SEATTLE TIMES August 30, 2006
Growers say fruit's ready, but workers are scarce
By Joe Mullin
WAPATO, Yakima County — Heinz Humann was late this year. Later than he's ever been. His workers finished thinning out apple and pear trees to prepare for the harvest in mid-August. But they should have been finished a month earlier. The past few months, it's been tough for Humann to find enough workers for what he can afford to pay. He's had plenty of work, he says. But it seems there's no one willing to do it. Add to that the other issues that hurt his bottom line, such as taxes and environmental regulations, and "I can see the writing on the wall," he says. "We're doomed." Like Humann, apple growers all over Washington this summer are complaining that a heated immigration debate in the U.S. has combined with a late cherry harvest to create a shortage of agricultural workers, perhaps the worst they've seen. Evidence in the fields of Eastern Washington is so far anecdotal. But some guess that migrant workers may be attracted away by higher-paying jobs. Others surmise that high gas prices have discouraged some workers from driving north after finishing harvests in California. Among the workers themselves, one theory predominates: The border may simply be harder to cross. Many of the growers say the situation would be eased by a guest-worker program, in which foreign laborers are ushered to the fields for the harvest, then escorted home when it's over. Yet state economists say they can't find hard evidence of a long-term agricultural labor shortage. And labor groups, opposed to guest-worker programs, say the talk of shortages is just a lot of political posturing. "There are local spot shortages, at a minimum," said Greg Weeks, an economist who oversees the state Employment Security Department's agricultural labor statistics. "What we don't see is the wage rate being bid up by a shortage of labor." Labor, price worries On a balmy morning earlier this month, a dozen workers circled Humann's trees in his 105 acres of orchards outside Wapato, looking for small clusters of apples, then removing the unwanted ones and hurling them to the ground. As he watched the work, Humann worried that if he couldn't keep this current crew around, the apple season could be disastrous. Washington's apple harvest gets into full swing by late August and peaks through September and October. During those months, more than 30,000 workers are needed to bring in the state's largest crop. But this year the growers say they can't find enough of them. Gary Writer, another Wapato orchardist, said he ran 30 workers short recently. He had to pay extra to bring in a temporary crew from the Tri-Cities area. John Warling, a farm-labor contractor in Othello, Adams County, said that this year he has received more calls than ever from farmers needing workers. Apples are a labor-intensive crop. They require hand harvesting so the fruit looks as good as it tastes. At the same time, the giant grocery chains such as Arkansas-based Wal-Mart and Ohio-based Kroger's, which runs QFC and Fred Meyer, can push down prices, growers say. "They want perfect fruit," Humann said. "And they don't want to pay much for it." Why the shortage? One reason for the labor shortage for apple picking is the dynamics of the state's recent cherry harvest. Because cherries need to be picked as soon as they are ripe, pay for cherry picking tends to be better. This year's cherry harvest was not only later but longer than usual. It lasted about six weeks, causing it to run into apple- and pear-thinning time. The growers also speculate that many migrants may be moving into higher-paying sectors like construction. But all that doesn't entirely explain the difficulty in finding apple workers this year, the growers say. In the fields, many workers say it's been harder to cross the border from Mexico. Border security has been stepped up since Sept. 11, 2001, and this year the Bush administration added several thousand agents, as well as new camera systems and other technology. "Each year more people try to come, but it's more difficult," said Nemecio Hernandez, a migrant laborer who was living this summer in a workers camp near Wenatchee. Another worker, Jovito Vasquez, who works for orchardist Writer, said he has also heard such stories. "They go back to Mexico, and then they can't make it back," Vasquez said. "Last year some orchards had signs up — 'No help needed.' Now, it's 'Help wanted.' " Biggest crop Apples remain Washington's biggest crop, with $1 billion worth exported in 2004, according to the most recent figures. And according to a 2002 federal study, more than 60 percent of the men and women who pick them are in the United States illegally. Growers say they check documents, but acknowledge that not everyone is legal. Writer, like many of his fellow growers, said he supports border protection but would like to see a better guest-worker system. "If that labor force is moving back and forth across the border, it needs to be easy for them to do it," he said. Farmers complain that the existing program to bring in foreign farm workers temporarily, known as the H-2A visa, is expensive and unwieldy. By the time the paperwork is done, the harvest could be over. Two years ago, some Yakima Valley farmers hired workers from Thailand using H-2A visas, with the help of a Los Angeles company called Global Horizons. The growers and the company were sued, not only by local workers who claimed the arrangement was illegal, but by the Thai workers, who said they were mistreated and underpaid. Recently the state WorkSource program, run by the Employment Security Department, has been referring more workers to agricultural jobs, scouring unemployment rolls and tapping "nontraditional" sources such as high-school students and housewives. But Writer said he asked WorkSource for 25 workers this year. They sent him nine. Six of them quit or were fired by the second day on the job. Within a week, the others had quit, too. "The people at WorkSource try hard," Writer said. "But they don't have much to work with. They're not the part of the work force that will get the job done." Economists disagree Despite the gloomy outlook from growers, economists who study the agricultural work force for the state Employment Security Department say they don't see any evidence of a long-term labor shortage through 2005, the last year for which data are available. Last year, farm workers earned an average of $10.89 per hour. Adjusted for inflation, farm workers' wages have been stagnant for 15 years. If there were a labor shortage, wages would rise as employers outbid each other to hire limited numbers of workers, the economists point out. The growers counter that many of them can't afford to pay more. "Farmers don't set the prices they get for their crops," said Dean Boyer, a spokesman for the Washington State Farm Bureau. "Many of our growers will tell you they have offered more this year than they have in the past. There are simply no takers. It is difficult work." Last year, some growers left fruit on the trees to rot because they couldn't find enough workers, Boyer said. And he warned it could happen again this year, only worse. Yet the labor unions say they have seen none of the dire predictions come true — no rotting fruit, no shortage of workers. "We have an adequate labor supply, supplemented by an adequate migrant-labor supply," said Jeff Johnson, research director for the Washington State Labor Council. "At this point, it's unclear that we need a guest-worker program. Growers in the state are not bashful about making their needs known." The state economists grant the possibility that farm work isn't getting done. But they point out that apple production has not fallen dramatically. U.S. Department of Agriculture officials forecast this year's crop at 5.6 billion pounds. That's slightly below last year's 5.8-billion-pound crop, but well above the harvests in 2002 and 2003. Even so, this year they added two questions to a survey they give growers: How many more workers would they have liked to hire? Were any tasks left undone as a result of a labor shortage? Growers pessimistic Regardless of the debate this season, growers Writer and Humann both believe the outlook is dim for small and medium-sized growers. The future is in large operations, with the big fruit packers running the orchards, they lament. In his Wapato orchard, Humann plucked a sucker, a branch that bears no fruit, from one of his trees. Like every year, he has protected his orchards all year long, from winter frost, scorching heat and attacks from moths and other pests. "It's no fun anymore," he said. "The last five to six years, it's been a real struggle. I'm hoping this crop will bring some money."
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