Opinion: The Farm Labor Situation In California
July 10, 2013 
Last month I got the following notice, which eloquently depicts the nature of the farm labor situation in California, if not throughout the West, and perhaps a good portion of the entire country: “Due to low enrollment, the June 4 UCNFA (University of California Nursery and Floriculture Alliance) workshop ‘ABCs of Horticulture (English)’ in Watsonville has been canceled. The Spanish workshop ‘ABCs de la Horticultura’ on June 5 in Watsonville will go on as scheduled.”
I remembered the above note while reading a June story in the Fresno Bee about how growers were paying higher wages — both hourly and piece rate — this season because of labor shortages. Toward the end of the story, the managing director of the California Labor Contractor Association, Lupe Sandoval, said he didn’t think wages would go up too much more.
Even more interesting, Sandoval didn’t think offering higher wages would result in others applying for farm jobs. “Just because you offer someone $20 an hour does not mean you are going to get a good worker,” Sandoval was
quoted as saying. “There are still a lot of people that will work for $8 an hour at McDonald’s rather than in the fields for more money.”
With just a few words, Sandoval painted a dead-on accurate picture of the U.S. labor situation for those without an advanced degree or specialized skill. It should be required reading for every member of Congress who claims that all those farmworker jobs are taken by people in the country illegally at the expense of “real Americans.” What a bunch of hogwash.
Can’t Hold Up
The next time you hear one of those politicans go on and on about “them taking our jobs,” picture a watermelon field in Georgia. A couple years ago, Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, told of men forming a chain to move the melons from the field to a waiting truck. It’s hot and humid, and the watermelons weigh 15 to 20 pounds. Growers tried hiring “real Americans” to do the work, but they physically couldn’t hold up.
“We may have 9.5% unemployment,” Hall said at the time, “but these people aren’t in shape to do it, and they don’t know what to pick or how to pick it.”
That last point gets overlooked too. Those same politicans think that farm labor is unskilled labor, and anybody could do it. Or you hear that these workers are transients, rootless, contributing little to society. Try telling that to Art Barrientos, vice president of harvesting for Ocean Mist Farms in Castroville, CA. He estimates about 300 of “his guys” have been with Ocean Mist for 20-plus years.
Oh, and there’s one other difference between “his guys” and many of the unemployed “real Americans,” he says, pointing at the former.
They want to work.” Class dismissed.
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