Reference no: EM133137660

Biting the Hand That Feeds You?

California's central valley is home to some of the nation's most fertile farmland. Over 6 million people live in the area, and the fields bring in $35 billion a year in revenue. It is a bustling region in a state that provides the United States with more of its food than any other state. However, in 2016, large portions of the annual crop rotted in the fields due to the inability of employers to find workers to harvest the wide variety of produce grown in the valley. In general, California's agricultural economy reported lost production across the board of 8 to 10% that year, and some individual growers lost over 25% of their crop due to labor shortages caused by crackdowns on illegal workers from Mexico.Page 231

Further east, meat producers in the Midwest also experienced similar problems with labor shortages that limited production. Already burned by hiring illegal immigrants in prior years, only to watch them be deported, meat producers changed their strategy 10 years ago, and turned to a new supply of labor-refugees-to solve their chronic labor shortage problem. U.S. regulations allow refugees to work as soon as they arrive in the country and over the years, the share of immigrant labor in Midwest slaughterhouses has grown to 35% many of which come from Somalia. However, this strategy was upended in 2017 when U.S. policy placed restriction on refugees entering the country, cutting this supply of labor in half. Like produce, meat is a commodity that needs to be processed in a timely fashion, and thus labor shortages also threaten the viability of this segment of the economy, worth $29 billion.

The common element to the problems plaguing these two industries is that the nature of the work is so undesirable that no native-born Americans would be willing to take these jobs. The work is very physically demanding and conducted in either the scorching hot sun or within freezing ice coolers at very low pay. However, the strategy of relying on illegal workers and refugees to plug this labor gap is becoming increasingly untenable, leaving the human resource management professionals in these industries struggling to meet the demand for labor.

H2-A visas are temporary visas issued strictly to farmworkers, and back in California, employers are trying to get the government to raise the number of H2-As but they are running into stiff political opposition. This has also been the experience of large meat producers who have been unable to get relief from the limits on refugees, many of which come from predominantly Muslim countries. Joseph Pezzini, COO of Ocean Mist farms, notes that when it comes to feeding the nation, "labor has always been an important part of what we do, but there were other resources issues that would take center stage like safety or water. But now the highest priority issue is the availability of labor"

1) What are some alternatives to the use of immigrants and refugees when it comes to addressing a labor shortage for jobs that are unattractive to U.S. workers?

2) One response to labor shortages is to raise pay. Why is this option seemingly "off-the-table" when it comes to agriculture jobs versus manufacturing jobs?