Though Eckel's tomato pickers made an average of $16.59 per hour last year, he said the relatively high wage is not enough to attract local labor to work the fields.
"A lot of people think with immigration that we're talking about immigrants taking jobs from others. Let me tell you, there is no local labor that is going to go out and harvest those tomatoes in 90-degree temperatures except our immigrant labor," Eckel said. "They come here to do a job that no one else will do in this country."
Friday, March 28, 2008
$16.59 an Hour Jobs That No One Wants
Fred Eckels Sons Farms, the largest producer of fresh-to market tomatoes in Pennsylvania, has stopped planting tomatoes and pumpkins and will only plant half as much corn. Here's why:
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2 comments:
I find it very suspect that the immigration issue is news lately. They've been here a very long time. Seems like someone is trying to stir up conservative voters by appealing to fear and racism.
Living in Arizona, that sounds very familiar. I mean, most of our farm jobs don't pay as much as the article you mentioned, but they do pay over minimum wage, for the most part. And you hear from both Arizona and California farmers all the time that with the crackdown on illegal immigration, and the crackdown on employers hiring illegal immigrants, that farmers are having a hard time getting people to work their farms. Crops even go bad because there is no one to harvest.
We need a workable guest worker program in this country again. I have been to Mexico enough to know why we have such an illegal immigration problem from there, and why they will gladly take the farm jobs that nobody else wants. In AZ, some of these jobs can involve working in 110 degree heat.
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