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Colorado Farmers Hire Locals for Farm Labor, They Quit After Six HoursTate Watkins | October 5, 2011Reason Magazine Oct. 07, 2011 |
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 With unemployment in his state at 8.5 percent and visa requirements for seasonal workers becoming more frustrating, Colorado farmer John Harold decided to hire fewer migrant farm workers for his harvest this summer and supplement his smaller-than-usual team with locals. How did it go? The New York Times reports: Six hours was enough, between the 6 a.m. start time and noon lunch break, for the first wave of local workers to quit. Some simply never came back and gave no reason. Twenty-five of them said specifically, according to farm records, that the work was too hard. On the Harold farm, pickers walk the rows alongside a huge harvest vehicle called a mule train, plucking ears of corn and handing them up to workers on the mule who box them and lift the crates, each weighing 45 to 50 pounds.Other farmers in the area that the Times talked to reported similar experiences. And it's not like the local workers they were hiring were a bunch of hipster weaklings. According to area farmers, most of the local hires were Hispanics who probably had a history of doing farm work while they were new immigrants until finding better work in construction or landscaping. Read More |
