By law, each worker must earn minimum wage, or $7.25 an hour. But there’s an incentive system. Harvesters get a green ticket worth 50 cents every time they dump a bucket of cucumbers. If they collect more than 15 tickets an hour, they can beat minimum wage.
The Latino workers moved furiously Thursday for the extra pay.
Jose Ranye, 37, bragged he’s the best picker in Americus, the largest community near the farm. His whirling hands filled one bucket in 25 seconds. He said he dumped about 200 buckets of cucumbers before lunch, meaning he earned roughly $20 an hour. He expected to double his tickets before the end of the day.
None of the probationers could keep pace. Pay records showed the best filled only 134 buckets a day, and some as little as 20. They lingered at the water cooler behind the truck, sat on overturned red buckets for smoke breaks and stopped working to take cell phone calls. They also griped that the Latinos received more tickets per bucket than they did, an accusation that appeared unfounded.
Robert Dawson, 24, was on his fourth day of fieldwork. On probation for commercial burglary, he said the governor’s idea was a good one and long overdue. He said farmers were at least partially to blame if they’re experiencing a labor shortage because they hired illegal immigrants.
“I feel like they should have gone and hired us first before they even hired them,” he said in the morning. “You pay us right and we’ll get out here and work. If you don’t want to pay us nothing and we’re out here in this hot heat, 100-and-some degree weather, it ain’t gonna last.”
That thing that everyone said would happen is now happening.
Background: Not to be outdone by Arizona, misguided lawmakers in Georgia in May passed their own “papers, please” law that allows law enforcement to question certain people about their immigration status. And, unlike Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation, the Georgia law also creates stricter reporting requirements for businesses that hire workers and harsher punishments for companies that employ undocumented workers.
Authorities in Georgia will begin enforcing the law July 1.
What’s happening now: Undocumented workers are now leaving Georgia en masse as the enforcement date approaches – leaving millions of dollars of rotting crops in the fields and sabotaging the state’s farming economy because no one else will fill the labor void they’ve left.
“Georgia labor officials estimate a shortage of some 11,000 workers in the agriculture sector, and the state has enacted a program where people on probation, who often have difficulty finding jobs, are sent into the fields,” reported the AFP. But employers are finding that, when given the opportunity to work in place of an undocumented laborer, America’s probationers aren’t nearly as productive. This disruption to Georgia’s farming economy will hurt consumers.
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day fourteen.
from Reyna
Alex Day: Georgia