Wage Challenges

From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob arson with today’s Fruit Grower Report. Wages for ag labor have gotten to an almost unsustainable level thanks in part to an increasingly complicated system of calculating what should be paid.

Kate Tynan, Vice President at the Northwest Horticultural Council, says whether it’s piece-rate or hourly, prevailing wage or AEWR, surveys offer unquantifiable data …

TYNAN … “Some years, we’ll have a survey that comes out and sets one wage for all of apple harvest, which is not representative of the vast majority of apple harvests. Other times, you might have a wage that tries to get down to a granular level of, let’s say color picking a medium density Gala orchard. Well, is the state workforce agency going to have the same interpretation as the grower on what that means? Who knows.”

Tynan says they had an interesting situation just last year …

TYNAN … “Where the state released a survey where they initially attempted to set a prevailing wage for pruning trees by the bin. I’d like to find anybody who is able to prune a tree by the bin.”

And the prevailing wage, Tynan says has many issues …

TYNAN … “So, there’s just a number of glaring issues that have come up as a part of this prevailing wage system that we’ve seen in Washington state, but could occur in any state across the country, and we really believe that needs to be addressed in order to make sure that this program is sustainable not only now, but into the future.”

Could it get more complicated? Tynan says she’d hate to say no, but it is the federal government after all.