Mr. Harold, a 71-year-old Vietnam War veteran who drifted here in the late ’60s, has participated for about a decade in a federal program called H-2A that allows seasonal foreign workers into the country to make up the gap where willing and able American workers are few in number. He typically has brought in about 90 people from Mexico each year from July through October.
This year, though, with tough times lingering and a big jump in the minimum wage under the program, to nearly $10.50 an hour, Mr. Harold brought in only two-thirds of his usual contingent. The other positions, he figured, would be snapped up by jobless local residents wanting some extra summer cash.
“It didn’t take me six hours to realize I’d made a heck of a mistake,” Mr. Harold said, standing in his onion field on a recent afternoon as a crew of workers from Mexico cut the tops off yellow onions and bagged them.
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.
A friend of mine (who has hired migrant workers before) said his reason was simple, Americans won’t do many kinds of work. It is kind of sad that with unemployment around 10% that unemployed workers won’t do some kinds of work.
The hardest job I ever had was with Custom Foundations in Saskatoon. My bosses were good guys but it was incredibly hard work. All day I was either carrying a 100 pound form into a basement pit or carrying a 100 pound form out of pit. There were hundreds of trips. I didn’t get paid that well but I didn’t spend a dime because I was too tired to out that summer. Our crew was supposed to be five guys but there never more than three of us because the same thing would happen, guys would quit rather than work.
