Brokaw and crab pickers
Click here for an NBC report by Tom Brokaw, filed from Cambridge, on the Eastern Shore, about the lack of workers to pick crabs. I wish I had a way of busing a bunch of ex-offenders from Baltimore down there; they'd do the work. The phone rings at my desk every day, calls from men and women out of Maryland prisons and unable to find jobs around here.
Comments
Why should the picking houses be immune from the basic forces of economics? All they have to do to get locals to line up and take these jobs is pay a market wage - a wage that locals are willing to work for. But the industry has grown so accustomed to paying foreigners a below market wage, and consumers have grown so accustomed to prices kept low by below market priced labor, that processing crab meat isn't profitable paying market wages. So they complain to the government their supply of below market priced labor has run out. Boo hoo!
Posted by: Brandon | May 29, 2009 10:16 AM
I don't know why they need more crab pickers. When every time you look Mikulski is trying to get more and getting them foreign help to pick crabs, that they keep telling us we don't have. Can someone please tell me what happens to these people after the crab season ?
Posted by: R Munyan | June 15, 2009 9:16 AM