10/18/06 Minimum Wage and Farmers

If you work in a fast food restaurant, clean motels or man the counter of a convenience store in Washington State, you just received a .31 cent an hour raise. While it is nothing to write home about, and won't even buy a cup of diner coffee, the fact that your are now paid nearly $8.00 an hours, ( $7.94 to be exact) means you receive the highest minimum wage in the US. It might be great for you but it is bad for our farmers. Despite rising fuel and fertilizer costs, farmers are now faced with increasing employee wages making it nearly impossible to grow labor intensive crops like asparagus and tree fruit competitively in a global market. Even more frustrating is the fact that even if they opt to pay well over minimum wage workers aren't showing, instead they are choosing to work in construction, landscape or the hospitality industry. Now that California will also be raising their minimum wage to $ 7.50 in January growers will also loose the financial incentive next season that drew pickers north as high gas prices and travel will cease to make $7.94 a carrot.