George,

Well, I certainly never called farm workers lazy as Mary Bauer implies in her email. I never mentioned anything about minimum wage workers making a poor choice either, but she would have been correct if I had.

People who work at a wage not appealing to their financial situation have made a poor choice or they made a choice that they had to work at that wage until they can move into a better paying job.

In 1990 I was laid off from a well-paying job as an Auditor for Saks Fifth Ave. in Palm Beach, FL. The next day, you did not find me at the unemployment office sucking money from the public dole; I was at Manpower Temporary at 6:00 AM and worked hard labor for three weeks before I got a job at Stouffer's Hotel Corp. similar to my previous job and income level.

I did not make a poor choice, but I made a choice to keep the income flowing until I found something to bring me back to where I could properly manage my finances.

If I were to move to Ireland, let's say; I would probably not get a choice job right away, but I would take a lesser job in the interim and then find more suitable work as soon as possible. The same situation currently applies and actually happens with today's farm workers.

The age distribution of U.S. farm workers changes rapidly and the graph looks just like any other age employment graph for the United States - highest percentage of the workforce is age 25-34. According to 1997-98 NAWS data, the median age of farm workers was 29 years old, 52% were married, 47% complete more than 12 years of schooling and 44% owned a vehicle.

As far as Mary Bauer's lie about overtime protection, U.S. farm workers - even those in the H-2A program are cover by the Fair Labor Standards Act and "...overtime pay at a rate of not less than one and one-half times their regular rates of pay is required after 40 hours of work in a workweek." Even with this law, according to the latest data, U.S. farm workers worked an average of 40.4 hours per week with the highest average of 45.7 hours a week in the Mountain III Region, Arizona and New Mexico! Oh my God, what are we going to do? We better make sure some big mean corporation paid them their fair share of time and a half for those 5.7 extra hours! http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/reports/nassr/other/pfl-bb/2002/fmla1102.txt

Also, according to the National Agricultural Workers Survey: 1997-1998 "Although years of schooling completed do not necessarily correlate with present abilities to read and write, school completion data provide some indication of ability to process and use printed information."

"Underemployment is widespread within the farm workforce. In 1997-98, farmworkers spent, on average, about 47 percent of their time in U.S. farm work, 24 percent of their time living abroad, 19 percent of their time residing but not working in the U.S., and 8 percent of their time in U.S. nonfarm employment. Time spent working in U.S. agriculture varied by place of birth: non-Mexican-born Latinos spent the largest proportion of their year (56%) in farmwork. By comparison, Mexican-born and U.S.-born farmworkers spent 48 and 46 percent of their year in farmwork..."

Now tell me why the farm work income amount is so low. Because they work 47% to 56% of their time in farm work - that's right!

Would you pay top dollar to a new employee that just started, could barely speak the native language, had no prospect of growing with your business and was going to be gone half of the year? By law under the H-2A program in Virginia you would have to pay them $7.53 an hour (above the national minimum wage, I might add...) and the contract states that this is Temporary Work. What is it that you don't understand?

I will bet you that farm workers that work at these wages don't do it for long before moving on to greener pastures. Finally, if Mary Bauer and her friends want to help farm workers who "...labor in an industry which has historically been exempted from many labor protections available to workers in other industries..." they should encourage their legislators to vote ¡Si Se Puede! on Senate Bill 1641.

Will Lyster (electronic mail, October 13, 2003)