Thread: Cherry growers hiring teens to harvest fruit

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/642 ... rvest.html

Monday, June 26, 2006 · Last updated 2:48 p.m. PT

Cherry growers hiring teens to harvest fruit

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

DONALD, Wash. -- Bianca Cruz, a senior next fall at Wapato High School, needed a summer job. John Verbrugge, a cherry grower in Wapato, needed cherry pickers.

Cruz, 17, is one of about 110 high school students working for growers throughout the Yakima Valley this summer picking cherries and thinning apples.

The Washington State Fruit Commission has estimated this year's cherry harvest at 120,000 tons. The bumper crop is driving an already increasing demand for pickers this summer.

Months before the cherry harvest began, WorkSource Yakima - a division of the state Employment Security Department - was recruiting high school students to fill picking positions.

Larry Sanchez, area director for WorkSource Yakima, said growers filed more than 700 job orders for cherry pickers last week, a 20 percent increase from last year.

The high school program is one of several recruitment efforts. WorkSource Yakima employees have gone to churches and supermarkets on the weekends, made radio announcements and worked with several community organizations to find workers.



"We're trying everything we can," Sanchez said.

The growers need the help. One grower reported that she had only 20 percent of the workers she needed, said Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers League. Anecdotal information from growers suggests shortages throughout the area, Gempler said.

Verbrugge, owner of Valley Fruit, has been outspoken about the region's labor needs for months. Verbrugge was among the growers who hired a labor company, under the federal guest-worker program, to bring in farm workers from Thailand the past two years.

"It seems very, very tight right now and we're not at the peak of demand right now," Verbrugge said.

Cruz said she spent her first day goofing off with her friend and picked only eight boxes of cherries. She assumed it wasn't a problem; she thought she was paid by the hour.

When she found out she was being paid by the box, and that she'd made only $40 that day, she knew she'd better get serious.

Cruz and her friend decided to team up and help each other pick the most cherries possible. Cruz took only 15 minutes for her lunch break so she could continue to work.

By the end of the day Friday, she had picked 17 boxes of cherries and made $85 double what she had been making earlier in the week.

"Time goes by when you have a goal that day to get more and more boxes," she said.

Verbrugge said while he had difficulties with some students and had to let several of them go, overall he has been satisfied with their work. But he also said teenagers shouldn't be the sole solution to any labor shortage.

"When you look at the amount of people needed, there's not enough kids out there," he said.

Even so, he would like to participate in the program again next year, so he can hire some of the same students, who will have more experience.

"It works out," he said. "They're not in school and we need a lot of people."

Isn't it strange that all they had to do was put out the word that laborers are needed and they show up? Will even bet once these teen-agers go back to school and talk about having a summer job, there will be even more show up next year!!! This is the way it has worked for decades but our government would rather import illegals!

When I was a teen, most of my friends worked at fast food restaurants for their teen jobs. I myself got a job at a tea company (nationally known) in the shipping room I worked from 2:00pm to 6:30 or 7:00 every weekday on the loading dock. Most of the part-time workers were high school and college students. Where can they go for a job now having to compete with illegals willing to work for the low wages and full-time without benefits to boot? Many kudos to the Fruit Growers in Washington State for giving American Kids a chance to earn and show 'em what they got!