Thread: Cleanup leaves growers short of workers for harvest

http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/news/art ... 98,00.html

Cleanup leaves growers short of workers for harvest
Growers think workers are being siphoned away from the fields and groves by builders and landscapers B and even FEMA for cleanup elsewhere in Florida and in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

By LAURA LAYDEN, lllayden@naplesnews.com
November 20, 2005

Local growers say they're having a hard time finding enough workers to clean up the mess that Hurricane Wilma left behind.

The storm flooded vegetable fields. It blew over citrus trees and knocked fruit to the ground. It destroyed packing houses and ripped apart greenhouses, tearing up tender young vegetable plants that had yet to be planted.

Wilma arrived just as growers were about to start their winter harvest and as migrant workers were starting to return to Southwest Florida for season.

While the storm was deadly for growers, it didn't destroy everything. There are still crops to pick and there's a lot of cleanup to be done.

"Right now, at this moment, we are desperate for more help for cleanup and for the ongoing crop. There is still a crop out there. The crop was hurt and some of it was destroyed but it was not 100 percent destroyed for the year," said Jay Taylor, president of Taylor & Fulton Inc. in Palmetto, which has tomato acreage in northern, central and southern Florida, including Collier County.

His company could use another 100 workers a day just in Immokalee to help replant and to care for and harvest the tomato plants that survived.

Taylor said there's more work than usual this time of year in vegetable fields because of the hurricane.

"We will have an ongoing need," Taylor said. "We need more now than we will in the future. We have so much work to do to catch up."

Other growers feel his pain.

"There's not much help around right now," said John Alexander, chairman and chief executive of Alico Inc., a LaBelle-based grower whose crops include citrus and sugarcane. "We're a little early for the normal influx of migrant workers. They come in a little later."

The peak of season is still more than a month away. But that's just one of the reasons growers believe there's a shortage of workers. They say they're competing with other cleanup efforts in Southwest Florida. They think workers are being siphoned away from the fields and groves by local builders and landscapers â€â€

Hey Farmers!! Print up some ads, place them in newspapers in high unemployment counties of the US, promise American Workers only; give a travel stipend, pay a fair wage for the work in accordance with American Law and guess what?? You'll have plenty of workers to tend your crops. You may have to show them how to do the work; perform a little "on-the-job" training....but once you do you'll have the best workers you've had in a very long time. You may have some increase in your labor charges, so you may earn less, but your profit will be legal and of the people, by the people and for the people of the United States.

Then, while your adapting to the task of running a legal farm in the United States, contact your Representative and Senators, tell them to Pass the Fair Tax, http://fairtax.org and you can increase your profits legally by eliminating social security payments, medicare payments on your legal workers and eliminating federal income tax on your profits, so by going Legal and Going Fair Tax....you'll increase the profits overall and have your best season yet.

Sit on your duffs waiting for some illegals to show up and pick and tend your crops? You're going broke and just don't know it yet. The illegals have moved on and up stealing construction and trade jobs from Americans. They could care less about your "crops".

Some farmworkers are making $10 or more an hour cleaning up trash and trees in Southwest Florida. Growers say they can't afford to pay that much, especially with the losses they face from Hurricane Wilma.

Just how much do these farmers pay anyway?

$8 in most areas plus a bonus on picking. On clean-up, I don't know. Looks like if they paid $10 they would have all the labor they could dream of, eh?

The American Labor is there for $8 if they'll just advertise and get the word out to the work force instead of WHINING all the time.

BE "MEN", Farmers....recruit! Everyone heard of this word before?

We've heard your WHINING, but we don't know where your farm is, what work needs to be done, how long the job is, what the pay is, even though all these things are essential information for a prospective legal American Worker to consider.

Instead of whining, ADVERTISE THE JOB!

Duh!!!

There is no annual cap on the H-2A unskilled temporary worker visa. These farmers can get as much labor as they need. Of course they have to pay a certain wage and provide housing for their workers and that is what they do not want to do. They are looking for cheap slaves that they can treat like human trash.

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