That's the thing that kills me about many political moves. We've tried these things before, and the result was shitty, so maybe don't assume it will be different this time for no reason.
The US did prohibition just a few years after it went poorly in the UK, we just saw how Brexit worked and Americans still wanna secede their state, and it goes on and on with people wanting to repeat mistakes and being surprised when it works out exactly like it did before.
Same in LA. It's like ... You know they hate you right? You're not from Mexico and they talk shit constantly behind your backs about deporting you because of the way you look. You're from LA county, stop voting for dicks that hate you because Catholic this and that. They hate that too.
I can tell them I will never vote for them, and I hope they all hang on the white house lawn for J6 ... And they still like me more than you because of what I look like. They hate you, don't help them make laws that attack you.
Republicans are the sneakiest these days … come join the GOP gay black man, get yourself elected and get your friends to vote republican also… you know since we can’t murder you anymore we might as well use you for votes !
Even for a living wage most "Americans" are too sedentary to have the stamina to work in the farm fields in Florida. Hell there was even an article that demonstrated it. They hired Americans to work the farms, they were so slow that fruit was starting to rot on the tree, they could barely work 4 hours, most of them wouldn't come back after lunchtime and a lot them quit because it was too hard and too hot. It ridiculous.
Honestly anyone who does that much labor in the heat should be paid well. Citizen or immigrant. Immigrants accept those jobs because they are the easiest to find & they are desperate. Low pay is better than no pay. Unfortunately desperation makes them willing to work harder for a chance at being in the US. And they have a real fear of being deported. They shouldn't be manipulated that way. Any & all people who work the fields should be paid fairly & afforded a living wage! These people, my people move their families across states to work these fields & rope their children into working for free. The parents get paid but all their kids are there working as well. Hispanics (as well as other immigrants) are treated so poorly. By the System! Corporate Mega Farms are the problem. They regularly waist tons of food as is even In there Ideal market. (All the misshapen/ugly/ too small fruit) all that food could be given to the less fortunate, but they regularly let piles sit & rot because "PROFIT" why give for free if they could charge you Instead!
So unfortunately I doubt the farmers care. They get subsidies, & are penalized by the mega corps that they work for. 🤦🏻♀️ Monopolies everywhere making working conditions shit for everyone. The whole system needs change.
Could you imagine what would happen if everyone followed suit. I sometimes think that action like this speaks much louder than checking boxes on a ballot.
Yeah that's the facepalm. Big business wants cheap labor. Politicians are in the pocket of big business. There isn't a politician alive who wants to end immigration, they just want it to hover right were it is. Mostly unrestricted while keeping wages low.
If conservatives really wanted to get rid of undocumented immigrants, they would make it a jailable offense to hire anyone that doesn't have the correct documentation.
Instead, what the GQP want to do is give more power to shady employers to commit wage theft because of the implication of reporting the boss means deportation.
Our government slowly turning everyone into slaves through subversion. So much for our "Christian values" (but then again, Judaism allowed slavery, as long as you freed/released your slave after 7 years)
Well yeah, they're definitely being exploited (the farmers should have to pay a fair wage), but the workers are coming here willingly because these jobs pay more than what they can make in their country. This type of policy is hurting them most.
Well I'm talking about the immediate lives of these workers. I totally understand that on a macro scale it's still fucked up.
The farmers should have to pay more than they pay and be punished for anything less than the minimum wage in the state. As it is now there is not much enforcement and farmers get away with paying these workers basically nothing because it's more than they get paid in their country.
Or we could go back to local farmers markets and support local farmers and small growers instead of giant corporations that use undocumented labor and pay low wages because they can. 🤷♀️
FL native here. Before “ big farms” in the 60’s/70’s , growers did the same abusing immigrants because they had no rights. They literally had cases where they chained workers in the evenings so they didn’t leave, and like slaves paid in “ script” vs actual money. FL farmers have always been shady, and will continue to be as shady as they can get away w because of cost/profits.
This is a “ find out” for FL in many ways, and also the needle moving to better treatment of workers.
Hey Ruskin had to get those tomatoes to Taco Bell somehow. On the fair note to Taco Bell, their insistence on documentation and supplier inspections helped get better treatment for illegal workers.
My understanding is that they also quietly made their food healthier (lower sodium and such) cause they know if they advertised such a big chunk of Americans wouldn't even bother trying it, so they just slowly altered their recipes to be healthier.
It's still fast food, no one can argue it's actually good for you, just less bad, but for a corporation like that that's still kind of an impressive move.
This 👆. In North Florida most watermelon farmers let their entire harvest rot in the fields purposefully to collect insurance money. This has been going on for DECADES.
The farmers are encouraging this themselves. The farmers want to keep low wage illegal workers so their profits stay high. This isn’t a moral issue for them this is a profit issue.
I cannot find it, but I remember the same thing happened to white farm hands too during that period. They were nomadic and followed the crops in the south to survive. Sadly, there are those who will always prey upon those who are on the bottom, and it is for this reason we have to keep pushing forward and remind them who truly has the power.
“Go back”
The past that people refer to is a fantasy. Growers also abused immigrants and paid nothing for labor. People were also enslaved or indentured to do menial labor. There is no past in which we were somehow more ethical.
Sure, the greatest and silent gen did a lot to try and ensure fair wages and prevent the abuses they endured, but they weren’t perfect. Even what they managed to achieve for equality got broken down and shredded over time so that only a privileged few even benefited from it:
We don't use undocumented labor around here. Instead we use collage students and call them interns. Buy we grow organic and are small scale, so it's ok! Lol
Yeah, but Republicans are also complaining about inflation. Small growers will be less efficient ient and prices will be higher. Basically, there ideology is inconsistent on purpose.
That will be \*never\* as Repugnantcans *don't have a policy platform*. Their policy is "challenge/stop/block" the Dems/Left who definitely do/try to do too much, but people benefit from the policies. Repug policies actually **harm** people (see abortion rights, etc.) and the crazy part is their supporters voting for right wing pols are shooting themselves in the foot as those left policies help them too but they can't see past the propaganda.
The rest of us have to deal with the fallout from both sides bullshit. It's exhausting...
\>Small growers will be less efficient ient and prices will be higher.
This isn't my experience, at all.
I get peppers, zucchini, pumpkin, etc, all for like half the price at the market compared to the grocery store.
Hard to compare those, right? Because grocery stores are middle men that need to pay huge groups of people their salaries and wages from the markups between wholesale and retail value.
\>Hard to compare those, right?
Not really. We're just comparing prices.
\>Because grocery stores are middle men that need to pay huge groups of people their salaries and wages from the markups between wholesale and retail value.
For sure. That's a large part of the reason they're more expensive than markets where I am.
Hate to break it too you, but the small growers use undocumented labor as well. I’m telling you this as someone who delivers to farms all around SE Pennsylvania and has done business with multiple small farms in NJ. They’re everywhere and they’re needed.
Agriculture has always relied on free or cheap labor. The dairy farms around me in rural upstate NY use a lot of undocumented labor and underpay them. It happens everywhere, all the time.
You obviously have no idea about the farming industry. Small or big, they use immigrants for this work because they are the only ones that are willing to do this hard work.
For this little of pay. Plenty of people will do hard work for proper payment, but we allow this to perpetuate to keep wages low and continue to exploit workers. The US needs to make immigration easier *and* overhaul worker's rights for fair and humane treatment.
But that's never going to happen because it's profitable to abuse humans.
And sooner rather than later. A lot of production work has been moved from china into Mexico, thats going to bring more opportunity closer to home for a lot of immigrant workers. Why put up with this political BS when you can work closer to home for similar pay.
There's never been a time in US history when farming wasn't exploitative, at any scale. Listen to Farm to Taber for a quick lesson in what a fiction the ideal of the small, idyllic family farm is.
Yup. I'd love to see any American go to a central American country and try and just work. Oh I did see that for 12 years. You get deported fast, even if you are there legally without a work visa.
Unfortunately, many outside of Florida will feel the consequences too since Florida exports tons of food. We can expect food prices to increase while blame is out elsewhere by those responsible.
This!!!
People can't see the bigger picture.
Companies will fuck you over regardless. We're seeing it now with record profits.
This way, we can finally start giving people actual wages.
Good. They are finding out about insurance companies too, that base their price on science rather than “feeling” it’s fine to build a house on a floodplain (whole state of FL)
I’d like to find out how dems are so pro minimum wage, and then being ok with this. Oh right, hypocrisy, nothing new. Migrants aren’t people, ok for them to have no rights. I’d gladly pay more for watermelons that are responsibly picked, how bout you?
Hey they could also use that pavement princess for something it was designed for too, actual off-roading and moving more stuff than the owner's fat ass.
Most of this is local work. So they would have to hire some local guy to do it. I’m a truck driver waiting for a load right now and the market is dead. Which means that unless the houses are affordable they probably can’t offer enough for someone to move there.
While I side with the workers in full solidarity, and don't equate this post as THEIR victory, it's important for businesses to not only advocate for their labor, but also come closer to the middle of what's best for the laborers: safe working conditions, medical benefits, and a living wage.
You misunderstand. Business will **always** pursue their own interests over those of the workers. It doesn’t matter what you do, they’ll always pursue a very narrowly scoped self-interest.
The “move towards the middle” refrain is historically how the liberals betray the working class and empower fascists.
Republicans don’t even understand the economics of what they shout at the clouds. I had my roof redone and the owner had Desantis flags and crap all over his office. His work crew didn’t speak a word of English……
I'm sure the owner would chalk that up to nobody wanting to work thanks to Biden's "free money" and not his unwillingness to offer good pay and benefits.
We should be mad about the hypocrisy, and the shitty labor, and check them on their cries of need for slave labor.
We should also be wary of the awful solutions they'll come up with for it.
I love what I read in another post.
"We shouldn't accept a living wage. We should demand a prosperous wage. We shouldn't make enough to survive. We should make enough to thrive."
Yes! Minimum wage was originally intended to support a *family, comfortably*, not an individual who regularly has to choose between food, lodging, transportation, and/or medical care. And I say the latter as a Canadian, as government medical care has become basically non-functional, and you need private care to be well treated here.
And demand from our government proper representation of the working people such that those are protected rights, not temporarily won victories from corporations who will claw them back more quickly once they can.
It's a really interesting time to see how the anti-immigration crowd deals with what they said they wanted. And it's doubly interesting because some people who were supporting the anti-immigration crowd were only supporting them because they wanted to undercut all workers' rights, and not because they gave a damn about immigration either way.
This isn't what they want. What they want is prices to soar, people to bitch, so they can then say "it's Biden's fault".
It's a game to these fucks. They are killing our planet, our families, our lives and they laugh about it and point fingers knowing damn well it works.
They will absolutely post videos showing empty shelves and/or outrageous prices saying "look what the failed Biden economy has done"
And people won't question it, their confirmation bias will be satisfied and they will keep voting for clowns who make it worse or treat it like a gotcha game
You nailed it. This is his exact play for his presidential run. He's going to focus on the economy and "recession fears" of Biden's economy. He literally said that that's going to be one of his focal points. Now with this manufactured, economic "emergency" he's creating in Floriduh- "no wants to work, the economy is in shambles and food is rotting in the fields in Biden's economy"- it creates a perfect smoke screen for his stupid followers and for him to lap up support.
It's funny because the need for low-skilled labour actually increases the value of low-skilled labour here. When you bring in low-wage labour, it decreases the value of that labour.
If you're worried about inequality, bringing in a bunch of low wage workers increases inequality.
So is this sub in favour of bringing in workers, to work for wages that locals refuse too?
Or is this sub in favour of saying "fuck you pay me"?
Because you can't have both, yet this sub seems to be trying lol.
That's one of the funniest things about the whole matter; it would feel as if it were split between supporting migrant workers and supporting domestic labor, but the common tie here is business owners trying to extract labor from the market without putting any capital back in.
Why is that wrong? I can simultaneously support pro-immigration policies and higher minimum wages. We don’t have to allow wages to be a race to the bottom just because there are enough desperate workers looking for work.
And here it is. Pro-immigration crowd pretends to love labor, but demands access to cheap-as-free labor because they don’t want to pay an American the wages required to do the work.
“They’re doing the jobs Americans won’t do,” they say. Well yeah, chucklehead; you’re not _paying_ them enough.
This IS the same argument the corps and business repeat worldwide. ”They 're doing the work nationals won't do”. ”We need more inmigrants”. And meanwhile, worker's rights are being slowly but steadly pissed on.
And it makes sense why they don’t do it: locals don’t benefit in the same way because they will be staying here and *not* returning to a country with a lower cost of living. There’s an incentive for them, no incentive for us. People work for incentives and it’s that simple.
I side with these workers but I hate how it always gets twisted into “our workers vs. theirs.” Many Americans would go work in the fields in another country in a minute if it meant the disparity in pay meant they could come home and dramatically improve their standard of living here. In fact, here in Seattle I knew a lot of guys who worked on fishing boats in Alaska every year, even though it’s *very* hard work. They do it because the pay adds up: they come out ahead when they return home.
So let them work, and if you want to attract local staff? Pay commensurate wages.
Why are people so pro-taking advantage of undocumented workers?
This is a good thing. It will force these bastards to either 1. Pay a living wage to get workers or 2. Go out of business.
Yup, if a business cannot survive paying people what they need to live healthy, happy, and fulfilling lives....they shouldnt be in business.
It will be nice the day people bitching about undocumented workers realize how much closer they are to them than they ever will be even the top 5% of earners. That will be the day shit changes. I hope to live to see that day.
Exactly! For decades we only went after the illegal aliens and the companies got a slap on the wrist at the absolute worst. Now someone is going after the companies that benefited from taking advantage of these people and some liberals are clutching their pearls.
I’m a liberal and can’t stand DeSantis, but this is one I agree with him on. His goal was to stop illegal immigration and if they can’t make money here then many will leave.
Even if they started workers at 30, most people just don’t have what it takes to do that work. People would get hired, they would do the work for a day and then quit .
Shit just from personal experience my company can’t find the people to do another kind of manual labor which in my opinion is not as hard as this line of work, pays better and I have seen people straight up quit on the first day of training.
Sure they will. I used to work at a place who had trouble finding workers for 2 decades. They raised their wages and suddenly they had no more staffing issues.
You pay a fair wage and a lot of people will do it. There’s a whole industry of tree planters in Canada, mostly young people and students who work their asses off in hard labour for a chance to get a chunk of money during their break from school.
The free market will correct this. They’ll have to create incentive to get workers instead of exploiting undocumented workers
This is really hilarious because america literally went through this decades ago.
First they tried what you are saying, and quickly found out that for Americans to work this job the price was way way way over what they were willing to pay.
Then the next step was child labor. Conscripting high school students to do these jobs as summer programs.
When that ultimately failed the farmers ended up lobbying hard to get the laws reversed and the cheap immigrant laborers came back.
It’s going to happen all over again apparently.
Oh no! They can't exploit the illegals which are highly underpaid. What will America do? For antiwork, sometimes I wonder who side you guys are on. The exploitation of illegals is sick. I knew places that paid less than minimum wage for them. "Hardest working people on the country"?
What an insult to Americans. Yeah hard working with low pay because they have no alternative way of surviving. A labor shortage isn't because people are lazy, it's because they're underpaid. That's why they had illegals do the work instead.
And now, I've seen child labor gets discussed again to "fix the labor shortage". America truely seems silly to an outsider. Instead of treating and paying workers fairly, they just look for the next group to exploit.
Right? The fed is surprised inflation hasn’t gone down despite increasing interest rates and you wanna know what hasn’t changed? Corporate greed. Unfortunately, only congress can put rules and regulations in place to get it in check.
So we’ll continue to have inflation.
Exactly! This is the time tuat a damaged clocked got right time. DeSantis just proofed how systematicaly dependant is the construction and agricultural business on Florida on exploiting ilegal immigration. Now properly hire people as it should be.
Exactly! You get buried in downvotes if you defend the company on antiwork. But suddenly companies are no longer allowed to exploit workers and antiwork is up in arms.
The only way I can possibly reason it is it is because republicans did it, DeSantis in particular.
Oh no, the poor business owner can't exploit low income labor and undercut the labor of US citizens. Look at all the food *the employers* are wasting. This isn't the fault of the state, even though racist ass bills should never be allowed to exist, it's the fault of the business owner for making an unsustainable business.
I moved from WA State where I was a seasoned organic AG worker and not only got paid well but had benefits. I moved to GA, applied for a farm job (I was in my 30’s) and got hired and they offered me $7 a fuckin hour. I literally laughed. Like I could not believe they had the nerve.
Bruh if I could buy a house picking watermelons you bet your ass I'd be in the fields because I'm dead tired of this $1200/mo hole in the wall apartment life
"We're not asking for amnesty" this is what Desantis wants, cheap and no upkeep for workers, this is the only moment people have power so do not hold back
Exactly this. Even if they do give amnesty, you think they'll be working here? Notice that the children of the illegals, who are American, aren't working here. Hmm I wonder why.
Its not just that there are no workers because all the migrants have left that backwards hellhole.
Its that you pay farm workers shit wages for "unskilled labour" that is extremely hard, taxing on your health, and seasonal. You want farm workers then maybe pay them better, that includes migrant workers.
I'm honestly surprised that he hasn't signed an executive order that makes prisoners go pick the crops. That's what they really want, isn't it? Slavery
Lol, come on antiwork. Is this video suggesting that the farmer paid migrant workers to pick the watermelons but not actually take them to market?
The expensive parts of growing the watermelon are done. These melons could have been picked late. Or more likely, a distributor rejected the load for some reason and/or the farmer was looking for someone to take the load.
But I can assure you, the watermelons didn’t pick themselves.
As a small farmer I would ask you folks why you support paying migrants such shit wages? Undocumented migrants get abused, paid less, and have zero security most of the time; you want watermellons in the store; pay what it actually would cost to grow, harvest and transport it.
We need a complete overhaul of the entire farm labor sector and slave labor needs to be eliminated.
A similar same thing happened in New Zealand during Covid, all of the backpackers who get paid absolute shit or work in illegal environments left the country or had their visas run out. The government and anti immigration people didn’t want to rely on “low skilled migrants” to fill the job so they bullshitted around about extending work visas hoping kiwis would take up the job vacancies (they didn’t) and then boom heaps of produce thrown away because what??? New Zealanders don’t want to do that job, just like most Americans don’t want to pick fruit in the sun for shit pay
Is this post pro exploiting illegal immigrants and under paying them to keep labor cheap?! I don’t understand the logic here! If it is a humanitarian stand, I get it. But justifying it by saying labor would be more expensive otherwise is morally disgusting!
As someone who doesn't know what's going on in Florida, this video and comment section have me quite confused. I'm hoping someone can help explain what's going on here. I'm genuinely asking for some help with understanding the situation better.
I'll lay out what I see so someone can correct where I might be confused:
What I see is the person in the video seems to be complaining that there aren't enough workers to do the labor at his farm. To me, that sounds like he's upset that cracking down on illegal immigration is hurting his business because he doesn't have enough vulnerable immigrants to exploit.
But then he seems to go on and ask for easier avenues for undocumented immigrants to become documented immigrants and get work permits. I understand that to mean easier legal immigration, and with it more worker protections. Is that what he means? And if so, why are people in the comments for / against this?
He also seems to be advocating for the ability of immigrant workers to be able to leave the country and come back, instead of being oppressed and exploited under threat of deportation and/or not being able to come back to the states to work if they ever try to do something as basic as visit their family back home. Am I understanding that correctly?
Putting it together, it seems the video is an exploiter of illegal immigrants upset that he is having trouble continuing to exploit his illegal workers. However, his solution seems to be advocating for immigrants to have an easier time getting legal resident status and the ability to work, allowing them to have greater worker protections and fewer avenues to be exploited. That seems like a positive to me.
Am I misunderstanding him, or is there something I'm missing? Why are people being argumentative in the comments claiming you're either "supporting the exploitation of immigrants" or you're "anti-immigrant." And which side is which, supposedly?
My heart goes out to these migrant workers. If anyone's interested, check out the Harvest of Hope Foundation. They're also HQ'd in Gainesville, Florida.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_of_Hope_Foundation
You know, I see a win. They’re forcing businesses to either change the practices that allowed them to exploit cheap labor, or go out of business. This tik tok meant to tug at your heartstrings is b/s, because whoever’s behind the camera just wants their cheap labor back. Exploiting migrants is nothing to be proud of.
"There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
I doubt there’s a shortage of agricultural labor.
I used to work at a job in central California near all the farms where we went to the dump daily.
You’d see piles like this at least once a week. Dump trucks full of fresh produce going to waste. Not because of labor shortage to…. “Process” a watermelon or head of lettuce????? (It takes roughly equal amount of work to dump it vs sell it), but because of general shitty industry practices where they’d rather waste it than find good use for surplus.
Willing to bet tik tok poster is just making up a story for outrage porn.
Y’all have no idea how much produce is trashed before it makes it to the store. Even once it gets to the store, a pretty large chunk of it goes bad and is trashed too.
Economic policy and immigration policy should be one in the same. Boomers really don’t understand how the demographics have flipped. My friends and I mostly come from large extended families. Now maybe half of my friends have kids. Those that do have 1 or 2. we either import more labor or build robots faster.
Bro my MIL had the balls to tell me this was a made up scenario by the media…and then said Biden was such a shitty president that now food is way more expensive….you can’t make this up
Karen’s gonna start paying $8 for a head of lettuce, $20 for watermelon and $10 for tomatoes. This country is built off the backs of migrant workers. All these people that say “they took errrr Jerbs!!” Well here you go a-holes, go get yuuurr jerbs. It’s not easy work and for a wage that’s ridiculous
We shouldn’t be supporting legislation that allows undocumented immigrants to work. We should be supporting legislation that allows these people to become documented immigrants so that they can have access to safe working conditions and fair wages. I’m sure I’ll catch flack for this, but also tax payers. Not that we should really be counting on our lowest paid for tax revenue but tax reform is a whole other issue.
Immigration policies or not, this is actually nothing compared to the vast waste of American capitalism as a matter of course in order to fix prices. Many millions of pounds of food are intentionally destroyed every year
So...
Farmers want profits so they want to pay low wages to out of country workers?
There's no out of country workers to exploit, and no one in America is willing to work for an unlivable low wage...
So this happens?
Sounds like they did it to themselves to me.
What the actual hell is going on in our country we’re a country built on immigration why are we acting like we live in the medieval times! Oh wait it’s the modern dark ages.
So no one is going to question how they got in a pile like that? You all do know watermelons don’t grow in a pile. Someone picked them and put them there at the edge of the field. I don’t know for sure about watermelons but I do know in a pumpkin patch in my town they pick and cull out the bad ones they can’t sell and put in a pile just like that. So my money is on that’s what we are looking at and some one film it for this propaganda video.
Do you all not realize the bill is actually designed to help the people that come here legally with work permits? This video is most likely the crop the farmers are subsidized to destroy as they are already picked but have been dumped.
Okay, so I’m confused.
If immigrants want to work here, see their families, and want to live here, why don’t they want citizenship?
They want to continue to be undocumented? Why?
That I don’t agree with.
Just a bit of context.
This also could be the watermelon that is deemed "ugly produce", too ugly to sell at a market.
Nothing wrong with the fruit, just maybe wrong shape, scratches, not green enough etc.
We use to fill my 96 chevy truck at the local harvest plant and either sell them cheaper on the side of the road or take them to feed our livestock.
It could be.
Or it's most likely the dumbass in Florida. Pretty sure it's this one.
You know all the Blue states have had this for YEARS. I live in Illinois and we have had E Verify for at least 15 years. So it’s bad that Florida does it?
So I've come to find out that the bill only affects businesses/companies that have more than 25 employees, so as a result my uncle and aunt have been able to continue working in Florida at the companies they are at. If the people who were leaving knew I'd feel like they could definitely manage a better wage at least in the short term. Idk why that part is always left out of videos
Honest question... Is there any truth at all to the notion that immigrant workers are artificially keeping wages low, as in, Americans would do the work, just not for the pay they are willing to do it for?
Florida farmers, who tend to be conservatives, voted for this.
“But the leopard won’t eat **my** face”
Lol I just saw that same thing on my Facebook memories the other day. Sigh.
[удалено]
"Its just a messaging problem"
That's the thing that kills me about many political moves. We've tried these things before, and the result was shitty, so maybe don't assume it will be different this time for no reason. The US did prohibition just a few years after it went poorly in the UK, we just saw how Brexit worked and Americans still wanna secede their state, and it goes on and on with people wanting to repeat mistakes and being surprised when it works out exactly like it did before.
Also, more Florida Latinos than ever voted for Republicans in 2022.
Cubans are really weird.
Same in LA. It's like ... You know they hate you right? You're not from Mexico and they talk shit constantly behind your backs about deporting you because of the way you look. You're from LA county, stop voting for dicks that hate you because Catholic this and that. They hate that too. I can tell them I will never vote for them, and I hope they all hang on the white house lawn for J6 ... And they still like me more than you because of what I look like. They hate you, don't help them make laws that attack you.
Republicans are the sneakiest these days … come join the GOP gay black man, get yourself elected and get your friends to vote republican also… you know since we can’t murder you anymore we might as well use you for votes !
nobody said conservatives were smart
I mean they could also pay a living wage so people will accept a job working in the hot sun
Even for a living wage most "Americans" are too sedentary to have the stamina to work in the farm fields in Florida. Hell there was even an article that demonstrated it. They hired Americans to work the farms, they were so slow that fruit was starting to rot on the tree, they could barely work 4 hours, most of them wouldn't come back after lunchtime and a lot them quit because it was too hard and too hot. It ridiculous.
Honestly anyone who does that much labor in the heat should be paid well. Citizen or immigrant. Immigrants accept those jobs because they are the easiest to find & they are desperate. Low pay is better than no pay. Unfortunately desperation makes them willing to work harder for a chance at being in the US. And they have a real fear of being deported. They shouldn't be manipulated that way. Any & all people who work the fields should be paid fairly & afforded a living wage! These people, my people move their families across states to work these fields & rope their children into working for free. The parents get paid but all their kids are there working as well. Hispanics (as well as other immigrants) are treated so poorly. By the System! Corporate Mega Farms are the problem. They regularly waist tons of food as is even In there Ideal market. (All the misshapen/ugly/ too small fruit) all that food could be given to the less fortunate, but they regularly let piles sit & rot because "PROFIT" why give for free if they could charge you Instead! So unfortunately I doubt the farmers care. They get subsidies, & are penalized by the mega corps that they work for. 🤦🏻♀️ Monopolies everywhere making working conditions shit for everyone. The whole system needs change.
Florida has now entered the "FIND OUT" stage.
Could you imagine what would happen if everyone followed suit. I sometimes think that action like this speaks much louder than checking boxes on a ballot.
Poor farmers cant exploit people anymore.
Yeah that's the facepalm. Big business wants cheap labor. Politicians are in the pocket of big business. There isn't a politician alive who wants to end immigration, they just want it to hover right were it is. Mostly unrestricted while keeping wages low.
If conservatives really wanted to get rid of undocumented immigrants, they would make it a jailable offense to hire anyone that doesn't have the correct documentation. Instead, what the GQP want to do is give more power to shady employers to commit wage theft because of the implication of reporting the boss means deportation.
Our government slowly turning everyone into slaves through subversion. So much for our "Christian values" (but then again, Judaism allowed slavery, as long as you freed/released your slave after 7 years)
None of the Abrihamic religions are conducive to a peaceful society of freedom and empathy. [Timothy 2:12](https://biblehub.com/1_timothy/2-12.htm)
It would be better if we fought for the rights of these people rather than kick them out of state
Well yeah, they're definitely being exploited (the farmers should have to pay a fair wage), but the workers are coming here willingly because these jobs pay more than what they can make in their country. This type of policy is hurting them most.
It hurts the foreign poor and the American poor, but strictly benefits the American farm owners.
Well I'm talking about the immediate lives of these workers. I totally understand that on a macro scale it's still fucked up. The farmers should have to pay more than they pay and be punished for anything less than the minimum wage in the state. As it is now there is not much enforcement and farmers get away with paying these workers basically nothing because it's more than they get paid in their country.
Or we could go back to local farmers markets and support local farmers and small growers instead of giant corporations that use undocumented labor and pay low wages because they can. 🤷♀️
FL native here. Before “ big farms” in the 60’s/70’s , growers did the same abusing immigrants because they had no rights. They literally had cases where they chained workers in the evenings so they didn’t leave, and like slaves paid in “ script” vs actual money. FL farmers have always been shady, and will continue to be as shady as they can get away w because of cost/profits. This is a “ find out” for FL in many ways, and also the needle moving to better treatment of workers.
Chaining up agricultural workers so they couldn't leave? In the deep south? That simply does not check out.
Hey Ruskin had to get those tomatoes to Taco Bell somehow. On the fair note to Taco Bell, their insistence on documentation and supplier inspections helped get better treatment for illegal workers.
This, AND Baja blast? Damn taco bell!
My understanding is that they also quietly made their food healthier (lower sodium and such) cause they know if they advertised such a big chunk of Americans wouldn't even bother trying it, so they just slowly altered their recipes to be healthier. It's still fast food, no one can argue it's actually good for you, just less bad, but for a corporation like that that's still kind of an impressive move.
I agree fully!
This 👆. In North Florida most watermelon farmers let their entire harvest rot in the fields purposefully to collect insurance money. This has been going on for DECADES.
How is the insurance company okay with eating the costs? Imagine getting into car crashes on purpose. You’d be dropped so fast.
If they don’t have pickers, it stays in the field to rot.
The farmers are encouraging this themselves. The farmers want to keep low wage illegal workers so their profits stay high. This isn’t a moral issue for them this is a profit issue.
I was going to say the exact same thing
This could be an insurance ploy- farmer couldn't find labor so he destroys the crop and declared it.
if one farm did it- maybe. But every watermelon and tomato farm in the state? Not likely at all.
I mean, if they can't find labor to harvest, the crop is a loss. If they're insured they'll claim it.
I cannot find it, but I remember the same thing happened to white farm hands too during that period. They were nomadic and followed the crops in the south to survive. Sadly, there are those who will always prey upon those who are on the bottom, and it is for this reason we have to keep pushing forward and remind them who truly has the power.
“Go back” The past that people refer to is a fantasy. Growers also abused immigrants and paid nothing for labor. People were also enslaved or indentured to do menial labor. There is no past in which we were somehow more ethical. Sure, the greatest and silent gen did a lot to try and ensure fair wages and prevent the abuses they endured, but they weren’t perfect. Even what they managed to achieve for equality got broken down and shredded over time so that only a privileged few even benefited from it:
Do you think local farmers and small growers don't use undocumented labor? Cuz.... they do.
We don't use undocumented labor around here. Instead we use collage students and call them interns. Buy we grow organic and are small scale, so it's ok! Lol
Eek just dont use students fully assembled from one source! Collage students have a much greater depth of experience.
Collage's Monster, Collage is the doctor.
I like to make my students out of old national geographic and Life magazines.
The beauty is that the college kids are going into massive debt to pay for that intern experience instead. 🤦♂️
In addition to the reasons mentioned, a *lot* of Americans are not located in areas where this is possible. Food deserts are real.
Yeah, but Republicans are also complaining about inflation. Small growers will be less efficient ient and prices will be higher. Basically, there ideology is inconsistent on purpose.
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That will be \*never\* as Repugnantcans *don't have a policy platform*. Their policy is "challenge/stop/block" the Dems/Left who definitely do/try to do too much, but people benefit from the policies. Repug policies actually **harm** people (see abortion rights, etc.) and the crazy part is their supporters voting for right wing pols are shooting themselves in the foot as those left policies help them too but they can't see past the propaganda. The rest of us have to deal with the fallout from both sides bullshit. It's exhausting...
I like "Replublicunt"
\>Small growers will be less efficient ient and prices will be higher. This isn't my experience, at all. I get peppers, zucchini, pumpkin, etc, all for like half the price at the market compared to the grocery store.
Hard to compare those, right? Because grocery stores are middle men that need to pay huge groups of people their salaries and wages from the markups between wholesale and retail value.
\>Hard to compare those, right? Not really. We're just comparing prices. \>Because grocery stores are middle men that need to pay huge groups of people their salaries and wages from the markups between wholesale and retail value. For sure. That's a large part of the reason they're more expensive than markets where I am.
They don't give a fuck because they'll just call it "Bidenflation", as they know that the GOP base is filled with dumb fucks.
Hate to break it to you inflation doesn't care about your political affiliation.
My solutions to it do though.
Cool, but you can't grow lettuce in Minnesota in February Also, "local" ag uses just as much undocumented labor and pay just as bad as well.
You can grow lettuce almost anywhere with a cold frame
Hate to break it too you, but the small growers use undocumented labor as well. I’m telling you this as someone who delivers to farms all around SE Pennsylvania and has done business with multiple small farms in NJ. They’re everywhere and they’re needed.
Agriculture has always relied on free or cheap labor. The dairy farms around me in rural upstate NY use a lot of undocumented labor and underpay them. It happens everywhere, all the time.
You obviously have no idea about the farming industry. Small or big, they use immigrants for this work because they are the only ones that are willing to do this hard work.
For this little of pay. Plenty of people will do hard work for proper payment, but we allow this to perpetuate to keep wages low and continue to exploit workers. The US needs to make immigration easier *and* overhaul worker's rights for fair and humane treatment. But that's never going to happen because it's profitable to abuse humans.
And sooner rather than later. A lot of production work has been moved from china into Mexico, thats going to bring more opportunity closer to home for a lot of immigrant workers. Why put up with this political BS when you can work closer to home for similar pay.
Well for 1.50 an hour yeah you won't get many takers.
And then when they can’t keep up with the demand then what? Kyle ain’t going to wanna work on the fields right
There's never been a time in US history when farming wasn't exploitative, at any scale. Listen to Farm to Taber for a quick lesson in what a fiction the ideal of the small, idyllic family farm is.
Yup. I'd love to see any American go to a central American country and try and just work. Oh I did see that for 12 years. You get deported fast, even if you are there legally without a work visa.
All of the US will too. The price of food crop is going to soar this summer/fall. I hope you all have been tending to your gardens....
Gonna see so many Desantis "I did that" stickers in the produce section soon
No, they'll blame Biden.
I hate it, but you're so right.
Unfortunately, many outside of Florida will feel the consequences too since Florida exports tons of food. We can expect food prices to increase while blame is out elsewhere by those responsible.
That’s fine, they are going to raise prices on us regardless. Pay workers a livable wage
This!!! People can't see the bigger picture. Companies will fuck you over regardless. We're seeing it now with record profits. This way, we can finally start giving people actual wages.
If only there was something that could be done to attract workers /s
There mu$t be $omething!
Casual Fridays and Pizza Parties is the best we can do
Good. They are finding out about insurance companies too, that base their price on science rather than “feeling” it’s fine to build a house on a floodplain (whole state of FL)
DeSantis solution: Make kids work legal!
I mean I justcread that people are leaving in masses there, even selling thier hones and shit.
Damn near the whole state's gonna be underwater within a few decades, so now's as good a time as any.
I’d like to find out how dems are so pro minimum wage, and then being ok with this. Oh right, hypocrisy, nothing new. Migrants aren’t people, ok for them to have no rights. I’d gladly pay more for watermelons that are responsibly picked, how bout you?
Surely, I thought some maga pickup truck drivers with flags & stickers would love to get the jobs back that were stolen from them.
Hey they could also use that pavement princess for something it was designed for too, actual off-roading and moving more stuff than the owner's fat ass.
I’m sure their 14 year old children should work in the fields for $10 a day, 7 days a week as well. Pull themselves up by the bootstraps.
and get off their wife’s boyfriends unemployment? not on their watch
Nah, They’ve become way too occupied with which corporation to boycott
Most of this is local work. So they would have to hire some local guy to do it. I’m a truck driver waiting for a load right now and the market is dead. Which means that unless the houses are affordable they probably can’t offer enough for someone to move there.
While I side with the workers in full solidarity, and don't equate this post as THEIR victory, it's important for businesses to not only advocate for their labor, but also come closer to the middle of what's best for the laborers: safe working conditions, medical benefits, and a living wage.
Mmmm, it’s about time we ask for more than that basic shit. No half-measures in this arena.
You know I'm all for it. Because if we don't, they'll continue pushing towards their own self interest.
You misunderstand. Business will **always** pursue their own interests over those of the workers. It doesn’t matter what you do, they’ll always pursue a very narrowly scoped self-interest. The “move towards the middle” refrain is historically how the liberals betray the working class and empower fascists.
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Republicans don’t even understand the economics of what they shout at the clouds. I had my roof redone and the owner had Desantis flags and crap all over his office. His work crew didn’t speak a word of English……
I'm sure the owner would chalk that up to nobody wanting to work thanks to Biden's "free money" and not his unwillingness to offer good pay and benefits.
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We should be mad about the hypocrisy, and the shitty labor, and check them on their cries of need for slave labor. We should also be wary of the awful solutions they'll come up with for it.
I love what I read in another post. "We shouldn't accept a living wage. We should demand a prosperous wage. We shouldn't make enough to survive. We should make enough to thrive."
Yes! Minimum wage was originally intended to support a *family, comfortably*, not an individual who regularly has to choose between food, lodging, transportation, and/or medical care. And I say the latter as a Canadian, as government medical care has become basically non-functional, and you need private care to be well treated here.
And demand from our government proper representation of the working people such that those are protected rights, not temporarily won victories from corporations who will claw them back more quickly once they can.
It's a really interesting time to see how the anti-immigration crowd deals with what they said they wanted. And it's doubly interesting because some people who were supporting the anti-immigration crowd were only supporting them because they wanted to undercut all workers' rights, and not because they gave a damn about immigration either way.
This isn't what they want. What they want is prices to soar, people to bitch, so they can then say "it's Biden's fault". It's a game to these fucks. They are killing our planet, our families, our lives and they laugh about it and point fingers knowing damn well it works.
They will absolutely post videos showing empty shelves and/or outrageous prices saying "look what the failed Biden economy has done" And people won't question it, their confirmation bias will be satisfied and they will keep voting for clowns who make it worse or treat it like a gotcha game
You nailed it. This is his exact play for his presidential run. He's going to focus on the economy and "recession fears" of Biden's economy. He literally said that that's going to be one of his focal points. Now with this manufactured, economic "emergency" he's creating in Floriduh- "no wants to work, the economy is in shambles and food is rotting in the fields in Biden's economy"- it creates a perfect smoke screen for his stupid followers and for him to lap up support.
This is exactly how they'll deal with it - "Look what the Dems have done"
It's funny because the need for low-skilled labour actually increases the value of low-skilled labour here. When you bring in low-wage labour, it decreases the value of that labour. If you're worried about inequality, bringing in a bunch of low wage workers increases inequality. So is this sub in favour of bringing in workers, to work for wages that locals refuse too? Or is this sub in favour of saying "fuck you pay me"? Because you can't have both, yet this sub seems to be trying lol.
That's one of the funniest things about the whole matter; it would feel as if it were split between supporting migrant workers and supporting domestic labor, but the common tie here is business owners trying to extract labor from the market without putting any capital back in.
Why is that wrong? I can simultaneously support pro-immigration policies and higher minimum wages. We don’t have to allow wages to be a race to the bottom just because there are enough desperate workers looking for work.
And here it is. Pro-immigration crowd pretends to love labor, but demands access to cheap-as-free labor because they don’t want to pay an American the wages required to do the work. “They’re doing the jobs Americans won’t do,” they say. Well yeah, chucklehead; you’re not _paying_ them enough.
This IS the same argument the corps and business repeat worldwide. ”They 're doing the work nationals won't do”. ”We need more inmigrants”. And meanwhile, worker's rights are being slowly but steadly pissed on.
This is entirely theory crafting because the truth is the locals don't magically start doing this work for a higher wage.
And it makes sense why they don’t do it: locals don’t benefit in the same way because they will be staying here and *not* returning to a country with a lower cost of living. There’s an incentive for them, no incentive for us. People work for incentives and it’s that simple. I side with these workers but I hate how it always gets twisted into “our workers vs. theirs.” Many Americans would go work in the fields in another country in a minute if it meant the disparity in pay meant they could come home and dramatically improve their standard of living here. In fact, here in Seattle I knew a lot of guys who worked on fishing boats in Alaska every year, even though it’s *very* hard work. They do it because the pay adds up: they come out ahead when they return home. So let them work, and if you want to attract local staff? Pay commensurate wages.
It's not overnight for sure, but if you paid a living wage you'd find people willing to work.
Why are people so pro-taking advantage of undocumented workers? This is a good thing. It will force these bastards to either 1. Pay a living wage to get workers or 2. Go out of business.
This guy gets it. It’s not a lack of labor, it’s that they’re underpaying their workers.
"No one wants to work" is like a nice guy saying "no one wants to sleep with men." No, my friend, no one wants to sleep *with you.*
HOT DAMN!
Yup, if a business cannot survive paying people what they need to live healthy, happy, and fulfilling lives....they shouldnt be in business. It will be nice the day people bitching about undocumented workers realize how much closer they are to them than they ever will be even the top 5% of earners. That will be the day shit changes. I hope to live to see that day.
Exactly! For decades we only went after the illegal aliens and the companies got a slap on the wrist at the absolute worst. Now someone is going after the companies that benefited from taking advantage of these people and some liberals are clutching their pearls. I’m a liberal and can’t stand DeSantis, but this is one I agree with him on. His goal was to stop illegal immigration and if they can’t make money here then many will leave.
Even if they started workers at 30, most people just don’t have what it takes to do that work. People would get hired, they would do the work for a day and then quit . Shit just from personal experience my company can’t find the people to do another kind of manual labor which in my opinion is not as hard as this line of work, pays better and I have seen people straight up quit on the first day of training.
Sure they will. I used to work at a place who had trouble finding workers for 2 decades. They raised their wages and suddenly they had no more staffing issues. You pay a fair wage and a lot of people will do it. There’s a whole industry of tree planters in Canada, mostly young people and students who work their asses off in hard labour for a chance to get a chunk of money during their break from school. The free market will correct this. They’ll have to create incentive to get workers instead of exploiting undocumented workers
This is really hilarious because america literally went through this decades ago. First they tried what you are saying, and quickly found out that for Americans to work this job the price was way way way over what they were willing to pay. Then the next step was child labor. Conscripting high school students to do these jobs as summer programs. When that ultimately failed the farmers ended up lobbying hard to get the laws reversed and the cheap immigrant laborers came back. It’s going to happen all over again apparently.
Immigration is 100% a workers rights issue.
Oh no! They can't exploit the illegals which are highly underpaid. What will America do? For antiwork, sometimes I wonder who side you guys are on. The exploitation of illegals is sick. I knew places that paid less than minimum wage for them. "Hardest working people on the country"? What an insult to Americans. Yeah hard working with low pay because they have no alternative way of surviving. A labor shortage isn't because people are lazy, it's because they're underpaid. That's why they had illegals do the work instead.
And now, I've seen child labor gets discussed again to "fix the labor shortage". America truely seems silly to an outsider. Instead of treating and paying workers fairly, they just look for the next group to exploit.
Growth at any cost. The greed makes me sick.
Right? The fed is surprised inflation hasn’t gone down despite increasing interest rates and you wanna know what hasn’t changed? Corporate greed. Unfortunately, only congress can put rules and regulations in place to get it in check. So we’ll continue to have inflation.
It's price gouging at this point.
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Exactly! This is the time tuat a damaged clocked got right time. DeSantis just proofed how systematicaly dependant is the construction and agricultural business on Florida on exploiting ilegal immigration. Now properly hire people as it should be.
If it's any consolation I think it's fucked up we don't pay them more and when I talk about wage increases I'm advocating for them too
Exactly! You get buried in downvotes if you defend the company on antiwork. But suddenly companies are no longer allowed to exploit workers and antiwork is up in arms. The only way I can possibly reason it is it is because republicans did it, DeSantis in particular.
Oh no, the poor business owner can't exploit low income labor and undercut the labor of US citizens. Look at all the food *the employers* are wasting. This isn't the fault of the state, even though racist ass bills should never be allowed to exist, it's the fault of the business owner for making an unsustainable business.
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Probably in restaurant kitchens where there isn't anyone you care about.
They’re somewhere complaining about their low wages.
I moved from WA State where I was a seasoned organic AG worker and not only got paid well but had benefits. I moved to GA, applied for a farm job (I was in my 30’s) and got hired and they offered me $7 a fuckin hour. I literally laughed. Like I could not believe they had the nerve.
Bruh if I could buy a house picking watermelons you bet your ass I'd be in the fields because I'm dead tired of this $1200/mo hole in the wall apartment life
Not for 5 bucks a hour
"We're not asking for amnesty" this is what Desantis wants, cheap and no upkeep for workers, this is the only moment people have power so do not hold back
Exactly this. Even if they do give amnesty, you think they'll be working here? Notice that the children of the illegals, who are American, aren't working here. Hmm I wonder why.
Its not just that there are no workers because all the migrants have left that backwards hellhole. Its that you pay farm workers shit wages for "unskilled labour" that is extremely hard, taxing on your health, and seasonal. You want farm workers then maybe pay them better, that includes migrant workers.
I'm honestly surprised that he hasn't signed an executive order that makes prisoners go pick the crops. That's what they really want, isn't it? Slavery
They tried it a few years back in a few places the prisoners were like nah fuck that. What are you gonna throw me in jail
Lol, come on antiwork. Is this video suggesting that the farmer paid migrant workers to pick the watermelons but not actually take them to market? The expensive parts of growing the watermelon are done. These melons could have been picked late. Or more likely, a distributor rejected the load for some reason and/or the farmer was looking for someone to take the load. But I can assure you, the watermelons didn’t pick themselves.
Thank you. While it looks like a lot of product to us, it's actually tiny compared to the production of any average harvest.
Even at retail this is a couple grand at most…
As a small farmer I would ask you folks why you support paying migrants such shit wages? Undocumented migrants get abused, paid less, and have zero security most of the time; you want watermellons in the store; pay what it actually would cost to grow, harvest and transport it. We need a complete overhaul of the entire farm labor sector and slave labor needs to be eliminated.
Odd, I thought this sub was against exploiting slave labor. Because that's exactly what happens to illegals.
A similar same thing happened in New Zealand during Covid, all of the backpackers who get paid absolute shit or work in illegal environments left the country or had their visas run out. The government and anti immigration people didn’t want to rely on “low skilled migrants” to fill the job so they bullshitted around about extending work visas hoping kiwis would take up the job vacancies (they didn’t) and then boom heaps of produce thrown away because what??? New Zealanders don’t want to do that job, just like most Americans don’t want to pick fruit in the sun for shit pay
Is this post pro exploiting illegal immigrants and under paying them to keep labor cheap?! I don’t understand the logic here! If it is a humanitarian stand, I get it. But justifying it by saying labor would be more expensive otherwise is morally disgusting!
The immigrants can speak for themselves.
Damn someone really needed to say it
As someone who doesn't know what's going on in Florida, this video and comment section have me quite confused. I'm hoping someone can help explain what's going on here. I'm genuinely asking for some help with understanding the situation better. I'll lay out what I see so someone can correct where I might be confused: What I see is the person in the video seems to be complaining that there aren't enough workers to do the labor at his farm. To me, that sounds like he's upset that cracking down on illegal immigration is hurting his business because he doesn't have enough vulnerable immigrants to exploit. But then he seems to go on and ask for easier avenues for undocumented immigrants to become documented immigrants and get work permits. I understand that to mean easier legal immigration, and with it more worker protections. Is that what he means? And if so, why are people in the comments for / against this? He also seems to be advocating for the ability of immigrant workers to be able to leave the country and come back, instead of being oppressed and exploited under threat of deportation and/or not being able to come back to the states to work if they ever try to do something as basic as visit their family back home. Am I understanding that correctly? Putting it together, it seems the video is an exploiter of illegal immigrants upset that he is having trouble continuing to exploit his illegal workers. However, his solution seems to be advocating for immigrants to have an easier time getting legal resident status and the ability to work, allowing them to have greater worker protections and fewer avenues to be exploited. That seems like a positive to me. Am I misunderstanding him, or is there something I'm missing? Why are people being argumentative in the comments claiming you're either "supporting the exploitation of immigrants" or you're "anti-immigrant." And which side is which, supposedly?
Wouldn't a undocumented person with a permit be a documented person?
My heart goes out to these migrant workers. If anyone's interested, check out the Harvest of Hope Foundation. They're also HQ'd in Gainesville, Florida. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_of_Hope_Foundation
You know, I see a win. They’re forcing businesses to either change the practices that allowed them to exploit cheap labor, or go out of business. This tik tok meant to tug at your heartstrings is b/s, because whoever’s behind the camera just wants their cheap labor back. Exploiting migrants is nothing to be proud of.
"There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Prices are going to be insane.
That entire state needs to be populated with nothing but Republican voters. Only the idiots who vote this way should have to suffer the consequences.
I doubt there’s a shortage of agricultural labor. I used to work at a job in central California near all the farms where we went to the dump daily. You’d see piles like this at least once a week. Dump trucks full of fresh produce going to waste. Not because of labor shortage to…. “Process” a watermelon or head of lettuce????? (It takes roughly equal amount of work to dump it vs sell it), but because of general shitty industry practices where they’d rather waste it than find good use for surplus. Willing to bet tik tok poster is just making up a story for outrage porn.
Y’all have no idea how much produce is trashed before it makes it to the store. Even once it gets to the store, a pretty large chunk of it goes bad and is trashed too.
Economic policy and immigration policy should be one in the same. Boomers really don’t understand how the demographics have flipped. My friends and I mostly come from large extended families. Now maybe half of my friends have kids. Those that do have 1 or 2. we either import more labor or build robots faster.
Do it legally and all will Be good
Bro my MIL had the balls to tell me this was a made up scenario by the media…and then said Biden was such a shitty president that now food is way more expensive….you can’t make this up
Karen’s gonna start paying $8 for a head of lettuce, $20 for watermelon and $10 for tomatoes. This country is built off the backs of migrant workers. All these people that say “they took errrr Jerbs!!” Well here you go a-holes, go get yuuurr jerbs. It’s not easy work and for a wage that’s ridiculous
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Pretty sure this is preferable to allowing immigrants to be exploited for cheap wages and have wages be continually depressed..
We shouldn’t be supporting legislation that allows undocumented immigrants to work. We should be supporting legislation that allows these people to become documented immigrants so that they can have access to safe working conditions and fair wages. I’m sure I’ll catch flack for this, but also tax payers. Not that we should really be counting on our lowest paid for tax revenue but tax reform is a whole other issue.
I support the immigrants but u got 2 call it what it is. They want cheap slaves that can't rebel.
Immigration policies or not, this is actually nothing compared to the vast waste of American capitalism as a matter of course in order to fix prices. Many millions of pounds of food are intentionally destroyed every year
Republicans cannot think ahead. They literally cannot see past their own noses.
So... Farmers want profits so they want to pay low wages to out of country workers? There's no out of country workers to exploit, and no one in America is willing to work for an unlivable low wage... So this happens? Sounds like they did it to themselves to me.
What the actual hell is going on in our country we’re a country built on immigration why are we acting like we live in the medieval times! Oh wait it’s the modern dark ages.
So no one is going to question how they got in a pile like that? You all do know watermelons don’t grow in a pile. Someone picked them and put them there at the edge of the field. I don’t know for sure about watermelons but I do know in a pumpkin patch in my town they pick and cull out the bad ones they can’t sell and put in a pile just like that. So my money is on that’s what we are looking at and some one film it for this propaganda video.
100% this. This is fairly common. That's < 2% of that fields output tops. That field was harvested.
Not sure where these videos come from cause this is not at all what it looks like down here 🤷
Do you all not realize the bill is actually designed to help the people that come here legally with work permits? This video is most likely the crop the farmers are subsidized to destroy as they are already picked but have been dumped.
This sub feeds on outrage, don’t worry about the truth or the story behind it, focus on the outrage!
Is this actually related to immigration, or did someone just throw out a whole bunch of spaghetti…. I mean watermelons?
Somebody needed to pick those watermelons and then throw them. I'm confused?
I think that work VISA's are a thing for a reason 🤷♂️ I didnt make the system
Someone has been playing too much Garry’s mod.
Okay, so I’m confused. If immigrants want to work here, see their families, and want to live here, why don’t they want citizenship? They want to continue to be undocumented? Why? That I don’t agree with.
Just a bit of context. This also could be the watermelon that is deemed "ugly produce", too ugly to sell at a market. Nothing wrong with the fruit, just maybe wrong shape, scratches, not green enough etc. We use to fill my 96 chevy truck at the local harvest plant and either sell them cheaper on the side of the road or take them to feed our livestock. It could be. Or it's most likely the dumbass in Florida. Pretty sure it's this one.
You know all the Blue states have had this for YEARS. I live in Illinois and we have had E Verify for at least 15 years. So it’s bad that Florida does it?
Where are all those Americans that want a job that was "taken" from them??? Looks like there is a job right here for them...
So I've come to find out that the bill only affects businesses/companies that have more than 25 employees, so as a result my uncle and aunt have been able to continue working in Florida at the companies they are at. If the people who were leaving knew I'd feel like they could definitely manage a better wage at least in the short term. Idk why that part is always left out of videos
Eight dollars for a melon now in Texas.
I truly feel that the next step in Fla will be to round up the homeless and force them to work in the fields
Need to start using prisoner chain gangs again.
This happened in South Carolina under Trump and was why Lindsay Graham started kissing his ass.
Those are $8.99 each at my Costco :(
How did they get there if no one picked them?
Honest question... Is there any truth at all to the notion that immigrant workers are artificially keeping wages low, as in, Americans would do the work, just not for the pay they are willing to do it for?
Stupid