01/08/07 Will It Work In 2007?

Will It Work In 2007? I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. A lot of growers have been looking into the 2007 fruit growers crystal ball and one of the first images that has come into focus is the labor issue. Mike Gempler with the Washington Growers League says that just having job applicants won't necessarily guarantee workers. GEMPLER: What was interesting in doing the recruiting in 2005 and 2006, when using the H2 system was the results of the local and regional recruiting. Typically in the Spring if we had job openings, a couple hundred openings or even a hundred job openings we'd get maybe twice as many applicants as we had openings. And we'd interview them all and we'd make a significant number of job offers. I remember one application we had about 200 people who were interviewed, we ended up making a little over a hundred job offers and out of those 105 to 110 people who made job offers, we had maybe 50 accept. Out of the 50 who accepted we had about 5 who actually showed up on the first day of work. How does Gempler feel H2A is working? GEMPLER: Overall, I think the H2A employees who were brought up in 2006 proved to be a reliable and stable workforce, overall. It was successful and positive overall. There's glitches; there's fine tuning; there are challenges, particularly when you start up. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.