Random thoughts on ag labor shortage

[chh]

The local DHS office called me with a sob story a few(97 or 98) years ago when we still had the hog operation. The had a woman in her early 20's whose husband was in prison on drug charges and they wanted to put her in a part time job and in a Votech progam to be a nursing assistant. She been employed in a hog facility before and they called me wanting me to hire her since she only lived a couple of miles from me. My wife knew her and thought she was ok. She was part Indian so some program was going to pay 1/2 her wages and the state was going to give me a tax credit for whatever I paid her. They required that I employ her for $10 an hour on a 20 hour week 8 am to 12, so she could attend classes in the afternoon. It sounded like a good deal even if we didn't have any employees that weren't family members so we told them to send her out to talk to us. I could hear the conversation in the background and the lady agreed to be at our place at 8 the next morning. About 10 I called the DHS lady back to see why she never showed up. Turned out she decided the job was "beneath her" and that she was just better off on welfare. That was the first, last, and only time I every tried to hire anyone out of the family to work for me.

 

[riptides]

I find this topic interesting.

It raises a whole bunch of serious issue behide the scenes.

Definition of wealth and all that it implies.

Last I looked our economy in my area is t a n k i n g.

No way one is going to work for minimum wage just yet. That won't even pay my internet access fees. I must use internet access to advertise that I have a need for workers on my place.
Another topic.

A local county has made the news by enforcing immigration status checks. Guess what happened to a labor pool?
Another topic.

I also use the net to check local sales of commodity items. Hmmm... come to think of it, where I am, most other nations of equal GDP have better net access than I do.
Another topic.

In any case, since I suffer from labor pool shortages, and the local economy has tanked, I need to sell assets. Guess what is not selling right now. Another topic.

I cannot even go to the bank, that wealth implication has me over a barrel too. The banker will not lend, says I am over extended.
Another topic.

The whole thing is a cycle. Can't, can't, can't. Not in todays current economy.
It needs fixing.

I'd like to get some of my kids to help, but they can't do it either....

-Tough times.
-Mike Z.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

The local DHS office called me with a sob story a few(97 or 98) years ago when we still had the hog operation. The had a woman in her early 20's whose husband was in prison on drug charges and they wanted to put her in a part time job and in a Votech progam to be a nursing assistant. She been employed in a hog facility before and they called me wanting me to hire her since she only lived a couple of miles from me. My wife knew her and thought she was ok. She was part Indian so some program was going to pay 1/2 her wages and the state was going to give me a tax credit for whatever I paid her. They required that I employ her for $10 an hour on a 20 hour week 8 am to 12, so she could attend classes in the afternoon. It sounded like a good deal even if we didn't have any employees that weren't family members so we told them to send her out to talk to us. I could hear the conversation in the background and the lady agreed to be at our place at 8 the next morning. About 10 I called the DHS lady back to see why she never showed up. Turned out she decided the job was "beneath her" and that she was just better off on welfare. That was the first, last, and only time I every tried to hire anyone out of the family to work for me.

We deal with this during construction. We do a lot of work on low income homes using public grants. So dealing with these organizations we tend to get asked to hire people out of the Job Corps and such like. We hired one girl and started her out painting. She worked one day and never came back.

Two years ago there was another project where we were hired to fix an entire house to be resold for around $40k to a first time home buyer with children and low income. Well, we were asked to work with the Youth Build program on this house. You have no idea the headache we had trying to work with these kids. This project was not big enough to have 5 extra people on it as there were 4 kids and their instructer for each shift (kids worked half a day then went to school). Well, one day we had all 8 kids at once. None of the kids had any experience with this field so we were scrambling to try and teach them and keep an eye on the work they were doing. So for the most part the kids did work when they were there. However, some of them would not show up on time or skip completely. A couple of them got stoned during lunch. Almost all of them did nothing but complain that the other kids had the "easier" job. There were some who wanted to bully the others and so on. But there was one kid who loved this type of work and would be on the job waiting for us every morning. However, he was only 17 and couldn't work on the roofs with us so he got stuck doing a lot of the grunt work when he should have been learning the trade but the law requires the kids to be 18 in order to work on roofs.

From that experience we will never work with that program again. The headaches we had during the entire project coupled with the embarassing work done by the kids and the instructor while we were not able to keep an eye on them or when we were not even there (long story) just made the entire experience negative. I still shake my head in disgust when I look at that house as it is not up to our standards but we got tired of redoing everything two or three times as there were only 2 of us to supervise 6-12 people at a time spread out inside and outside of this house.

I like the idea of these programs but it seems like most of the people in these programs are only there for easy money or because they "have" to be in order to get money or their GED. Heck, even the votech classes have become a joke now. A lot of the high school kids go to these schools so they don't have to stay in a regular class room. I do have two friends though that did continue on into the field from votech. One is now running heavy equipment down in Ohio and the other has a welding business in town.

 

[rgood]

Interesting topic - Where I am from the County has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state. But do you think you can find anybody to do any work? I went through 6 contractors in 2 years that all told me they would give me a bid to do some work on a building, before I found one that actually did give me a bid and did the work. I've tried to hire contractors to do mowing, they don't show up. I've tried to hire people to do field spraying, they don't show up. Even though there are people that are unemployed, there's no shortage of work - There is a shortage of people that are willing to work. A lot of these things I would do myself, but I don't live there year round.

 

[redlevel]

The grower who leases my land for peaches uses migrants. He works through a labor contractor. I don't know what he pays, but I imagine it is well above minimum wage.

I don't understand why people think farmers started using migrants because it was cheaper. In most cases, it was the only option. If migrants were not available, Georgia would be out of the peach business. LOCAL PEOPLE WOULD NOT WORK IN THE PEACH ORCHARDS FOR TWENTY DOLLARS AN HOUR. You can believe that or not, but it is the truth. You might have a crew for two days, but I really doubt they would last that long. They don't have to do it. There are too many options.

I don't know what the answer to the whole illegal/labor/migrant problem is, but if migrants are no longer available, the fresh and processed produce industry in the United States will be a thing of the past. American laborers will not do the type of work migrants do in the fields. Not at any wage.

If you are interested, here is a thread where I was really taken to task by some folks in Georgia. One suggested that If I wanted to be profitable as a farmer, then I should be willing to live in the same house my great grandfather did. Another criticized me for riding in an air conditioned truck. They don't allow any bad language, but the discussions are more spirited sometimes than you see here.
http://www.forum.gon.com/showthread.php?t=176876

 

[MossRoad]

The labor shortage has crippled the circus industry also. There was a clip on the news the other day about quite a few of the big circus companies being shut down because they do not have the labor to set up the circus let alone take it all back down and move to the next town.

But isn't unemployment in the US at a rather high rate right now

I've been accused of looking like a carney!

 

[Tororider]

Where I grew up I was fortunate enough to be very well off. I started my landscape business and worked very hard at it. When we got big enough to need to hire on more people we had the luck of having a couple very hard working friends that worked out great. But we also had the people who would quit after a week. One was a friend of my sister in law, big guy, strong, played football. Thought that since he worked for a city cutting grass one year he could work for us no problem. Worked one week and then told us he quit because it was too hard. Very common. At least in that area, kids were getting handed $50 from their parents when they walked out the door, why would they want to actually have to work, especially hard work. And they weren't even getting a discount on designer clothes, the travesty.

The answer to the labor shortage is to increase the H2B work visas at least tenfold. I could care less if there is a path to citizenship for illegal or legal immigrants as most of them don't want to become citizens. They want to make their money, enjoy the winter in their home country, and come back in the spring to do it again. There are a number that bring their families, or start a family here and they of course want to stay, but it is my experience that those are in the minority. Unfortunately the government is hearing cries from the uninformed that believe these people are taking their jobs, which as many here have said, is just not the case.

In order to get workers through the H2B program you have to post ads looking for help, interview the help, and show cause that you can't find good help. The problem is that many of the people who respond to the ads are being paid unemployment and would rather get that than actually work. Even if you think you have found someone, they seldom last more than a week. It's sad really. I guess it comes back to our welfare/unemployment programs that more or less pay people not to work.

Sorry if that seems like a rant, I truly love our country, but there are certain government programs that are very very broken.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Toro, you have no idea how many high school football players I have gone thru with haying the last few years I am lucky if they will last one whole day. Yet my regular helper is a small framed baseball player

 

[bigshovel]

I told myself not to come back to this thread but, can's open worms everywhere. I've been in business 20 + years and I have learned a thing or two about employee's' 17 on payroll now, subcontracted labor I used to be able to broker, and the cost of doing business at a profit. I live in the middle of farm country, my next door neighbor is the farmer of this valley. He is the man who is now forced to buy seed at full retail, prepare hundred of acres of soil in a time specific fashion, repair any mechanical failure, pray's that drought nor flood is not in his near future, and hopes his help shows up to harvest. Now the harvest is clean, good quality, and grown on our USA soil. The buyers of that crop now beat down the wholesale price so they can make a profit at a store that put him and thousands of other farmers out of the fresh produce business. They do this with no regard to the fact fuel, fertilizer and seeds have over doubled. This man has farming coursing through his veins, he does it without complaint and with no regard for his time or the weather. Many years of watching this process tells me corn is worth $12 a dozen. Just my opinion. As for the wealthy farmer opinion I've seen VERY few instances of a full time farmer able to climb off of a tractor and declare a comfortable retirement without going to work for someone else. I do take a week off of work and help the farmer of this valley. The least I can do for the man who skids downed logs close for us to cut for firewood he give to us neighbors, the state road he maintains way before the plow truck shows up, and his 600 acres he doesn't post so that on a whim a non video playing kid may want to go hunting or take a dog for a walk. We as a society have created a lazy culture of people. My last job opening for an expeirienced carpenter that was Davis-Bacon wage scale commercial construction showed me people won't show up 2 days in a row for $38.50 an hour.

 

[riptides]

whoSome mighty refreshing words and thoughts in this thread.

There are a lot of people who get it.

Thanks!

-Mike Z.