Juan Valdez will do it!..............
Posted on 11/23/2009 1:11:22 PM PST by BBell
In a time of massive layoffs, there are some jobs that nobody in Puerto Rico wants.
Puerto Rico has the highest unemployment in the U.S., at 17 percent, and that number will go higher if the government carries out plans to lay off 30,000 employees. At the same time, coffee plantations are desperate for workers. When the governor recently suggested people pick coffee, many considered it an insult.
The coffee plantations are struggling to get enough workers, even after throwing in free transportation and meals. Plantation owners are now using convict labor, with buses taking the prisoners to the fields and back each day.
An entrepreneur who spoke to Fox News said Puerto Ricans have become too dependent on the state and look down on agriculture as something backward. He has plans for agri-tourism. He got his start selling fresh orange juice to hotels.
It's not easy work. Coffee is grown on hillsides to allow the water to run off. Coffee beans are berries first, sweet. Coffee pickers here make about $75 on a good day, at about $8 an hour. They pick during rainy season, so in the dense leaves it is always wet, and with the mud on a hillside it is slippery. Mosquitos bite, leaving a small red circle as if you have been stuck by a pin.
We watch a coffee picker removing the red beans from a plant. His thumbs and forefingers move rapidly and gently at the same time, taking the red, leaving the green. It reminded me of someone typing on a Blackberry, but it was a real berry instead.
(Excerpt) Read more at liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com ...
I’d be out doing it if I lived there. Seems the entitlement mentality isn’t only here in the States.
That'll never happen, because welfare is the only thing keeping them at home. If that gravy train ended they'd probably move en masse to the U.S.
kind of a strange story here
Considering median household income in PR is $18 K a year, compared to the poorest state in the US Miss. at $33 K, this is a very good salary for PR. Of course there is a huge stigma in doing manual work like this.
Don’t care! Drink columbian coffee...
Juan Valdez will do it!..............
AMERICA
ROSALIA
Puerto Rico,
You lovely island . . .
Island of tropical breezes.
Always the pineapples growing,
Always the coffee blossoms blowing . . .
ANITA
Puerto Rico . . .
You ugly island . . .
Island of tropic diseases.
Always the hurricanes blowing,
Always the population growing . . .
And the money owing,
And the babies crying,
And the bullets flying.
I like the island Manhattan.
Smoke on your pipe and put that in!
OTHERS
I like to be in America!
O.K. by me in America!
Ev’rything free in America
For a small fee in America!
ROSALIA
I like the city of San Juan.
ANITA
I know a boat you can get on.
ROSALIA
Hundreds of flowers in full bloom.
ANITA
Hundreds of people in each room!
ALL
Automobile in America,
Chromium steel in America,
Wire-spoke wheel in America,
Very big deal in America!
ROSALIA
I’ll drive a Buick through San Juan.
ANITA
If there’s a road you can drive on.
ROSALIA
I’ll give my cousins a free ride.
ANITA
How you get all of them inside?
ALL
Immigrant goes to America,
Many hellos in America;
Nobody knows in America
Puerto Rico’s in America!
ROSALIA
I’ll bring a T.V. to San Juan.
ANITA
If there a current to turn on!
ROSALIA
I’ll give them new washing machine.
ANITA
What have they got there to keep clean?
ALL
I like the shores of America!
Comfort is yours in America!
Knobs on the doors in America,
Wall-to-wall floors in America!
ROSALIA
When I will go back to San Juan.
ANITA
When you will shut up and get gone?
ROSALIA
Everyone there will give big cheer!
ANITA
Everyone there will have moved here!
Music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
© 1956, 1957 Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Sondheim. Copyright renewed.
Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.
look no further tha Lancaster CO, PA
send all them back to pick
Puerto Rico is the States.
“...mosquitoes bite, leaving a small red circle
as if you have been stuck by a pin...”
-
Why did the author think his readers needed to have
it explained to them what a mosquito bite looked like?
My aunts and uncles were pickers back in the fifties, from time to time. They’d load up the kids, rent a house near the fields, and work while there was work. It was not uncommen in those days, people didn’t like to be on the dole so if you were laid off, you went to work in the fields.
With unemployment much easier to get, people don’t have to do that. So we import people who can’t get unemployment.
Of course if you give them amnesty, or they obtain by some means their legal residency, they don’t stay in the fields either, they look for work in the oil fields or construction. So you are always having to bring in more people who can’t get unemployment.
Or you could raise the pay so that it is competitive with construction. But if you don’t want to do that, the alternative is what it is. Since the labor cost of picking a tomato is a tiny percent of the cost of the tomato, you could probably double their pay and the cost of the tomato would go up a couple of cents. Or, bring in more illegals. But be aware that as soon as you give them amnesty you’ve lost them.
“An entrepreneur who spoke to Fox News said Puerto Ricans have become too dependent on the state and look down on agriculture as something backward”.
What this unnamed enterpreneur said is misleading. For $8.00 and hour, there are plenty of other jobs available that are not back breaking. Picking coffee in mountainous terrain is a far cry from picking other crops in flat terrain. Coffee picking were almost exclusively done by slaves and indentured servants in the past and in the recent past. It is really tough work and near minimum wage is not nearly incentive enough to do it. In Colombia they can get away with paying farm workers cents an hour. Not in Puerto Rico where as a U.S. territory, the minimum wage applies.
IF I were unemployed and IF I couldn’t get a job, say, in McDonald’s, I might consider picking coffee. In fact, I would much rather sweep the streets than pick coffee.
Not a state, a commonwealth. Until I see a 51st star, anyway.
Some enterprising American needs to organize “work tours” to Puerto Rico. People willing to do this work, even for a few weeks at a time, could go down in groups, have the arrangements made for them, and make some money.
It’s not easy work.
about $75 on a good day, at about $8 an hour. They pick during rainy season, so in the dense leaves it is always wet, and with the mud on a hillside it is slippery. Mosquitos bite, leaving a small red circle as if you have been stuck by a pin.
Geez, sounds just like the summer landscaping job I had to work my way through college in Pennsylvania back in the day...
We had trouble for years, actually since the last amnesty, getting chile pickers but this year we had them in droves. There were so many that we could pick 2 semi loads of red in a couple of hours. They averaged about $35 and working 6 days a week that is about $210 with SS and Med taken out around $194. Considering the vehicles they drove many would run short on their payments for the month.
These are the people from the 1986 amnesty and their children who left for parts unknown and were making big bucks in construction.
It is hard out there.
My husband’s cousin has a small farm in Hawaii, he has to import Mexicans for the harvest.
The are living off US welfare paid by (hateful) you and me.
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