"Alex W." wrote in
:

On Sat, 01 Jun 2013 11:42:00 -0700, Jeanne Douglas wrote:


I always ask people how much more they're willing to pay for their
produce in order to avoid having them picked by undocumented workers.

It's a pretty pointless question, I'm afraid, Jeanne.
What people will tell you is that they would do the same job
for reasonable and sutainable wages -- it's the
ideologically correct thign to say. What people DO, on the
other hand, is to sit and kvetch about the lousy labour
market without ever even going anywhere near a farm. People
will likely tell you that they are prepared to pay more for
fruit or meat or services if that helps save American jobs.
Then they will go and buy the cheap stuff which they know
cannot have been produced without cutting corners -- and
labour costs are the single biggest corner to cut.

Several years ago in Germany, the government, pressured by
trade unions, passed a law forcing farmers to pay their
casual and illegal foreign seasonal labour the same rate as
native German workers. As a direct result, that very year
the asparagus crop rotted in the fields as farmers found it
cheaper to let their crops go unharvested than to pay these
excessive wages. The law was very quickly modified.




Conservatives have no clue about the dynamics
of the labor market.




Pear Crop Rots as Hands Kept from Crossing Border
ABC News

Nick Ivicevich has been growing pears in northern
California for 45 years, but never had he seen as
good a crop as the one that blossomed here this
season. But now, much of his crop, almost two
million pounds, lies on the ground -- rotting away.

Thanks to increased security along the Mexican
border, thousands of migrant workers who harvest
the nation's fruits and vegetables never showed
up for work. Ivicevich's pears ripened and then
just fell off the tree.

Farmers across the country blame Congress for
not coming up with legislation that would grant
migrant workers "seasonal worker status,"
allowing them to come work in U.S. fields
temporarily and legally. It's a matter of
national security, some say.

"We couldn't get by without foreign workers in
California," said Jack King of the California
Farm Bureau. "We employ some 450,000 workers."

As if things weren't bad enough, the farmers in
California are worried about the pruning season
for the pear trees in December. And then there's
the next harvest -- not only pears, but also of
grapes and walnuts. Unless those workers somehow
get across that border, agriculture here once
again will be hard hit, if not crippled.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/US/story?id=2677661&page=1