountain, a plateau in the north of the state about nine miles long and two miles wide. It's perfect tomato-growing country – the soil is sandy and rich, and the elevation provides a breeze that keeps frost at bay and allows early planting.

For four months every year he employs almost exclusively Hispanic male workers to pick the harvest. This year he had 64 men out in the fields.
Then HB56 came into effect, the new law that makes it a crime not to carry valid immigration documents and forces the police to check on anyone they suspect may be in the country illegally.
Brian Cash Alabama Alabama tomato farmer Brian Cash

The provisions – the toughest of any state in America – were enforced on 28 September. By the next day Cash's workforce had dwindled to 11 ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/14/alabama-immigration-law-workers?newsfeed=true

[ZombieHorde]

1. Recommended. Like most criminals, illegal aliens are awesome. nt

[MrsBrady]

10. omg

love your "my hero" link...freaking hilarious

[Spider Jerusalem]

41. Illegal immigration is a civil offence, not a criminal one.

[Name removed]

42. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Warpy]

2. Well, guess we can expect tomato prices to start going up

since there won't be any late season ones available from Alabama or Georgia.

Republicans with some kind of axe to grind are incapable of thinking anything through.

[apocalypsehow]

3. Then perhaps those Alabama farmers should start paying workers a living wage so those jobs will be

filled by those legally in the country, whether born, naturalized, or otherwise. That's a progressive value, yah know? Living wages?

[jowsybart]

5. Talking the talk or walking the walk?

2 different things. Now we see who is on whose side.

[saras]

6. And you'll buy enough $10 tomatoes to keep them in business?

[eppur_se_muova]

7. What ridiculous bullshit -- workers pick HUNDREDS of tomatoes an hour.

If a worker picked 200 tomatoes an hour at $10/hr that would be 5 cents per tomato. Labor contributes next to nothing to the cost, and you know it.

To get a more realistic esitmate of how many productive ag workers can be, here's an excerpt from an editorial by three Dem. Senators:

The Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, the trade association that represents the region's growers, claims that their tomato pickers earn an average wage of $12 per hour wage. To earn this wage, workers must pick 3,000 tomatoes per hour, an impossible pace to sustain over the course of a day. Even the highest paid farmworkers in the region earn less than $10,000 a year.

(If they pick fewer than 3,000 per hour, the pay drops considerably, evidently.)

Growers moved to block an agreement between workers and purchasing companies that would have given tomato pickers an extra PENNY PER POUND:

In reality they are leading the fight to stop chains like Taco Bell and McDonald's from providing Immokalee's workers with a much needed extra penny per pound of tomatoes picked. Recently, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which for 15 years has been fighting to improve working conditions and wages in Immokalee through collective action, successfully negotiated two landmark agreements with Yum! Brands, which owns Taco Bell, and McDonald's Corp. Under these agreements Taco Bell and McDonald's would pay workers an extra penny per pound for tomatoes picked and agree to a vendor code of conduct to improve worker conditions.

These agreements could be life-changing for thousands of tomato pickers. Unfortunately, the Growers Exchange is threatening its members with massive $100,000 per incident fines should they cooperate in a penny-per-pound arrangement. This threat has halted the participation of farmers in the Yum! and McDonald's agreements, denying the modest penny-per-pound increases for workers. What's most surprising is that the penny-per-pound proposal would cost Florida farmers and the Growers Exchange absolutely nothing.

How the Hell do you get $10 tomatoes out of that ??

View the whole editorial at Bernie Sanders' Web page: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=f0bf554a-ff72-4c65-b408-cbc72ecbe939

[the other one]

12. Your analysis is flawed

Employes don't have to pay Illegals SS and Medicare, and the employer doesn't have to figure state and federal taxes. So the increase will probably at leasts double what you figure, on the wholesale level. If the farmer tries to pass that along to the wholesale market it would probably result in an increase of forty cents per tomato at the retail level. That doesn't include increases in tomato based product - ketchup, pasta sauce etc.

And it doesn't even consider that the farmer will have to hire a permanent professional picking crew or face higher unemployment tax costs and the associated costs of highering and laying off that professional seasonal force. As if americans are dying to be professional fruit pickers.

Any way you go you should prepare for higher food prices as a result of these policies. Just the price we have to pay.

[eppur_se_muova]

13. The cost I gave was, deliberately, absurdly HIGH.

200 tomatoes/hr was a figure so low (18 seconds per tomato!) that I assumed anyone would recognize it was not meant to be taken seriously.

If workers are unable to *sustain* 3000/hr (per Sanders' editorial), then something lower by, say a factor of four might be more reasonable -- so 750/hr. Assume labor costs go up to $30/hr. That's still only 4 cents/tomato.

Unemployment tax costs for migrant labor?

Employment Not Covered
Some types of work are not covered and some wages paid for services are not subject to unemployment taxes. These exemptions include:

•Services performed by aliens in agricultural labor, who have entered the United States pursuant to s. 1184(c) and s. 1101(a)(15)(H) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
•Services performed by nonresident aliens, who are temporarily present in the United States as non-immigrants under subparagraph (F) or (J) of s. 1101(a)(15) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

http://dor.myflorida.com/dor/taxes/unemploy_comp_law.html

Of all the costs involved in getting produce to market, the costs of *field* labor seem likely to be the least significant. The "you couldn't afford to eat!" argument is just a way of salving the end consumer's conscience -- hey, we can't afford $10 tomatoes, so whattayagonnado? Pity the poor brown people breaking their backs in the sun. Life is unfair, but it's not our fault. Mission accomplished!

[jowsybart]

9. and if he does not, that rich corporations can go bankrupt

and all the rich investors can take a nice fat haircut. It is not the duty of the working class to support rich investors.

Leftism!

[hack89]

15. Certain foods will simply become affordable to only to the wealthiest among us

the diet of the poor will deteriorate further.

[jowsybart]

16. I am sure the poor are eternally grateful for your

kind ministrations

[hack89]

17. Basic economics - food is cheap because of cheap labor

I have no problems with higher wages for farm workers - but then I can afford higher food prices.

[jowsybart]

19. perhaps that is why you cannot identity with working class americans

and instead seem to identity with the rich and their foreign cheap labor

[hack89]

21. How does higher food prices help the working poor?

I hear a lot of outrage but no solutions.

Actually I am from working class roots - so is my wife. We were both the first in our families to go to college and our siblings include a crane operator and a dog groomer.

[jowsybart]

24. higher wages help working class american citizens

that is my concern. what is your concern?

[hack89]

25. That fine

but if the cost of increased wages are passed to the consumer, have things really improved for the working class? What is your plan to increase wages but freeze prices?

[jowsybart]

28. some believe in trickle down

but i believe in trickle up

[hack89]

29. Care to elaborate?

inflation is a real threat here - I can impoverish millions in a heartbeat.

[Warpy]

27. Bullshit argument.

A study some years ago showed that paying migrant harvesters a living wage would add five cents to the price of a head of lettuce. Tomatoes would be no different and the increased labor cost passed on to customers would be negligible.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather pay that five cents and know that the workers were able to live decently.

[totodeinhere]

36. I think you are referring to the study done at UC Davis. It also said that the price of

bread would only go up a few pennies. I for one would be glad to pay an extra nickle for a loaf of bread so that workers could have decent living wages and benefits. I thought that progressives were in favor of those things, but after reading some of the responses in this thread I am not so sure.

[jowsybart]

40. ideological warriors indoctrinated to serve the rich

that is what all political activists are in america

[Warpy]

43. Wow, what a big broad brush you have there!

Better narrow it down.

[MadMaddie]

38. Nope

Most people can grow their own tomatoes in their homes year round....but watch the sales of seeds go up..etc...

[totodeinhere]

8. +1

[jowsybart]

18. the rich and their fake leftist allies have ruined this nation

time to put the fakers in their place and get rid of the foreigners who have brought down our wages.

[MH1]

35. Yes but it's also a seasonal job and for some reason it's hard to get Americans to do that

I think we aren't raised with an itinerant culture where we are used to the idea of moving from place to place with the seasons.

[MadMaddie]

39. I don't even think it's the season part of the job

it's backbreaking work and Americans don't want to do that type of work. We have become a bit soft....(I am talking about all of us including myself). We are dependent on conveniences and an easier life, not the life our parents, granparents and other earlier realitives lived.

[jowsybart]

4. invisible hand of the market --how the rich hate it when it takes $ from their fat wallets

whose side are we on? The working citizen or the rich? Or the foreigners?

[tuckessee]

11. What are they paying people per hour? n/t

[pampango]

14. Score one for nativist teabaggers over the chamber of commerce in Alabama.

The latter will win most intra-republican battles but not this one.

[jowsybart]

20. unfortunately, as long as the federal govt is the friend of the rich

any efforts to rid america of this cheap labor foreign scourge is doomed to failure. Too many fakeleftists in the pocket of the rich and their federal friends.
Hence the drop in real wages since the invasion.

[pampango]

33. By that logic, the republican Alabama state government is the friend of the American worker.

Something tells me that republican state governments that break unions, slash safety nets, and lower taxes for the rich are not sincerely trying to "rid America of this cheap labor foreign scourge".

Reminds me of the joke: A CEO, a tea party member, a union worker and an immigrant are sitting at a table when a plate with a dozen cookies arrives. Before anyone else can make a move, the CEO reaches out to rake in eleven of the cookies. When the other three look at him in surprise, the CEO locks eyes with the tea party member. "You better watch them," the executive says with a nod toward the union worker and the immigrant. "They want a piece of your cookie."



MLK said, “We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools." GOP's response: "Not so much. Getting some folks to hate other folks keeps us in power."

Robert Reich: Republicans have a long history of turning fears into resentments that animate voters. (Remember Willy Horton? Senator Joe McCarthy?) For years, Fox News, yell radio, and other outlets of the Republican right have built followings on hatefulness.

Deep economic crises are fodder for demagogues who channel economic fear into a politics of resentment against “them.” In the 1930s it was foreign traders (mainly Europeans), immigrants, and Jews. Now it’s foreign traders (mainly the Chinese), immigrants, and Muslims.

[sakabatou]

22. Reminds me a little of the movie "A Day Without a Mexican."

[lunatica]

23. The karmic adjustments cometh

[ladjf]

26. The South is already responsible for the Civil war. Now they are

hell bent on doing a repeat. nt

[WinkyDink]

31. Fine with this Yankee.

[ladjf]

34. The problem is that we all suffer for their folly. nt

[WinkyDink]

30. Be careful what you.........

[hunter]

32. If someone is working they are contributing to the common good...

... whether or not they are a citizen.

If this is not the case, then the very premise of our economic system is disproved.

We can solve this problem by substantially raising minimum wages, improving working conditions, and granting legal status to anyone who is here working, or who is here as the child of someone who is working.

If we are worried about immigrant workers depressing wages, then the answer is to raise wages, not to violate the basic human rights of immigrants.

The entire immigration problem is caused by employers who abuse undocumented immigrants because they can.

[MadMaddie]

37. Well he should go get American workers to do the back breaking

work in the fields...what? But the Republicans said that Americans would flock to the back breaking work....what's that? Reagan, Clinton and Junior said that Americans don't do manual and manufacturing jobs anymore.....?


Anyone want some beer with their pretzel?

Once againg the idiot Repugs never think about the downstream impacts of their stupid decisions.....

Rock on OWS....