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NPR has an August 23rd, 2018 story about the original "A-TEAM" (Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower), a 1965 project to replace migrant workers with high school kids on summer break.
The year was 1965. On Cinco de Mayo, newspapers across the country reported that Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz wanted to recruit 20,000 high schoolers to replace the hundreds of thousands of Mexican agricultural workers who had labored in the United States under the so-called Bracero Program. Started in World War II, the program was an agreement between the American and Mexican governments that brought Mexican men to pick harvests across the U.S. It ended in 1964, after years of accusations by civil rights activists like Cesar Chavez that migrants suffered wage theft and terrible working and living conditions.
But farmers complained — in words that echo today's headlines — that Mexican laborers did the jobs that Americans didn't want to do, and that the end of [the program] meant that crops would rot in the fields.
[...] the national press was immediately skeptical. "Dealing with crops which grow close to the ground requires a good deal stronger motive" than money or the prospects of a good workout, argued a Detroit Free Press editorial. "Like, for instance, gnawing hunger."
[One group] got paid minimum wage — $1.40 an hour back then — plus 5 cents for every crate filled with about 30 to 36 [melons.] [Students] worked six days a week, with Sundays off, and they were not allowed to return home during their stint. The farmers sheltered them in... "defunct housing" [according to one student].
Problems arose immediately... In California's Salinas Valley, 200 teenagers... quit after just two weeks on the job... Students elsewhere staged strikes. At the end, the A-TEAM was considered a giant failure and was never tried again.
[Stony Brook University history professor Lori A. Flores] says the A-TEAM "reveals a very important reality: It's not about work ethic [for undocumented workers]. It's about [the fact] that this labor is not meant to be done under such bad conditions and bad wages."
The kids gave up their summer vacations, worked in 110 degree heat six days a week, slept with no air conditioning, and ate subsistence rations, for nearly no benefit; it's no wonder the program was not a rousing success.
In tangentially-related news, the U.S. Libertarian Party published a press release the day before entitled "Immigrants Benefit the United States" that makes the blanket assertion "Immigrants, almost across the board, are a net value to the United States."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @06:48PM
Farmer here.
Yea, and amen.
The good field workers turn up their noses at the proverbial macjobs, because they know that they can make way more by working hard for a shorter part of the year, and hitting something else the rest of the time - or relaxing with their families.
I have had many city folks on my farm volunteering for one thing or another. More than once I have been sincerely thanked for being a farmer because they don't want to do it, once they've experienced it.
But they sure like to eat.
We could double wages, and what would happen? The jobs would disappear, the roles would be automated (with reduced quality until the manufacturers really finetune their game), and who has the money to add that capital investment on top of their farm mortgages and equipment loans? Only big agribusiness.
Big green loves to push the poor farmworker story because it brings them one step nearer to pushing more of the small guys out, and snapping up their land and kit at firesale prices. Between that and estate taxes, continuity in US farming depends upon companies large enough for the government to efficiently sockpuppet.
It's very hard to look at this and not see a move to nationalise agriculture by stealth.