At the risk of sounding more like the cranky old man I can be, I have been in a discussion about the truth or lack of John McCain's axiom that even if you paid White Boys Fifty Bucks an Hour they couldn't and wouldn't pick lettuce along with the Hispanics in Arizona. He was lambasted for his view. Unfortunately, as much as I don't LOVE John McCain, he's right on this one. White boys are pretty lazy. So are black ones. It's about culture not skin color. In response I wrote this following story of my personal recent experience that demonstrates the reality of our current situation in American Working Culture.
I have knowns some diligent hard working steady white boys. I have known some just plain lazy Mexicans and I have certainly known some hard working Black Men who could get the job done.
It’s just that when you publish a job that says,
“Landscape Workers needed, 7am till dark. Seasonal. Must be willing to work. $14 per hour to start. Call xxx-xxx-xxxx” Most of what I get comes from Labor Ready, a temp firm.
Fourteen Bucks is about what we have to pay to get what amounts to a strong back now in my area. It’s all shovels and wheelbarrows.
What follows is real life recently. All of these are real people in recent past. The stories of how they worked out follows
I hire
5 white boys, I’m not getting the Harvard grads here.
One guy is just off Dope living in a halfway house.
One guy is burned out mid 40s
One kid had dropped out of school and living at home
One guy is just out of prison and trying to get work
One guy is unemployed and just looking to make a few hundred bucks, says he’s a good worker.
5 Hispanic
One is an older man, maybe 50. Speaks little English but when he looks at the situation, looks for a shovel.
One, Rodriquez, has been in the country maybe 6 weeks. NO ENGLISH. Mid 20s, wants to get established.
One, Jose, I think they are all named Jose, is young, very young, I wonder why they sent him.
One, a rough boy, speaks pretty good english, second generation here.
One is a son of someone who comes along that day. Good English, Danny I think they called him.
5 Black Guys.
One drives up in a car, doesn’t ride with anyone. Mid 30s. WAAAAY overweight. Manny.
Ike, an educated man, comes with fire in the belly and wants to work.
Jim, a kid with corn rows and a great smile comes with Ike
A lady comes with, obviously needing the money, obviously needing the work.
A big hulking almost football playing size fellow with a loud voice shows up and his first question to me is when break time is (that’s no lie)
Remember these guys come in response to an ad in a temp agency. I don’t worry about anything except their willingness to do the work. The temp agency takes care of everything else.
We begin digging holes, moving trees, loading trucks, unloading others. Hard repetitive work. Physical. Not intellectual. The kind I do.
The kind I did last week. The week before.
By mid day I have lost 3 white boys. Leaving The ex con and the doper. I like the doper, he’s not rocket science but he’s steady.
By mid day, all the Hispanics are still with me.
By mid day, Of the blacks, Jim, Ike and the Gal are still with me. The ball player and Manny are gone.
The day starts to wrap up when people start dropping out. I want to go till dark but by 4PM most are fading on me. All the white folks and Black folks hang it up.
The Hispanic folks are willing to stay and push thru except for the rough boy. He bails too.
So we work a couple more hours and wrap up about 6.
On this project we have to clean up and put away. Me and Rodriquez spend the last hour finding the spades that were left laying around by the others and rolling the barrows back where they were supposed to be.
Everyone that leaves I invite back for tomorrow as I sign off on their time sheets to pay them.
No one is uninvited except if they choose not to come back.
Show up I say:
Tomorrow, same place same time come ready to work.
Tomorrow comes. Who shows up?
4 of the 5 Hispanics (Rough boy doesn’t make it)
The ex con (white boy)
And Ike, the black fellow
I called the service, Wassup? Where’s my people? They tell me that some they didn’t know. Didn’t show up. The ones they contact complain the work is too hard. They ask the service What else you got that’s easy. Something in a warehouse involving air conditioning and a fork lift.
OK, let’s suppose I offered $50 bucks an hour. Do I retain or get any better workers for what is admittedly serious grunt work? Or is it the work?
Mc Cain is right.
If you look over the story, and by the way it’s all absolutely true. Composite over a few days but it’s experience that trumps our prejudices all day long and rules the day. Even if the truth hurts.
Reflecting on this, I wonder how good second or third generation Hispanics will be?
Maybe this is all a cultural thing. Once we become acculturated Americans we lose the ability or willingness to do stoop labor no matter the pay. Black or white or Hispanic.
My story only proves John McCain’s point. I don’t think you could get white lettuce pickers to work the field for 50 bucks an hour. I don’t think I could do it any more. When I was 30 yes I could. Not at 60. I have worked with crews of Mexican laborers. I’m astounded at their stamina. Particularly women. They go and go and go and go.
The hungry hard working foreigner has always been a part of the fabric of the American work force. Only in the last 20 years have we hit the wall in resenting them. Maybe the pendulum has swung too far. Maybe when construction and meat cutting became populated by cheap labor and we lost the union label things went south.
Strikes stopped. We all cheered. Meat got cheaper and new homes stayed affordable because of it all. We liked that. We just didn’t like the cheap wages. It’s Like we like cheap crap at Wal Mart but hate the fact that is builds the Chinese economy. We like cheap gas but hate the fact that some caliphate is built larger every time we fill our tanks.
Wasn’t it ever thus? Irish, Italians, and my German ancestors in the late part of the 19th century who walked from Mid Minnesota where the rail line stopped to near Watertown SD with what they could pull in a wagon by hand and what they could carry on their back. A 3 day walk. Working for whatever they could earn, speaking only German. Doing what they could to work hard to make a place and homestead.
Now 120 years later we’re still here.
I look at Rodriquez and see my great grandpa August Redlin (who was also Terry Redlin’s Great Grandpa).
We are a long way from those days. But sometimes I regret that whatever that work ethic was is lost. I wish I COULD hire some good white boys and do some good by them.
Oh, I’ve had a few. Very Few.
Unless you have had my experience you are living under the illusion of the “Hard Working American”. Yes there are some, but lots of them speak Spanish.
I don’t think we are hungry enough to do stoop labor anymore. Who will? At what price.
Somebody has to pick that lettuce and pick those oranges. Who you gonna call? I think if you want someone to do that work you’ll have to speak Spanish when you ask them.
2 comments:
Amen to your post. I ran a Labor Finders office for many years. I ran into that problem on a daily basis. I couldn't beg some to go on a ticket, but others would take the work before I told them what the job was.
What would have happened if in 1960 we had an absolutely closed border,and closed thereafter, and no illegals could have entered our country the last 50 years? Would the whites and blacks without jobs be doing the stoop labor of the last 10 years? Who does that labor in European countries today?....H.
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