Why don’t they find a MAGAt, they love cherry picking.
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 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.
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…
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.
Technically you can get unemployment in the offseason.
If cherry growing doesn’t pay without government subsidies, it’s not a viable business.
Ok but all Americans benefit from affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. If they need subsidies they need subsidies, but if they get subsidies their workers shouldn’t be impoverished and worked to the bone. We can take the money out of oil subsidies.
This pleases me. Great news to start my Monday morning.
Time to cherry pick some workers.
New gig economy app
