On Tue, 18 Dec 2018 10:18:27 -0800, Frank Krygowski wrote:

The
farm owner said he couldn't get "regular Americans" to do the work. They
wouldn't put up with the job for more than one day.

We get that bleat over here as well, but my 2c is that the farmer/
industry are responsible for their own predicament.

It is not so much just the "job" but the other stuff that goes with it
nowadays. Over here, in the past, during various work/study breaks I'd
check the harvest timetable, load up the bicycle with camping gear and
sally forth for the experience and extra income.

You'd arrive in town, check the workers wanted board, choose what you
wanted to do and head off to talk to the farm about what was required
and where you could camp. That stage has now disappeared behind online
"entities" where you have to register, sign away all your rights and
liberties and be noting more that an on-site casual who gets work if they
need you.

First the experienced farmers moved on and "buinesses with managers
became involved" and you'd loose valuable time waiting for the clowns to
get organised with basic stuff like not enough buckets, not enough
ladders, not enough working tools, not enough bins, nothing to record
bins, no idea of how many bins needed to be picked, no idea of which
fruit needed to be picked and on and on.

Then the week would roll round and there would be chucks taken out that
you weren't told about, union, "insurances", TAX (WTF, at the maxium rate
35%) and nil/dodgy paperwork. At least with paperwork,you would get any
excess back within 15 months.

Later you'd be lucky to survive a week where there wasn't a sudden inrush
of extra labourers because num-nuts could not do basic maths on how many
workers they needed initially to get the job done in time, so all your
mutual worker co-operation went up the spout as these short term bozos
were all me-me-me.

Some farmers managed to make all their workers sick by telling everyone
to camp around the farm dam and use the "toilet" facilities just up the
slope. Armies throughout history have learn that is what yu don't do. So
gummint stepped in with regulations about proper approved accommodation
being required, aka cheap jerry built that offered rat, flea and other
vermin accommodation for most of the year.

So you ended up having to paying money to a camping ground operator to
pictch your tent and then travel to and from the farm each day. At that
stage, for anyone with any home/family, any financial incentive to
actually do this work evaporated.

On top of that farmers put the job of selling their produce to
"marketers" who all basically courted the big two chain supermartkets by
offering produce at lower and lower prices and really cutting the fat out
of their operations.

One of the activities SWMBO'd & I did was organising the food for clubs
were were involved with from 10-40 for a week or up to 400 peole for a
weekend. One of the wrinkles to keep costs down was going to the state
farmers wholesale market and buying in bulk. When you could get the basic
vegetable bulk for $20 for 24hours for 400 people you know that there can
not be any fat for the farmers.

As far as I'm concerned, farmers have backed themselves into the corner
they are now in with their labour deficit.

Also seen similar problems in industry, especially when they start
"outsouring" the labour providers.