MSNBC: Why Americans won't do dirty jobs

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Why Americans won't do dirty jobs

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45246594/ns/business-us_business/



Only a skeleton crew was available recently to harvest tomatoes at Ellen Jenkins' farm near Birmingham, Ala., where many fruits rotted in the field.

By Elizabeth Dwoskin

updated 39 minutes ago

Skinning, gutting, and cutting up catfish is not easy or pleasant work. No one knows this better than Randy Rhodes, president of Harvest Select, which has a processing plant in impoverished Uniontown, Ala. For years, Rhodes has had trouble finding Americans willing to grab a knife and stand 10 or more hours a day in a cold, wet room for minimum wage and skimpy benefits.

Most of his employees are Guatemalan. Or they were, until Alabama enacted an immigration law in September that requires police to question people they suspect might be in the U.S. illegally and punish businesses that hire them. The law, known as HB56, is intended to scare off undocumented workers, and in that regard it’s been a success. It’s also driven away legal immigrants who feared being harassed.

Rhodes arrived at work on Sept. 29, the day the law went into effect, to discover many of his employees missing. Panicked, he drove an hour and a half north to Tuscaloosa, where many of the immigrants who worked for him lived. Rhodes, who doesn’t speak Spanish, struggled to get across how much he needed them. He urged his workers to come back. Only a handful did. “We couldn’t explain to them that some of the things they were scared of weren’t going to happen,” Rhodes says. “I wanted them to see that I was their friend, and that we were trying to do the right thing.”

His ex-employees joined an exodus of thousands of immigrant field hands, hotel housekeepers, dishwashers, chicken plant employees, and construction workers who have fled Alabama for other states. Like Rhodes, many employers who lost workers followed federal requirements—some even used the E-Verify system—and only found out their workers were illegal when they disappeared.

[hatrack]

1. Did Randy Rhodes offer to pay them more?

I didn't see it in the excerpt here, though I think they'd have mentioned it had the subject arisen . .

[MineralMan]

5. Nah. He didn't and he won't.

Poor Randy Rhodes...

[Enrique]

2. here it is

I'm surprised it's in here, most stories like this leave this obvious truth out of the story:

Tom Surtees is tired of hearing employers grouse about their lazy countrymen. “Don’t tell me an Alabamian can’t work out in the field picking produce because it’s hot and labor intensive,” he says. “Go into a steel mill. Go into a foundry. Go into numerous other occupations and tell them Alabamians don’t like this work because it’s hot and it requires manual labor.” The difference being, jobs in Alabama’s foundries and steel mills pay better wages—with benefits. “If you’re trying to justify paying someone below whatever an appropriate wage level is so you can bring your product, I don’t think that’s a valid argument,” Surtees says.

[eShirl]

11. +1!

[Sherman A1]

18. Bingo

:thumbsup:

[otohara]

3. We'll Just Buy More Fruit/Veggies From China

to make up for the rotted food.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

10. +1

[MineralMan]

4. Pay workers a living wage, and they will show up. Pay them

crap and treat them like crap and they won't. There's your equation. You suck Randy Rhodes.

[Ikonoklast]

9. Free Market Capitalism at work, Mr. Rhodes.

No pay, no work.

Capitalsts hate that part of the equation.

Guess you need to re-think your business model built on slave wages, jagoff.

[HereSince1628]

6. It just could have something to do with

"10 or more hours a day in a cold, wet room for minimum wage and skimpy benefits."

Gaddam Murikans just won't agree to being worked like serfs! It's just ruinin tha Amurikan way!

[enlightenment]

7. Thoughtfully written article - once past the initial section.

Thank you for posting it.

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

8. not only are they low paying and non-benefited

but many are seasonal, you are constantly worried about the next job and the next month's mortgage payment. If those issues were addressed, there would be no shortage of workers.

But to blame American workers because they want to know how the house payment will be made in 3 months is really ridiculous, and will never address the real situation of farm worker shortages.

[saras]

12. It's not just the wages. Take these jobs and you will be treated like migrant labor.

It's not just the money (although the money is a substantial part of the status as well).

In addition, because the jobs are so low-paying and traditionally go to abused workers, the working conditions are often much worse than they need to be, not even for profit but for the creation of control and dominance. There are often ways to make the jobs less hard on people, that are disallowed for no good reason, or for trivial reasons of short-term cost. Lots of Americans don't care for that kind of treatment, at any pay.

Ex. "10 or more hours a day in a cold, wet room"
The room doesn't have to be cold, or wet. Only the food being processed does. Better workplaces have been created. We don't do it as a matter of policy.

[xchrom]

13. recommend

[denverbill]

14. We had a slaughterhouse in my hometown.

As a kid, they took our cub scout group on a tour. It was godawful. The stench, the gore, a barrel full of pigs heads, eyes open staring at you, the screeching of the pigs. No way catfish cleaning is near as bad as that. But every worker there was an American, a very well paid American. Those were some of the best paying blue collar jobs around.

[enough]

15. Behind everything in this article is the fact that we expect our food to be cheap.

Interesting article, thanks for posting.

[Dash Riprock]

16. George Bush used that line a lot...

"these are jobs Americans won't do". They won't do them at that wage. There's a show on called "Dirty Jobs" hosted by Mike Rowe. It clearly shows that Americans will do the dirtiest jobs if the wage is right.

[tcaudilllg]

17. Coal mining is a dirty job.

Plenty of Americans do it.