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  1. #1
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    Golf course labor scarce "SOB"

    http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll ... 90323/1075

    From Today's Editions Of The News-press
    Golf course labor scarce
    Immigration, housing affect availability

    By Seth Soffian
    Originally posted on October 09, 2006


    TODD STUBING/news-press.com
    Alejandro De La Garza searches for weeds to spot-treat on the fourth fairway of the Creekside course at Bonita Bay in Bonita Springs. The course, which had been closed for three weeks for routine maintenance, reopened last week.
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    Whether it's at high-end private facilities or pitch-and-putt executive courses open to the public, golf courses across Southwest Florida are almost always manicured to the finest detail by the time golfers arrive each morning.

    Getting them that way, however, is becoming more costly and challenging every day.

    Along with rising costs for land, insurance and all-important fertilizers and other petroleum-based products, the escalating costs and availability of labor have become a concern for some Southwest Florida courses.

    "You can't get any," said Dave Smith, owner of S&S Golf Management in Fort Myers, which operates about 10 courses in Southwest Florida. "Almost every superintendent we have in Fort Myers (and) Naples is short."

    Shortages in skilled and unskilled labor — or, at least, greater costs in finding labor — are affecting courses' bottom lines, operators say.

    In the past four years, Smith said the average hourly salary for mechanics — a critical position, along with irrigation and spray technicians — has risen from about $13.50 to almost $20. Although several area superintendents said they haven't seen increases that large, wages have gone up to keep pace with the cost of living in Southwest Florida.

    "I'd say housing is at least 65 to 70 percent of it," Blane Burgess, general manager at Cypress Lake Country Club in Fort Myers, said of the reason for the rising labor costs. "Just look at the median prices of housing."

    In Lee County, the median home value is at $223,000.

    Collier hit hardest

    Although no one in Southwest Florida is immune, the greatest impact from skyrocketing housing costs is being felt in Naples.

    Darren Davis, director of golf course operations for Olde Florida Golf Club in Naples and a past president of the Florida Golf Course Superintendents Association, said he's paying the highest salary he ever has for a first assistant superintendent.

    It also recently took him 90 days to fill a second assistant superintendent job that once could be filled in little time. Even then, the job was only filled because the new hire was able to split housing costs with a roommate.

    "Finding labor is getting harder and harder for all hospitality-type employers," Davis said. "Two teachers in Collier County can't even afford to buy a first home. My guys are making less than that. If two teachers can't afford a home here, how can my guys?"

    Even where the cost of living isn't as great a factor, increases in entry-level wages — to an average of $8 to $9 per hour — can filter up the ladder.

    "If I raise entry level $1.50, I can't let my irrigation tech or spray tech be much closer to entry level," Smith said. "They have licenses. I end up taking them up a little bit also."

    Courses hurting

    The labor pool for golf courses also has been thinned by the once-red-hot housing industry, although some course operators say they are starting to see workers come back to golf courses as the housing industry cools.

    "They kind of suck up a lot of the labor," said Hal Akins, director of golf course operations for the 54-hole Bonita Bay Club, which has a grounds staff of 55 to 60. "They tend to pay more than what we historically paid as a profession. We have had to adjust a little bit. It's been a challenge, no question about it."

    Smith said he expects to get back a few people from the housing industry.

    "But I'm not sure we're going to get enough back to get back on even keel," he said.

    Also of significance in Southwest Florida, where the majority of unskilled course laborers are Hispanic, are increased efforts — and pressure — to be certain that employees are legal immigrants.

    "I think that's a big part of it," Smith said. "Immigration has slowed down, and we have to hire 100 percent legal immigrants. We go through a leasing company. We have to have them checked by Social Security card and by green card. I know all of our people are legal."

    Going to such lengths further limits the labor pool.

    "The individual employers are being more cautious," Cypress Lake's Burgess said. "They don't want anything to come back and haunt them."

    Unemployment low

    Rich Lamb, director of golf for city-owned Fort Myers Country Club and Eastwood Golf Course, said municipal facilities haven't been affected by labor difficulties because city salaries, benefits and raises generally are better for skilled and unskilled positions.

    Precautions hiring illegal immigrants also have been extensive for some time, Lamb said.

    "It's a lot different," Lamb said of the labor challenges for public and private enterprises. "Our labor costs are far, far higher than theirs. We're probably the highest of all the maintenance-type workers."

    Lucas Benitez, a leader of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which monitors the situation of laborers regionally and statewide, said there is no labor shortage.

    He pointed to better pay and increased competition from other fields — regardless of whether immigrants are legal or illegal.

    "Businesses are fighting for the employees available," he said. "Construction jobs pay much better, and workers are going to jobs where they can earn $1 or $2 more an hour."

    Indeed, unemployment rates in Southwest Florida remain at or below state and national rates. In August, the jobless rate was 2.8 percent in Lee County, 3.6 percent in Collier County and 3.5 percent in Charlotte.

    The statewide unemployment rate was 3.6 percent in August and 4.7 percent nationwide.

    But Fort Myers resident Rufino Gaspar, 36, a legal permanent resident from Guatemala who has worked for golf courses in Southwest Florida for about 10 years, said it has become more difficult for immigrant laborers to find work at golf courses.

    "They do check now more than they used to," said Gaspar, a spray technician at Cypress Lake who has personally benefited from a tightening labor market.

    Fluent in English and Spanish and the holder of a pesticides license, Gaspar has seen his wages climb as a spray technician at several courses in the area. He made $8 per hour at his first golf job here, at Bonita Bay, and makes more than twice that at Cypress Lake. Gaspar is married and has two young children and a mortgage.

    "There was nothing wrong with it. It's just the cost of life," Gaspar said of his reason for leaving for a better salary at Cypress Lake. "You want to make more."

    Golfers pick up cost

    While increases of only $1 per hour might not sound significant, payroll costs generally amount to about 55 percent of superintendents' total budgets, Davis said. With operations budgets surpassing $1 million at some high-end facilities in Southwest Florida, the total increase for labor can be significant.

    With such costs typically passed along to consumers in the form of higher fees or dues — or even contributing to other rising costs that have forced some facilities to close — the decision whether to pay them ultimately rests with golfers themselves.

    "The maintenance and appearance are important to my wife and I," said Wisconsin businessman Ralph Freitag, 66, who with wife Julie has lived in and been a member at Renaissance in Fort Myers for about two years.

    "You come through the gates, it has all the plants and greenery, going all the way through the whole community," said Freitag, who owns a number of Taco Bell franchises in Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa. "It's that first impression. It sets a tone. I guess that's why it probably gets the accolades it does."

    — The News-Press community conversation editor David Plazas contributed to this report.


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  2. #2
    Senior Member swatchick's Avatar
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    It is costly and some golf courses have contracted out maintenance and up keep in an effort to save money. I spoke with someone who used to be in charge of it and that is what he told me. Those companies who bid on the jobs try to be competive and get greedy so they use the ssame excuse as farmers.
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    I live in Florida and the shortage of legal workers is indeed due to the cost of living. Luckily we bought our house before the housing boom. People trying to buy houses here now are getting mortgages 3 times what ours is. Property taxes are sky high and homeowners insurance is unbelievable with the hurricanes we have had over the past few years. Rent is not much better. Affordable housing is a big deal all over central and especially South Florida. People just cannot afford housing on salaries that are being paid in the service areas and in many professional positions. Massive amounts of people are leaving the state for that reason alone.

    I really do not think it has anything to do with less illegals being here, believe me there are plenty.

  4. #4
    Senior Member swatchick's Avatar
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    Dlm1968: I live in Miami. With the cost of living so high you would think that people would take a part time job to make extra cash. Doing landsacpe maintenance for a golf course is done early in the morning before many people go to work. I have done jobs to make extra money in the past such as delivering telephone books and newspapers.
    As for the cost of housing you can thank The Formula, heirs to the Dunkin Donut chain as they are partly responsible for a fake boom. They got investors to buy condos for 15% less than they were worth so the builder had enough presales to get a loan to build. It looked like this huge demand for condos and prices went up. Those units would then be resold. These investors flipped properties like stocks. In the end alot of these condos had no real buyers. Prices have fallen and builders in many cases can't get rid of them. In the end home and condo owners who purchased recently got taken as their property taxes skyrocketed.
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    Golfers pick up cost

    While increases of only $1 per hour might not sound significant, payroll costs generally amount to about 55 percent of superintendents' total budgets, Davis said. With operations budgets surpassing $1 million at some high-end facilities in Southwest Florida, the total increase for labor can be significant
    How sad.

    Tiger Woods lives in Florida, as do many other pro golfers. I think they can absorb the cost increase, since Woods alone must make close to $50 million a year.
    It's like hell vomited and the Bush administration appeared.

  6. #6
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    swatchick - alot of flippers got caught with their pants down. Foreclosings are rising, and fast. Between the flippers getting caught with property they can't unload and homebuyers using the creative mortgages that are now converting the market has to correct. I am in St. Lucie county and there is a glut of houses for sale. I left South Florida about 6 years ago and will never go back. We just could not stand it anymore, more power to you.

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