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Wow, you're not kidding. Now that this thread has gone on a few pp, I'm realizing how incredibly naive my first post was! My experience w/ picking stuff is pick-your-own farms & grand dad's garden. I wasn't trying to be critical AT ALL of people who don't do these jobs, just saying that for a couple of hours at a time, I've enjoyed...what I thought was almost similar work.

 

That level of naivete in other people tends to irk me pretty badly, so I hope those irked will accept my apologies!

 

:001_smile:

Not at all. I wasn't offended, and thank you for taking my response so well.

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I am all for paying people a reasonable wage. However, if that happens, the price of food is going to go up. Americans don't like that.

 

Can't have it both ways, though.

 

I think food prices have to go up in our country. I would rather have prices go up and support higher wages for American workers than have cheaper prices due to illegal labor.

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I think food prices have to go up in our country. I would rather have prices go up and support higher wages for American workers than have cheaper prices due to illegal labor.

 

:iagree:

 

But wouldn't it be nice if it always meant the farmers got more? Pretty sure that even though the price of milk (for instance) has doubled in recent years, the farmers are not getting twice as much. There's no way the increase is due to rising energy/fuel costs either.

 

More of us are going to have to start making the effort (wherever possible) to go right to the source.

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:iagree:

 

But wouldn't it be nice if it always meant the farmers got more? Pretty sure that even though the price of milk (for instance) has doubled in recent years, the farmers are not getting twice as much. There's no way the increase is due to rising energy/fuel costs either.

 

More of us are going to have to start making the effort (wherever possible) to go right to the source.

 

 

You are correct. I can't find it at the moment, but about 10 years ago they did a study and asked people if they would pay 6¢ more for a 1 lb. loaf of bread. The point was that if the entire 6¢ would go directly to the farmer, that would double what he got for the wheat that made that bread. The reality is that the farmer would get NONE of the 6¢.

 

Here are some sources that I actually can find (lol) that shows the prices for wheat in 1919 ($2.63/bu) and this year current (avg 7.42/bu). In 1919, a 1 lb. loaf cost approximately 8¢. It now cost approximately $2.99. The prices in wheat do not, in any way, reflect the rise in cost of product.

 

The farmer isn't getting your extra money. He never was. He never will. The only thing farmers in this country had going for them was the Wheat Board, which the PCs are shutting down for good tomorrow. That was the closest thing farmers ever had to a collective bargaining right. So long, bye-bye, and the same for the Port of Churchill for whom 85% of their freight business came from the Wheat Board. Oh, well, no one gives a flying flipping d*amn about a bunch of farmers and a dinky little town on Hud Bay now, do they? :rant:

Edited by Audrey
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The farmer isn't getting your extra money. He never was. He never will.

 

She knows that they are probably made by sweatshop labour. She was going to save up to buy more expensive jeans. I had to tell her that the more expensive jeans probably just meant more profit to the shop. Unless she could find jeans supplied by an organisation which made some kind of specific pledge, the cotton growers and the sweat shop seamstresses would receive just as little.

 

Laura

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I was going to quote a whole bunch of posts and say "nope", but instead, I'll just link to this article from the NYT:

 

Hiring Locally for Farm Work Is No Cure-All

 

OLATHE, Colo. — How can there be a labor shortage when nearly one out of every 11 people in the nation are unemployed?

 

[...]

 

Mr. Harold, a 71-year-old Vietnam War veteran who drifted here in the late ’60s, has participated for about a decade in a federal program called H-2A that allows seasonal foreign workers into the country to make up the gap where willing and able American workers are few in number. He typically has brought in about 90 people from Mexico each year from July through October.

 

This year, though, with tough times lingering and a big jump in the minimum wage under the program, to nearly $10.50 an hour, Mr. Harold brought in only two-thirds of his usual contingent. The other positions, he figured, would be snapped up by jobless local residents wanting some extra summer cash.

 

“It didn’t take me six hours to realize I’d made a heck of a mistake,†Mr. Harold said, standing in his onion field on a recent afternoon as a crew of workers from Mexico cut the tops off yellow onions and bagged them.

 

Six hours was enough, between the 6 a.m. start time and noon lunch break, for the first wave of local workers to quit. Some simply never came back and gave no reason. Twenty-five of them said specifically, according to farm records, that the work was too hard.

 

[...]

 

Still, Mr. Mattics said, he can’t help feeling that people have gotten soft.

 

“They wanted that $10.50 an hour without doing very much,†he said. “I know people with college degrees, working for the school system and only making 11 bucks.â€

 

[...]

 

The H-2A program, in particular, in trying to avoid displacing American citizens from jobs, strongly encourages farmers to hire locally if they can, with a requirement that they advertise in at least three states.

 

[...]

 

 

I guess I'm in the minority, but I'm broken 9 ways to Sunday & I'd still figure a way to push my body through for that $10.50 an hour if my family had no income. Heck, me and hubby are willing to do things most of the folk on this board would find horrifying to guarantee kid was OK. But gov't handouts aren't one of them, and "waiting for a job commensurate with the last one" isn't another. Everyone has their own economic floor of what they are willing to do to survive. Mine is "anything".

 

 

a

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I guess I'm in the minority, but I'm broken 9 ways to Sunday & I'd still figure a way to push my body through for that $10.50 an hour if my family had no income. Heck, me and hubby are willing to do things most of the folk on this board would find horrifying to guarantee kid was OK. But gov't handouts aren't one of them, and "waiting for a job commensurate with the last one" isn't another. Everyone has their own economic floor of what they are willing to do to survive. Mine is "anything".

 

 

a

 

I was beginning to feel alone :D. I've cleaned toilets, baled hay, shoveled manure, worked with hogs, etc. Whatever it took, KWIM?

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Heck, me and hubby are willing to do things most of the folk on this board would find horrifying to guarantee kid was OK. But gov't handouts aren't one of them

 

I'm definitely not too proud to work, or work hard. The jobs being discussed here, however, would not guarantee my kids were ok because of the health insurance/medication cost issue I mentioned before. I, too, would do anything to guarantee my kids were ok. For us, with or children, that would be mean availing ourselves of public assistance so our kids had their lifesaving medication.

 

Tara

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I guess I'm in the minority, but I'm broken 9 ways to Sunday & I'd still figure a way to push my body through for that $10.50 an hour if my family had no income. Heck, me and hubby are willing to do things most of the folk on this board would find horrifying to guarantee kid was OK. But gov't handouts aren't one of them, and "waiting for a job commensurate with the last one" isn't another. Everyone has their own economic floor of what they are willing to do to survive. Mine is "anything".

 

 

In theory, that sounds good; in practice, I'm not sure it would work out that way.

 

So you're working 12 hour days that start at 6 in the morning: who's watching your kids? How are you paying them? Paying for 12 hours/day of childcare, and finding somebody willing to watch your children starting at about 5 or 5:30 in the morning (depending on how long it took you to get to work), would be very expensive.

 

What about health insurance?

 

How much energy would you have at the end of the day to meet your family's needs?

 

How much time and energy would you have left to apply for permanent jobs? These jobs only last for a few weeks or months. If you aren't able to spend time applying for permanent positions during that time, you'll be right back at square one at the end of the season.

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We are a spoiled society - we haven't HAD to do those jobs. Just benefit from them. I would be out picking, personally, if things got rough...

 

:iagree: I would even if they were near me! Around here in corn country, it's all mechanized and the farms are being bought out by factory farms. There are NO jobs like that. When I was younger you could make extra money tasseling, but not now.

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I'm wondering where people are getting this idea that, in the past, people were just lining up to do this kind of work? There's a reason we had slave labor and sharecropping, which were horrible, inhumane, and unjust systems, and it's because this kind of work is awful, people don't want to do it voluntarily, and, in order to make the kind of profit people are looking for, the farm owners need to pay as little as possible.

 

We're not talking here about somebody doing work on a family farm, even a very, very large one, which people did indeed willingly and perhaps even happily do and still do. We're talking about the kind of labor that we have always forced upon the people seen as the lowest in society.

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I was going to quote a whole bunch of posts and say "nope", but instead, I'll just link to this article from the NYT:

 

Hiring Locally for Farm Work Is No Cure-All

 

 

 

I guess I'm in the minority, but I'm broken 9 ways to Sunday & I'd still figure a way to push my body through for that $10.50 an hour if my family had no income. Heck, me and hubby are willing to do things most of the folk on this board would find horrifying to guarantee kid was OK. But gov't handouts aren't one of them, and "waiting for a job commensurate with the last one" isn't another. Everyone has their own economic floor of what they are willing to do to survive. Mine is "anything".

 

 

a

True. My husband has seen people come and go in trucking, factories, and warehouses. Mostly younger people that claim the work is "too hard".

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:iagree: I would even if they were near me! Around here in corn country, it's all mechanized and the farms are being bought out by factory farms. There are NO jobs like that. When I was younger you could make extra money tasseling, but not now.

Yep, there weren't when we were in S.IL. either.

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I'm wondering where people are getting this idea that, in the past, people were just lining up to do this kind of work? There's a reason we had slave labor and sharecropping, which were horrible, inhumane, and unjust systems, and it's because this kind of work is awful, people don't want to do it voluntarily, and, in order to make the kind of profit people are looking for, the farm owners need to pay as little as possible.

 

We're not talking here about somebody doing work on a family farm, even a very, very large one, which people did indeed willingly and perhaps even happily do and still do. We're talking about the kind of labor that we have always forced upon the people seen as the lowest in society.

 

Very good point!

 

Tara

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I'm wondering where people are getting this idea that, in the past, people were just lining up to do this kind of work? There's a reason we had slave labor and sharecropping, which were horrible, inhumane, and unjust systems, and it's because this kind of work is awful, people don't want to do it voluntarily, and, in order to make the kind of profit people are looking for, the farm owners need to pay as little as possible.

 

We're not talking here about somebody doing work on a family farm, even a very, very large one, which people did indeed willingly and perhaps even happily do and still do. We're talking about the kind of labor that we have always forced upon the people seen as the lowest in society.

 

Excellent point.

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In theory, that sounds good; in practice, I'm not sure it would work out that way.

 

So you're working 12 hour days that start at 6 in the morning: who's watching your kids? How are you paying them? Paying for 12 hours/day of childcare, and finding somebody willing to watch your children starting at about 5 or 5:30 in the morning (depending on how long it took you to get to work), would be very expensive.

 

What about health insurance?

 

How much energy would you have at the end of the day to meet your family's needs?

 

How much time and energy would you have left to apply for permanent jobs? These jobs only last for a few weeks or months. If you aren't able to spend time applying for permanent positions during that time, you'll be right back at square one at the end of the season.

 

This sounds obtuse to me to be honest.

 

Would it be easy, no. It's an JOB where you show up and you work and nobody is greasing all the wheels for you. When I did seasonal farm work my MIL watched my kids. The days that she couldn't there was a wife of one of the Mexican workers that watched all the other kids and my kids could go with her for the day. I had lunch with them and they learned Spanish. She wasn't expensive per parent b/c she had enough kids to watch that it added up. She was an Unlicensed Day Care Provider in some eyes but to my kids she was fun and a super good cook. The workers that were staying on a place further out carpooled to work. They did the morning milking at the dairy at 4:30 twice a day and then worked potatoes 12 hours a day on top of it.

 

We're talking hard times here, not inconvenient times. You do what you have to do; not hold out for just the right situation for you.

 

Do you have health insurance anyway? If not you might need some money to pay for a doctor visit. If you dont' have money you can't buy food to care for your family. You carpool to save on expenses, you figure it out. You can freshen up your resume and send it to employment services on your day off or at night or on your lunch break. (ask me how I know) You take time off for an interview-my farmer boss didn't fuss at all if you took a day off, he knew how it went.

 

I loved my potato jobs-they were good hard work and I learned a lot from the good hard workers that I met there. And they sure weren't college kids. The college kids lasted ONE day and they wimped out. I worked with Mexicans and other ranch wives that used those jobs to get some extra cash during the spring and fall.

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We're talking hard times here, not inconvenient times. You do what you have to do; not hold out for just the right situation for you.

 

There's a difference between "holding out for just the right situation" and not taking jobs like this. I took a $7/hour part-time job at a bargain bookstore after grad school. I wasn't "holding out for just the right situation" by any means. There were plenty of jobs that I'd be willing to do. But, quite frankly, I would have gone on government assistance before I started doing seasonal or migrant farm work for minimum wage and no benefits. I'd go as far as to say it would be stupid to do otherwise; to take on a job that is going to be gone soon, that pays little, that has no benefits, and that could quite possibly leave you injured or disabled when you could collect government assistance or unemployment as you apply for other jobs would be a silly, unwise gamble, especially for those with families to support.

 

The only people who take these jobs are people who have either are literally forced to (like the slaves we brought here to do this labor for hundreds of years) or the sharecroppers who were denied any other opportunity, or people who are forced into it because they have not a single other option (migrant farm workers during the Great Depression). Nobody chooses this kind of work. It is not like working on a family farm, at all. It is work that is done by the most outcast/despised in society. Of course you aren't going to get people with any other options at all lining up to do it. It's like asking why we needed slaves at all: why didn't all the poor white people just go volunteer to work for low pay on the plantations? They didn't because if you have any other option at all, you do not and never have done this kind of work. That's just how our society is.

 

My church has a small farm, and we get tons of people volunteering to work on it. Most of them are young, and they aren't getting paid. They like doing it. They aren't averse to hard work. But, they certainly wouldn't be lining up to work as seasonal farm labor, because that is a very different thing. It's different than working in your garden, it's different than working on your own farm, and it's different than working on a small local farm that isn't operating for a profit.

 

And, do we want to live in a country where people need to get up at 4:30 to milk somebody else's cows, then pick somebody else's crops for 12 hours, and then do some more milking before going home to care for their children (who have been watched by undocumented workers all day) just to get by? In what view could that be a good or just society?

Edited by twoforjoy
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This sounds obtuse to me to be honest.

 

Would it be easy, no. It's an JOB where you show up and you work and nobody is greasing all the wheels for you. When I did seasonal farm work my MIL watched my kids. The days that she couldn't there was a wife of one of the Mexican workers that watched all the other kids and my kids could go with her for the day. I had lunch with them and they learned Spanish. She wasn't expensive per parent b/c she had enough kids to watch that it added up. She was an Unlicensed Day Care Provider in some eyes but to my kids she was fun and a super good cook. The workers that were staying on a place further out carpooled to work. They did the morning milking at the dairy at 4:30 twice a day and then worked potatoes 12 hours a day on top of it.

 

We're talking hard times here, not inconvenient times. You do what you have to do; not hold out for just the right situation for you.

 

Do you have health insurance anyway? If not you might need some money to pay for a doctor visit. If you dont' have money you can't buy food to care for your family. You carpool to save on expenses, you figure it out. You can freshen up your resume and send it to employment services on your day off or at night or on your lunch break. (ask me how I know) You take time off for an interview-my farmer boss didn't fuss at all if you took a day off, he knew how it went.

 

I loved my potato jobs-they were good hard work and I learned a lot from the good hard workers that I met there. And they sure weren't college kids. The college kids lasted ONE day and they wimped out. I worked with Mexicans and other ranch wives that used those jobs to get some extra cash during the spring and fall.

And I'm willing to bet that if I went to one of the local farms and asked for a job working alongside the migrant workers, they would refuse me :glare:

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And I'm willing to bet that if I went to one of the local farms and asked for a job working alongside the migrant workers, they would refuse me :glare:

 

Not only that, but I am willing to bet that if something happened to this woman's children while they were under the care of unlicensed daycare workers, that EVERYONE would get all upset and judgmental about the mom who left her kids in unqualified care... :glare:

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Not only that, but I am willing to bet that if something happened to this woman's children while they were under the care of unlicensed daycare workers, that EVERYONE would get all upset and judgmental about the mom who left her kids in unqualified care... :glare:

Yep, we've legislated ourselves into a hole.

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Not only that, but I am willing to bet that if something happened to this woman's children while they were under the care of unlicensed daycare workers, that EVERYONE would get all upset and judgmental about the mom who left her kids in unqualified care... :glare:

 

A few years back there was a news item here about migrant workers who didn't even have daycare. They just left their pre-school and toddler children in their cars while they worked.

 

Tara

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A few years back there was a news item here about migrant workers who didn't even have daycare. They just left their pre-school and toddler children in their cars while they worked.

 

Tara

 

 

In our area, I've see women wearing their babies in slings while they hoed in 90-100 degree weather for 12 hr. days. Also, don't ask about the migrant worker who brought his five year old son with him to the field in order to help make his daily quota. Do you want to know what happens to a five year old run over by a fully loaded apple truck? You probably don't...it made the paramedics queasy.

 

Faith

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Making sure large groups of children are cared for by licensed providers is legislating ourselves into a hole?

Not in my world.

Oh my, where would we be without you! The whole of history has been awaiting your existence to change things. How dare we think we can have common sense without legislating ourselves to death. How dare my mother's town have allowed the gypsies to babysit their children. Terrible unlicensed gypsies!

Edited by mommaduck
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I'm wondering where people are getting this idea that, in the past, people were just lining up to do this kind of work? There's a reason we had slave labor and sharecropping, which were horrible, inhumane, and unjust systems, and it's because this kind of work is awful, people don't want to do it voluntarily, and, in order to make the kind of profit people are looking for, the farm owners need to pay as little as possible.

 

We're not talking here about somebody doing work on a family farm, even a very, very large one, which people did indeed willingly and perhaps even happily do and still do. We're talking about the kind of labor that we have always forced upon the people seen as the lowest in society.

 

Amen, sister.

 

*goes back to reading The Grapes of Wrath*

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A few years back there was a news item here about migrant workers who didn't even have daycare. They just left their pre-school and toddler children in their cars while they worked.

 

Tara

 

 

We had that happen in Michigan when I was a teen. I remember watching the Tv reporting about how 14 kids ROASTED one afternoon when our temps went over 100 all.day.long. :(

 

All the bad stuff about this side, I would absolutely plunk down more cash for clean crops harvested ethically by well paid and cared for workers. I think all Americans should wrap their heads around less "stuff" and better/REAL food.

 

However, to do this we have to toss Monsanto into the trash can because megafarms CANNOT convert to this type of farming and we have to subsidize the "little" farmers until they can have the correct ratio of land to workers to paying customers.

 

It's a huge shift for agriculture in our country. Personally, I think it's going to become more and more necessary as our population increases but there are so many issues with it that I'm not even sure our bureaucracy can handle it anymore. Who the heck is going to lobby in D.C. for common sense?!?!?

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We had that happen in Michigan when I was a teen. I remember watching the Tv reporting about how 14 kids ROASTED one afternoon when our temps went over 100 all.day.long. :(

 

All the bad stuff about this side, I would absolutely plunk down more cash for clean crops harvested ethically by well paid and cared for workers. I think all Americans should wrap their heads around less "stuff" and better/REAL food.

 

However, to do this we have to toss Monsanto into the trash can because megafarms CANNOT convert to this type of farming and we have to subsidize the "little" farmers until they can have the correct ratio of land to workers to paying customers.

 

It's a huge shift for agriculture in our country. Personally, I think it's going to become more and more necessary as our population increases but there are so many issues with it that I'm not even sure our bureaucracy can handle it anymore. Who the heck is going to lobby in D.C. for common sense?!?!?

Don't get me started on Monsanto :glare: EVIL!

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Don't get me started on Monsanto :glare: EVIL!

 

Some of our local farmers have been putting up little "No Monsanto seeds allowed" on their properties that look just like the ^%$#@%$#% Monsanto signs and it cracks me up every time. Have you seen those?

 

Grains... I need to learn how to grow my own oats and wheat and then I'll be set.

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Some of our local farmers have been putting up little "No Monsanto seeds allowed" on their properties that look just like the ^%$#@%$#% Monsanto signs and it cracks me up every time. Have you seen those?

 

Grains... I need to learn how to grow my own oats and wheat and then I'll be set.

Problem is, Monsanto seeds contaminate other seeds, then Monsanto trespasses to test their neighbours' seeds, then they sue the small farmer for having THEIR genetically altered DNA in the contaminated seeds.

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Problem is, Monsanto seeds contaminate other seeds, then Monsanto trespasses to test their neighbours' seeds, then they sue the small farmer for having THEIR genetically altered DNA in the contaminated seeds.

 

:iagree::iagree: but people ARE fighting back and that last court case was a clear victory. I just like the counter-Monsanto signs. I like the idea of people stopping at farms, chatting with the farmer and then asking, "What is Monsanto anyway?" Nothing like getting the information straight from the REAL farmers! :D

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Oh my, where would we be without you! The whole of history has been awaiting your existence to change things. How dare we think we can have common sense without legislating ourselves to death. How dare my mother's town have allowed the gypsies to babysit their children. Terrible unlicensed gypsies!

 

Hyperbole, much?

 

I know, I am one of those awful people who actually thinks some things are better now.

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Hyperbole, much?

 

I know, I am one of those awful people who actually thinks some things are better now.

 

Sure you think it is, because for you it is.

For those who can't afford to use those services, they are just as screwed as they ever were.

Only now we call them stupid or bad parents for it too.

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Oh my, where would we be without you! The whole of history has been awaiting your existence to change things. How dare we think we can have common sense without legislating ourselves to death. How dare my mother's town have allowed the gypsies to babysit their children. Terrible unlicensed gypsies!

 

If you are going to have institutionalized care, be it for kids, the elderly or mentally disabled people, there needs to be legislation so that those found mistreating or negleccting the people they've been entrusted to care for can be swiftly shut down. Mistreatment and neglect did happen in the past and it seems people just turned a blind eye to it.

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:iagree::iagree: but people ARE fighting back and that last court case was a clear victory. I just like the counter-Monsanto signs. I like the idea of people stopping at farms, chatting with the farmer and then asking, "What is Monsanto anyway?" Nothing like getting the information straight from the REAL farmers! :D

Link, please!

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Sure you think it is, because for you it is.

For those who can't afford to use those services, they are just as screwed as they ever were.

Only now we call them stupid or bad parents for it too.

 

I see what you're saying but I don't see how not having regulations for care would make it better.

ETA: I am not saying every person who cares for another has to be licensed. My mom did daycare for our neighbors and then her nephews and she didn't have a daycare license. I am talking about people or institutions who care for a group, as a business.

Edited by LeslieAnneLevine
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If you are going to have institutionalized care, be it for kids, the elderly or mentally disabled people, there needs to be legislation so that those found mistreating or negleccting the people they've been entrusted to care for can be swiftly shut down. Mistreatment and neglect did happen in the past and it seems people just turned a blind eye to it.

I'm aware of this. At the same time, I don't believe everyone has to be licensed to watch children, nor should families have to choose only those that are.

 

I've babysat a parent with alzheimers (not my own). I'm not licensed. I've been a nanny. I've never been licensed. The situation sounded like the person caring for the children is someone that is part of the group...like family.

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If you are going to have institutionalized care, be it for kids, the elderly or mentally disabled people, there needs to be legislation so that those found mistreating or negleccting the people they've been entrusted to care for can be swiftly shut down. Mistreatment and neglect did happen in the past and it seems people just turned a blind eye to it.

 

Mistreatment and neglect happen every single day in any institution type and all of them are licensed. People turn a blind eye to it all the time.

 

There has been the ability to shut down ANYONE who abused or neglects those they are entrusted with. One call to the police is all it takes. In any state. Licensed or not.

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Who the heck is going to lobby in D.C. for common sense?!?!?

 

 

Hmmm....lobby and common sense may be mutually exclusive terms...the grammatical equivalent of an "oxymoron". :D Sort of like "an honest crook!"

 

It weighs on my heart. We are being poisoned by Monsanto and it's cronies. Competing with the likes of them is driving the agricultural industry back to the days of feudalism and indentured servitude.

 

I know that most of the farms in our area are places that I could not morally allow my children to work. The practices against humans go against my conscience.

 

Though Michigan is an economic pit, I am at least grateful to be able to get 75% of our food from home gardening, wild crops on state land (blueberries, blackberries, wintergreen berries, grapes, and venison), and local Amish and Mennonite farms or the Mennonite bulk food store. I am impressed with the integrity in which these two cultural groups farm. But, they aren't in it for share holders and mass profits. They farm for their families and the benefit of their communities and that makes a world of difference in their approach to agriculture. I do wish the Amish farmers treated their horses better. Man are they hard on these animals and trying to educate them on better husbandry and training techniques is just like banging your head on a brick wall!...an act of futility.

 

It has changed the way we eat. I find that we eat less in terms of volume than most of our neighbors or for that matter, many members of our church famiy. But, we eat more nutrient dense foods and from mostly local, small farm sources with very little GMO cross-contamination.

 

But, again, I know what I know about how seasonal help is treated on the commercial farms in our area and I can tell you that I'd be on public assistance or moving before I'd let dh, myself, or one of the kids take a job with one of these abusive, injury producing operations.

 

Now, there is a you-pick blueberry farm down the road that doesn't spray and is a small family owned production. Very sweet people. Every season they hire teens to pick blueberries in July which they sell to local grocery stores. The kids get so many lbs. of blueberries (it is a reasonable amount though I can't remember the exact number) and a small amount of pay...less than federal minimum wage for certain. However, they treat the kids really, really well. Frequent breaks, a big lunch up at the main house with the family being super friendly and the food wholesome, bon-fire and weenie roast (not wholesome but definitely fun) each evening for those that want to stick around, and a loving farmer, his wife, and their grown kids wandering around making sure everyone is staying well hydrated. I would definitely let my children take a seasonal job with them. The kids could sell their share of the blueberries at a local farmer's market for some extra cash on top of the limited pay. Unfortunately, this kind of commitment to healthy, safe farming practices and diligent concern for the workers, isn't common.

 

Faith

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Sure you think it is, because for you it is.

For those who can't afford to use those services, they are just as screwed as they ever were.

Only now we call them stupid or bad parents for it too.

 

Yes, I believe that those caring for large numbers of unrelated children should have background checks and training. I also believe they should do so in a safe environment.

Strangely, I do not feel the need to apologize for that.

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Mistreatment and neglect happen every single day in any institution type and all of them are licensed. People turn a blind eye to it all the time.

 

There has been the ability to shut down ANYONE who abused or neglects those they are entrusted with. One call to the police is all it takes. In any state. Licensed or not.

 

So we put no regulations in place to at least attempt to prevent abuse and neglect before it happens?

No thank you.

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I grew up in an area with seasonal agricultural work. Most of my friends have worked as 'pickers'. I never did because I never owned a car. It was miles out of town. This was during high school and college. I lived at home during college to cut costs. I couldn't leave my mom without a car while I went to pick. There are not buses where I grew up.

 

My friends never made enough to cover tuition or rent. They were all experienced pickers and could fill their baskets. Sometimes, if they couldn't afford gas they skipped a week. If your car breaks you don't work until it is fixed. And of course no one had enough to pay for a car repair up front. There is NO WAY they were making even 100$ a day.

 

I consider myself lucky that I never picked. My friends who did struggled to get through their autumn semester while working so many long hours. Eventually they all quit college. That said, I was the only one who came from a home with college educated parents.

 

Two friends have permanent injuries from picking. There was no health insurance of course. They were paying it off for years.

 

Another friend has traveled to different parts of the country as seasonal work. She had picked blueberries, cranberries and corn. She has been sexually assaulted on farms, robbed, harassed by law enforcement, badly hurt etc. But, she also needed the money so she kept at it. Thank goodness she isn't doing it any longer.

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There's a difference between "holding out for just the right situation" and not taking jobs like this. I took a $7/hour part-time job at a bargain bookstore after grad school. I wasn't "holding out for just the right situation" by any means. There were plenty of jobs that I'd be willing to do. But, quite frankly, I would have gone on government assistance before I started doing seasonal or migrant farm work for minimum wage and no benefits. I'd go as far as to say it would be stupid to do otherwise; to take on a job that is going to be gone soon, that pays little, that has no benefits, and that could quite possibly leave you injured or disabled when you could collect government assistance or unemployment as you apply for other jobs would be a silly, unwise gamble, especially for those with families to support.

 

The only people who take these jobs are people who have either are literally forced to (like the slaves we brought here to do this labor for hundreds of years) or the sharecroppers who were denied any other opportunity, or people who are forced into it because they have not a single other option (migrant farm workers during the Great Depression). Nobody chooses this kind of work. It is not like working on a family farm, at all. It is work that is done by the most outcast/despised in society. Of course you aren't going to get people with any other options at all lining up to do it. It's like asking why we needed slaves at all: why didn't all the poor white people just go volunteer to work for low pay on the plantations? They didn't because if you have any other option at all, you do not and never have done this kind of work. That's just how our society is.

 

My church has a small farm, and we get tons of people volunteering to work on it. Most of them are young, and they aren't getting paid. They like doing it. They aren't averse to hard work. But, they certainly wouldn't be lining up to work as seasonal farm labor, because that is a very different thing. It's different than working in your garden, it's different than working on your own farm, and it's different than working on a small local farm that isn't operating for a profit.

 

And, do we want to live in a country where people need to get up at 4:30 to milk somebody else's cows, then pick somebody else's crops for 12 hours, and then do some more milking before going home to care for their children (who have been watched by undocumented workers all day) just to get by? In what view could that be a good or just society?

 

Oh. My. Word.

 

No wonder this country is in the state it is in.

 

 

asta

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Oh. My. Word.

 

No wonder this country is in the state it is in.

 

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by this.

 

Who has done this sort of labor all throughout American history? Slaves. Sharecroppers. Desperate Depression-era migrants. And now illegal immigrants. Sure, you may get an occasional high school or college student doing it for extra money, but this is not and has never been work that people who want permanent employment to support their families have taken if they have any alternative at all available to them.

 

Are you suggesting that people who have had any other option have ever lined up to take these jobs? I'd be very interested in what you are basing that view on, because it just doesn't seem to line up with historical reality.

 

Offer factory work. Offer retail jobs spending all day on your feet. Offer warehouse jobs lifting boxes. Offer jobs as caregivers in nursing homes wiping people's rears. You will get far more applicants than you have spots for. It's not about hard work, it's about this specific type of work being labor that has ALWAYS been done by people who were either actually forced into it or forced into it by circumstance.

 

And, like I said, that's for good reason. It would be, quite frankly, stupid to take a temporary job that provides low pay and no benefits and that has a high risk for injury when you have a family to support and have the option of turning to things like government assistance for temporary help. It is safer and smarter to take the government assistance and look for permanent employment.

Edited by twoforjoy
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I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by this.

 

Who has done this sort of labor all throughout American history? Slaves. Sharecroppers. Desperate Depression-era migrants. And now illegal immigrants. Sure, you may get an occasional high school or college student doing it for extra money, but this is not and has never been work that people who want permanent employment to support their families have taken if they have any alternative at all available to them.

 

Are you suggesting that people who have had any other option have ever lined up to take these jobs? I'd be very interested in what you are basing that view on, because it just doesn't seem to line up with historical reality.

 

:iagree:

 

I am struggling to find what you have said that anyone could consider historically inaccurate.

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Exactly. Heck, I am not afraid of hard work. I worked as a welder when I became a single mom. I needed a job with benefits and my dad taught me to weld. It was hot and hard work, but it was good money and I wasnt directly outside. If I was to do outside work here in FL, it would literally probably kill me. I can't sweat as much as others do....my body doesnt regulate itself well. I am out in the sun for an hour and I am throwing up, headache, etc.

I have a dd like that.

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So we put no regulations in place to at least attempt to prevent abuse and neglect before it happens?

No thank you.

 

Lucky and blessed are you (and myself) who have the luxury of making that choice.

 

I really don't care about regs. Fine by me.

 

But I don't have any problem with people not accessing those sources in an effort to do more for their families. I certainly don't think they are automatically bad parents or care givers for it.

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