MARCH NEWS
Vineyard Labor And the Law
Unified speakers tackle immigration S
acramento, Calif.—Speakers representing human resources, ac- ademia and California agriculture exchanged ideas about vine- yard labor recently at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium.
A comment from Mike Carlton, director of the labor division for the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, summarized the overall mes- sage: "If you don't make your voice heard, no one will listen." Although the session was billed in the Unified program as "Needed: People," it could just as well have been called "How Immigration Affects Farm Owners." Dr. Philip Martin of the University of California, Davis, a pro-
fessor of agriculture and resource economics, told a large audience that farm labor is the first job that many immigrants do upon moving to the United States. Up to 50% of farm laborers are un- authorized, and about one in six workers have been in the coun- try for less than a year. For vineyard owners, these high turnover rates can translate into increased time spent training and lower productivity. For many, the need for a competent and experienced workforce is reason enough to reconsider immigration law, but Carlton and Martin contend that a small but
High turnover rates cost money for vineyards employing farm labor. winesandvines.com
Learn more: Search keyword "labor."
vociferous group of anti-immigration leadership is dominating the conversation in Washington, D.C., and the cries of those groups have made it unlikely that Congress will address comprehensive immigration reform within the next two years. "Ten percent of Americans say immigration is the
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No. 1 problem today," Martin said. "It's a small group of people, but they make a lot of noise."
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