Alan, there really is something wrong with this picture. I looked up Broetje Orchards last night....it is a Huge operation, and seems to treat their helpers very well. Permanently has 850-900 employees, and in the peak season, seems to hire about 1300....
The foreign labor issue is rather complex unfortunately. Broetje is a very interesting example as well. His operation benefited very significantly from public funding (Port of Walla Walla IIRC) to the tune of millions of $. They paid for a large fraction of his packing plant (since he would provide jobs) which then went primarily to Hispanics (some of which might be citizens) mostly non citizens. He built a pretty good housing complex as well (again some public funds)but it can't house even 20% of his regular employees I don't think. Now for the rub. The Hispanics have large families, and this places significant strain on the local public service system, from medical care (largely free to low income) and schools. I would love to see a good economic analysis done of the true community cost of Hispanic farm labor, given the seasonal employment situation, and the family size issue, including such things as Federal earned income credit, etc.
OR & WA already have the highest minimum wage laws in the USA, but even at that, these jobs do not pay their way in the community. I suspect something more like $10/hr or better would be needed to accomplish this. The big crunch is coming in the K-12 school system, where some schools here in eastern Oregon are hitting 50% Hispanic, and the local voters are refusing to fund new schools to handle the increase. The voters are property owning citizens (predominately white). In a single generation this shift has occurred. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
In reality, the employment of Hispanic foreign labor, with the public picking up the social tab, amounts to a very large public subsidy to farmers, one not even acknowledged by most people. The local whites edged out of manual farm labor over the last decade have largely moved into trades such as construction. Now the Hispanics have woken up to the fact that better pay and working conditions are available in those areas, so they are targeting those jobs now. The housing boom of the last 3-4 years in this area has helped significantly with employment, (this area has high unemployment in general), so it will be interesting to see the social dynamics as real estate cools.
Kind of interesting that a small fraction of the population, farmers, having profited for less than a generation due to foreign labor, have now permanently transformed the social future of this area. For better or worse, I don't know. |
