Refuting the ag-business myth that cheap labor is required
I got this from API (alt.politics.immigration, an anything goes newsgroup dedicated to the discussion of illegal immigration). Fred (f.barnes) did an analysis on how increased wages paid to agricultural workers might not greatly increase the cost of produce.
> Here's a little analysis I did. It may not be precisely accurate, but
> it's somewhere in the ballpark.
>
> Right now lettuce is selling for $1.00/head, and about 10 cents (or
> less) of that is from the cost of labor. Lettuce pickers are earning
> about $8.00/hour. That implies that each worker on the field crew
> must be credited with $8/$.10 = 80 heads/hour. (That seems a rather
> low number, but not all members of the labor crew actually pick, some
> load trucks, some distribute boxes, etc.)
>
> So if we raise wages to $25.00 per hour, an increase of $17.00 per
> hour, that would mean that $17/80 = 21 cents is added to each head of
> lettuce by the increased labor cost. That is, the price of lettuce
> would go from $1.00 per head to $1.21 per head from increased labor
> costs alone.
>
> And if increased wages are to bring the cost of lettuce to $50.00 per
> head, increased wages must add $49.00 to each head of lettuce. So,
> the the increase would have to be $x/80 = $49.00. That is, each
> laborer's wages would have to be increased by $x = $3,920.00 per hour.
>
> Those pro-illegal people know all this, they just lie about 50 dollars
> per head of lettuce trying to frighten people.
