Dec 11, 2009

Let Them Play Video Games?

It’s a shame, really.

The things people admire about Hispanic workers ¬– the solid work ethic and strong family values ¬– can come back and bite everybody ¬– the employers, the workers, the do-gooders and the politically correct hypocrites.

In this day of interactive journalism, the black eyes really get spread around.

This happened the last week of October.

ABC News aired “undercover” film that showed children picking blueberries and toting buckets at Adkin Blue Ribbon Packing Co. in South Haven, Mich.

Four college journalism students shot the “children toiling” film after they were given permission to enter the fields by an Adkin employee who thought it was really nice that these college kids were doing a project to explain how blueberry farms work. The “testimonial” brought the Department of Labor to the farm, and the DOL levied fines. ABC’s Charlie Gibson introduced the “shameful” happening, and Brian Ross narrated, with indignation, this “rare insight into a well-hidden but prevalent practice,” and showed up at Randy Adkin’s house unannounced demanding an explanation, on camera, right now.

Local newspapers picked up the story, and reported that Meijer, Walmart and Kroger had suspended business dealings with the company.

Adkin General Manager Tony Marr tried to explain it all, but obviously the atmosphere was pretty well poisoned.

What could he say?

Well, he said, the company doesn’t hire underage workers. He told me that the farm turned away nearly 1,000 adults this year who, given Michigan’s miserable economy, wanted farm work. “We don’t need to hire children,” he said.

The company provides housing for about 250 workers who pick and pack the 400 acres of blueberries. They live there in family units, like migrants usually do. H-2A workers don’t bring spouses or children.

This year, Michigan’s miserable economy resulted in the closure of the usually state-supported migrant day care center at the farm, for lack of funding, and also the special summer school program there. It was July, so school was not in session.

So the families’ had to provide their own day care, and some chose to bring their kids to the fields with them ¬– something the farm does not allow but didn’t really stop, either.

So the kids went to the blueberry plantation.

The migrants work on a piece rate, so the incentive is there for kids to pick. More blueberries go into mom and dad’s bucket, so they get paid more. The kids probably don’t get paid, but the family does. That’s what family values and work ethics are about.

But the law says, no one under the age of 12 can work on a farm. And if those over 12 do, they need their own paycheck. They can’t work for mom and dad, unless mom and dad own the farm.

I thought it was probably just old people like me who failed to be outraged. I earned my first year’s college fees picking up potatoes on my father’s farm, and he hired other kids as well ¬– kids from my elementary school, which shut down for two weeks of “potato vacation.”

But actually, lots of people weren’t outraged. In reaction to the newspaper article, they replied with rancor . . . against Walmart. Walmart, readers said, is like a pipeline from China, where child labor is rampant.

And they didn’t much appreciate companies that move jobs overseas.

The responses cheered me up. Maybe I’m not so old-fashioned after all.