Tweet
If you can read this sign and want manual labor, you're probably not welcome. (photo: J. Stephen Conn via Flickr)
Today’s issue of Louisville, Kentucky’s Courier-Journal has a front page article that helpfully explains many jobs in the area must be filled by illegal immigrants because no American has applied for them.
The story appears to be spawned out of the fears expressed by employers like the area’s horse farms that the state’s legislature may crack down on hiring illegal immigrants, cutting off their last source of labor.
Employers say they have little choice but to bring on immigrant workers when filling positions.
“All of us are in a position of needing employees. We don’t want to hire illegals,” said David L. Switzer, executive director of the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association. Based in Lexington, the KTA represents the $4 billion annual horse breeding industry and 52,000 employees, according to the nonprofit’s website.
Asked how pervasive the presence of undocumented workers is in the horse racing industry, Switzer declined to comment. But he added that openings for stable hands, grooms and night watchmen are extremely difficult to fill.
“A significant number of foreign born are working in our industry,” Switzer said. “At some of our farms, they have not had a Caucasian or African American apply for a job in eight years. Nobody applies. What are we supposed to do?”
What a crock of potted baloney.
Try this yourself: browse through some of the job posting sites like Monster.com, Indeed.com, and SimplyHired.com and look for jobs with the keyword “horse” in the “Lexington, KY” area.
You’ll find nothing in the way of stable hands, grooms, watchmen or “equine staff” advertised for folks without a degree; you might find one job for a nonprofit equine advocacy manager, but that’s about it.
I went to the Courier-Journal.com’s website for the paper which carried this story and clicked on their Jobs listing. Apparently they use CareerBuilder.com to run their jobs page. Guess what? One job listing for keyword “horse” and location “Louisville, KY” — a sous chef position at The Blue Horse.
If I spread a slightly wider net, I can pull up a job listing under a category called “equine staff”; there’s a posting for a “driving stable assistant” which appears to be in Germany, IN. But that’s not in the neighboring state of Indiana; the posting is for an international job, location: Germany.
That’s why no Caucasian or African American has applied for their jobs: they aren’t advertising openings, and for a reason. . . .
What these *#%&$ employers want in the way of physical laborers are people who can’t read and won’t cost them a posting in either the local newspaper or a jobs board and ultimately won’t make any demands about hours, working conditions or a living wage out of fear of being deported. It’s the cheapskate, tightwad attitude of these employers which increases demand for illegal immigrants while Americans are out of work.
Kentucky’s legislature ought to slam employers hard for discriminating against Kentucky’s residents by seeking out only cheaper illegal immigrant labor; hefty fines ought to make it cheaper to advertise for legal workers than to risk illegal immigrants by word of mouth.
Let’s get the horse in front of the cart here and make it very clear that it’s not the illegal immigrants’ fault, either. There wouldn’t be illegal immigrants in Kentucky if there weren’t illegal employers hiring them. Punishing illegal immigrants only forces the illegal employers and the workers to go deeper under cover — and these illegal employers are already well under cover if you can’t find their job postings.
And the editor at Courier-Journal should be embarrassed (if not fired) for not asking the reporter to find the listings of these unfilled jobs gone wanting.
91 Comments
Traditionally, in a regular economy, if you are having trouble finding workers (not that these people actually are) you offer better wages. Or benefits, etc.
I hope these people go to jail.
“Traditionally, in a regular economy, if you are having trouble finding workers (not that these people actually are) you offer better wages. Or benefits, etc.
I hope these people go to hell.”
Fixed. :)
LOL!
Ditto Blue Chip Farms, locally, a trotter/pacer breeding farm http://www.bluechipfarms.com/
30 years ago, when we bought the house, all the workers were U.S. They were friendly, informative, willing to talk to visitors & tell you all about how the farm was run. Even saw a breeding there once.
Now, entire staff is Latino, who can barely speak English.
This is an increasing trend: employers pretend nobody knows the law of supply and demand. If they can’t find the workers they need – increase the wage rate.
But what they really mean is that they can’t find good workers for the shit pay they offer. Suddenly all that free market economics doesn’t fly. It is, and always has been. nothing more than a cudgel to sling against everybody else.
“What a crock of potted baloney.”
Absolutely. Total bullshit. I applied for horse farm jobs specifically a couple of years ago. I have some experience with grooming, keeping stables, and even track riding and track maintenance. I love horses. Called to follow up on my application several times. Never even got a call back. Finally checked back through the unemployment office to find that the job had been filled. Also love recycle (where many immigrants work). Was told in no uncertain terms that they do not hire women. Ditto for the riverboat companies. They want to hire immigrants so they can get away with lower wages and no benefits, bottom line. Piled high and deep, I’d say.
PS Same thing in Kentucky with stripping tobacco. It is all immigrants now too.
I checked KY’s job listings thru the employment dept. Looks like many (approx. 20 from Oct/Nov) stable attendant jobs (8.37-9.71/hr)FT/temp listed. One stable attend. position listed in Jan. this yr. Since they only want temps, it’s obvious they’re not interested in paying benefits or living wages.
Looks like the racing industry needs to start some outreach to the locals. How about a high school program for work/study? I don’t have a problem with hiring “foreign born” professional horsemen, but how often is that the reality? These folks are looking for grunt workers. Nothing wrong with that type of work, either, but it should at least include some benefits.
It’s too bad, really. Broadening the industry to include the locals lets you tap potential talent for everything from stable management to veterinary science. They’re neglecting their peeps.
As a side note, I like the term “foreign born”; sounds much more human than “illegal alien”.
Any bets these guys are not paying their workers the minimum wage or paying them less than they can get Americans to do the job for?
Are horse workers farm workers if so no overtime at all! But they can’t afford to pay their workers more money?
Didn’t Lou Dobbs the guy who ran an Immigrants are costing America jobs tv show every day for years on the Hate Channel CNN get into trouble recently for having immigrants work his daughters horse farm?
I grew up in KY and to be honest, most of the farm work paid shit but it was still a job available to students.
I never stripped any tobacco but did spend a couple of summers weeding it in amongst the putting up hay and measuring tobacco
Agreed on the “foreign born”, prefer it, but unfortunately doesn’t connote the legal status since many legal immigrants and even some American citizens would qualify as “foreign born.”
I think your comment walks up to one of the other challenges with regard to the horse industry. These folks apparently do not want to “breed” the next generation of horse breeders/handlers because they are clearly uninterested in anything but cheap labor which doesn’t ask questions. Are they not only trying to operate illegally on the cheap, but prevent any potential future competition from folks who might work for them?
A worker who is here illegally isn’t going to buy a farm just down the road and take what they’ve learned and turn it into a profitable, competitive business, after all — but a local kid who grew up in the area and knows the industry just might.
The employers were too elliptic. What they really meant to say, but were too clumsy to say it, was that they can’t get American workers to do the same work at the wage and working conditions of illegal immigrants. Now, if American workers would only wizen up, they could have those jobs.
I’m sure Rand Paul will get a bill to force Horse farms and other farms in Kentucky and the Nation to hire Americans/s
/s is the snark tag last time I made a comment like this I got deluged by peope who thought I was serious.
Funny Rand and the Tea baggers are not cleaning up their own state to busy stomping woman and forcing them to worship Aqua Buddha.
It’s not just the low pay for immigrants, but hours, conditions, and safety are always dismal. Also restricting their movements and communications, many probably live in farm “bunkhouses” with limited access to the outside world.
What the owners are saying is that US workers would report the farm for using slavery.
I wonder how many of the good jobs are filled by word-of-mouth hiring, without any ads at all (and, of course, how well it actually works).
Horse farms and other businesses that hire illegals gave how much to Rand? That would be a post.
That’s a really, really good point. I bet you’re right.
Cudos to Gebneral Technical Services LL, Adelphi MD. Graphics Artist Illustrator position $65,000-$95,000 per year US citizenship required Security CLearance.
Oh oooops must be working for the Military Industrial COmplex.
Set aside integrity all ye who enter here!?
That “supply and demand” concept is like a Cheshire Cat, isn’t it? When company executives are talking about executive pay, “supply and demand” is cited all over the place. But, when the discussion turns to workers at the other end of the pay spectrum, the “supply and demand” argument for wages abruptly disappears. What’s good for the CEO should be good for the sales associate or, in this case, the hotwalker.
I wonder how many of the good jobs are filled by word-of-mouth hiring, without any ads at all (and, of course, how well it actually works).
If you hire one immigrant you can always ask if he has friends looking for work.
Have you sent this to Dean Baker yet, Rayne?
Will Rand stand up for the rights of his state’s horse farmers to hire immigrants will he denounce them or just stay quiet? I bet on staying quiet just like the good little corporate lackey he is.
They’d like to have slaves but illegals are the next best thing.
DING DING DING! We have a winner!!!
We need a local to call his office mention the article in the news and ask what is Rand going to do about it since this was a major issue for his campaign. Senate offices tend to give preferences to answering local voter calls.
No, but who knows, he might see it.
Can always use the social media tools up at the top to spread it, too.
Yes, exactly – if they’re good for tomatoes and citrus in Florida, why not slaves in Kentucky for horses?
Security clearances are another way to produce a workforce that doesn’t have rights and doesn’t ask questions. The security clearance has proven to be an excellent end run around employment laws. The difference is, these are jobs requiring a higher level of education.
Yeah, that’s the truth of it. Just browse Craiglist for Northern Virginia, Maryland and DC and you’ll see plenty of jobs — if you want to work for the Masters of the Universe and the Powers That Be.
I am offering no defense of the industry but it must be noted that the Thoroughbred breeding industry is collapsing. A decline 30 years in the making as other avenues of gambling proliferated and racing declined. Combined with the odd makeup of the breeding industries reliance upon dilettante millionaires ‘investing’ in horses as a vanity exercise.
As an aside and way off in the weeds. A buddy of mine had an uncle who worked for decades at Santa Anita. On his last day before retirement they took him upstairs for a party with the hoi poloi. Before an early race he was handed a bunch of betting tickets for a long odds horse. It won.
Jail??? Are you kidding??? They’ll run for office and be elected by the very people they are denying jobs to.
There is another tragic angle to this story. About four years ago I awoke in a motel in Milan, New Mexico to a tragic local news story of a van sliding into the back of an 18 wheeler between Moriarty and Albuquerque NM. At first it was ten dead, then twelve dead then fourteen dead with one lone survivor. All illegal immigrants bound for Kentucky.
Yeah, Lou Dobbs was written about in an article for using undocumented immigrants at his daughter’s horse farm. I can’t remember if it was in Mother Jones or another progressive magazine. I imagine if you google Dobbs and horses it will come up. I also read that a lot of the horse farms have their workers living in deplorable conditions and also make them ride in the horse trailers with the horses while transporting them to racetracks, which is illegal. Don’t kid yourself, these employers want the most they can get for the least amount of pay! The horses probably get treated better than the workers.
I just got done showing this to a friend of mine who works with undocumented workers, and the response was that she was concerned that it was more about making the “illegals” go away than it was with making sure everyone got a fair shake, and I’m not sure that this was the impression that Rayne wants to leave.
My take is that Rayne’s major focus is that undocumented workers aren’t the only ones capable of working these jobs, and they’re definitely not the only ones who want them, despite what the employers claim.
Rayne saidL “Agreed on the “foreign born”, prefer it, but unfortunately doesn’t connote the legal status since many legal immigrants and even some American citizens would qualify as “foreign born.”…”.
Indeed; however, we’re not talking about citizenship, or ethnicity, we’re SUPPOSED to be talking about people LEGALLY eligible for work, no? These employers are not hiring people NOT legally eligible for work, surely! LOL!
Ooh, another opportunity missed! If all your great workers were legal, you could offer them holdings in your new co-op if you’re trying to save your barn!
I love horses, so do many people in the industry. Some will want to continue the tradition (hopefully improved) despite the fact that the industry as a whole is on the way out.
They have designated meeting places, where the workers congregate in the morning and the bosses come by and pick a crew from the group. Hasn’t changed from Steinbeck’s day.
GOT’S to have me some illegal aliens to run the stills; man the 1000 acre reefer farms; and, build the historically LIE that is the theme park motif for Kentucky.. Hey, early man and dinosaurs ran along side each other about 6000 years ago so we have to tell THAT story with illegal aliens even doing the moderation…
Sad day for Mitch’s home but anyone dumb enough to still live there deserves it.
If he’d let diners discriminate at their lunch counters and call that “free enterprise’, you can bet hiring illegal workers is that same kind of “free enterprise”.
Every day’s a sad day with McConnell around.
The difference is those who are powerless without options and those who are not. Clearly employers prefer employees who are deathly frightened and completely subservient to the overlords who maintain a boot in their face, no less than paying an employee in script that is only redeemable at the overpriced company store.
It is a story about corporate overlords, or elites, having unrestrained control over a workforce doomed to die in their traces, while shrugging with the dubious claim that they had no options, while the country is in the throes of 10-14% unemployment. Color me skeptical.
Given a backdrop of unhealthy consolidation of capital and ownership and the shutdown of capital/affordable capital for new ownership to arise even concurrently in more than one adjoining country, that makes these “incumbents” plantation owners taking advantage of desperate people migrating across borders for economic opportunity. The illegal migrators conveniently feed the nation-state’s prison systems at some point. So, I am wondering if the penalty for being an illegal employer should be much higher s.t. the policy is used to trust-bust. For example, should illegal employers lose their business license in any US state and have a forced 3 year sit-out?
Bottom line. Decent pay and benefits for all workers mandated through minimum wage, social security, health care laws etc — the problem of illegal immigration goes away. The incentive of jobs goes away because the indigenous workers take them.
Same deal with trade deficits etc. Enforce equal labor and environmental laws globally. No advantage to outsource and no deluges of cheaper than local goods.
That’s exactly the key.
This is why we had unions, to make sure pay made sense for the work that was being done.
These are the same idiots who go around threatening to abuse & deport illegals, meanwhile exploiting them on the low for all they are worth.
Shit’s disgusting.
Not to quibble, but if you’re going to say something to the effect of “a simple google search will yield…” then just do it yourself and post the link.
Lou Dobbs is a flaming hypocrite:
http://www.thenation.com/article/155209/lou-dobbs-american-hypocrite
Baltimore Sun ran a story on the same theme last year (I did a quick search for it but could not find).
If I remember correctly, the story amounted to a plea from horse farm owners/managers to be granted greater latitude in the employment of foreign workers.
Foreign workers – both legal and illegal – are essential to the continued profitability of the business of raising race horses in Maryland, according to my recollection of the story. For a variety of reasons, employers do not wish to hire US nationals for these jobs, some of which offer good pay by local standards.
It sounds like Kenturducken companies are admitting to breaking the law. Shut them down.
Teddy Partridge is upstairs!
Sunday Late Night: Creation Museum Bars Same-Sex Couple
As long as we insist in “economies,” basically this criminal activity is a type of “counterfeiting” of our currency of labor (please see the excellent “Book Salon Preview – Moneymakers: The Wicked Lives and Surprising Adventures of Three Notorious Counterfeiters“) as well a more sophisticated form of trafficking in human beings. How about illegal employers (e.g. like a Mubarack) aren’t allowed to skip town or hop borders and set up shop elsewhere (e.g. flees to Saudi Arabia but only Switzerland freezes his assets, not even the US) so they can’t keep doing the same thing? In that case, how about they get their day in court and the punishment is prison?
“Edith And The Kingpin” by Joni Mitchell (the inimically sophisticated portrait of a crime boss provided by these lyrics)
I keep thinking we all know there’s more to a job than pay, but more and more frequently, there isn’t. The globalization of jobs without concomitant globalized fair labor standards is the height of willing slavery. I think that’s where global and American business wants it to go.
Miserly and self-delusional people want and expect others to appreciate being treated as their slaves. They have no clue how far greater the creativity and satisfaction in life would be with participatory fellow laborers.
The industry types will list any openings they may have with official entities,ie the state employment office, to cover their asses. They won’t waste any money on classified ads as they have no intention of hiring respondents. That is to say legal residents who respond.
As for benefits and pay, by hiring undocumenteds they don’t have to pay the wages listed with the state office or provide benefits. $8.37-9.71/hr my ass. If they are paying that, the workers are getting hosed in company housing and/or commissary purchases.
Ugh. I just saw this: “Robert Fisk: Cairo’s 50,000 street children were abused by this regime” (The Independent (UK), Feb. 13, 2011)
rayne-
this is one of the least informed, i.e., ignorant of circumstances, and most blatantly prejudicial posts/comments i have ever read that you have written.
put simply, you demonstrate not the slighest sense of the topic you are writing about, but evince a great deal of subdued anger (likely motivated by your family’s (very admirable, in my view) business struggle) toward a very vulnerable and valuable subset of folks living in america.
you really should be ashamed of this claptrap you have posted.
and your readers should be wary of the special “test” you designed – kaintuck horse farm employment!!!
what does a lady who “cracks open computers” and, if i recall correctly, is somehow associated with manufacturing and autos, know about the day-to-days of farming – animal or vegetable?
in my state, a state with an important ag portion of the economy, farmers (and other non-farm employers who need cheap labor) cannot find that labor – often at any reasonable price.
do you know upstanding, god-fearing, hard-working, native-born americans who will :
-kill and gut chickens or hogs with the floor slippery with blood, remove their feathers and hair? good! send’em our way.
- bend over for hours in heat and humidty picking tomatoes or beans or melons from their vines? good! send’em our way!
- dig, clean, sort onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes? send’em our way!
there’s a bullying, NEVER EVER adopt live-and-let-live movement in my red-as-the-blood-of-christ state that just acvidently happens ( because you are surely a liberal) to make the same sort of argument you are making.
neither those benighted fellow-citizens of mine, nor so enlightened a person as yourself, seem to have knowledge or caring about the agricultural businesses or the immigrant families to whom those means a livelihood, just as does your husband’s company to you.
hablas espanol, senora?
conozces mexicanos?
guatamalcanos?
hondurenos?
nigaraugencias?
i may understand your anger, but your anger does not excuse your lack of knowledge or, worse for a “liberal”, your lack of empathy.
Reading this thoughtful discussion makes me think that there should be some laws protecting American workers from having jobs taken by citizens of other countries.
Oh wait, there are!
They just aren’t enforced.
The same thing happened in the fast food industry. This mainly from an article I read from a union organizer way back when but looks to be true from what I have seen as my ex-wife worked at McDonalds as a manager for a few years.
The fast food industry come of age in the 70′s and 80′s. American teenagers were their source of early labor. As those teenagers got our of high school many of them sought jobs in fast food as they hung out, looked for better, sought a way-station, etc. they got jobs in fast food. Only one problem–they wanted full time work.
And guess what, full time work or demand for full time hours leads to into state wage laws concering over time and requirements for full time workers.
So the fast food industry basically turned toward illegal Mexican immigrants to replace American teenage workers. The industry needed a very compliant part time, low wage, work force. And they got it.
And it always bears mentioning that those who most tout that the “free market rocks” and “supply and demand rules” are the very same ones who refuse to raise wages sufficiently to attract legal workers.
Their own “principles” of supply and demand would indicate that if they can’t find sufficient workers at the offered wages, they would raise wages sufficiently to find those workers.
Yes, I recognize that the Kentucky situation is different. Here, they didn’t even make the jobs known or available to American workers.
Um, make sure you click through to and read the Courier-Journal article to which Rayne makes a direct response then come back and read the article again.
You’re entitled to your opinion. But apparently your opinion is based on not reading the article or my post.
I’ll point this out one more time for you, slowly:
– Kentucky Thoroughbred Association said no Caucasian or African American had applied for a job in eight years.
– Yet there’s no advertised jobs in the paper which cited this as fact.
– There’s no advertised jobs in major job boards.
KTA is defending employers who are breaking the law.
And don’t give me crap about Americans not wanting to do the work on horse farms. I have family who’ve worked farms and my in-laws have owned them and operate one even now. There’s no excuses for illegal employers.
Edit: I just went and looked in the same manner for any jobs mentioning “farm” in Michigan. There’s a farm hand listing on Monster.com:
Without digging, in the top 10 results at Indeed.com, there’s a nursery worker job which popped up using the same search criteria:
The jobs appear to pay about $11/hour; the second one is seasonal, which would be typical for a nursery. Both jobs popped up without much effort to look. It’s not that Kentucky horse farms don’t have legal applicants, they just aren’t advertising their jobs where legal applicants can find them.
The similarity between ancient Rome and the US are chilling. Slaves and war.
I’m pretty sure looking on the internet for farming jobs is not going to give you an accurate representation.
And push for “tougher” border controls, which haven’t worked and never will.
Explain why Kentucky has NO ads for farm hands, but Michigan does.
Explain why the newspaper writing about this has NO ads for farm hands.
And Kentucky is at least 6 weeks ahead of Michigan in terms of farm season; they should have jobs right now. One poster up thread found them but listed as temp jobs paying much less through the unemployment office.
How about the Justice Department enforcing the laws against “EMPLOYERS” for hiring undocumented workers? It seems to me they are going about this wrong targeting the illegal workers. Their job would be much easier if they went after the cause of illegal workers, the employers willing to break the law. Their job would be much easier also considering there is probably 1 employer for every 20 workers. Enforce the law, go after the employer and lessen the court load. There, problem solved.
Yes we DO!
When my niece was in high school, she had a part-time job at a center for mentally disabled kids. Part of that job was taking care of the horses, including mucking out stables. She finally quit because the group expected her to “volunteer” for an all-day event rather than be paid for it. A t-shirt was supposed to be her compensation. People, including young people, will do this kind of work WHEN THEY ARE NOT BEING ABUSED or UNDERPAID for it.
a very sly, evasive rebuttal on yout part, reign.
you were clearly using the kaintuck horse farm situation to advance the general argument used today against illegal immigrants – they “take” (steal) american jobs from americans.
it’s nice to know that some your best family have some connection with american “farming” and that thru them you (clever lass) have absorbed the financial and social realities of that very, very broad class of economic activity.
your post was and remains a trivial, misleading, pandering commentary.
planting and harvesting crops and raising and slaughtering animals is how our society feeds itself. labor, hard labor, is a sine qua non for this class of economic activity. you take your farm labor help from wherever you can get it – if you can get it at all.
finally, i’ll point put to you that the diffetence, the ONLY difference, between a legal and an illegal immigrant is a single piece of paper – a work visa.
would you argue that immigrants WITH this piece of paper should not hold jobs, but cede those jobs to americans?
in this case, “illegal” is a technicality – a technicality generated by our government which is very chary about handing out visas, especially to citizens of neighboring hispanic countries.
it’s just as clear
oh, and are a few newspaper headlines which may serve to leaven your leaden loaf of a post:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/washington/22growers.html
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2010/aug/06/ripe-for-the-picking/
http://www.pri.org/business/american-farmers-move-to-mexico2538.html
http://www.eisenhowerinstitute.org/news/EI_In_The_News/immigration_issues_endangering_agricultures_future.dot
TBH, sounds like a good argument for raising the minimum wage.
You appear unfamiliar with how multinational business organizations use maquiladoras to deny real economic opportunity and impoverish the citizens in adjacent countries in a “trade zone.” Also, you also appear to be uninformed of the fact that there is an international pattern of illegal workers in many countries just for this purpose. Next, the US has many illegal workers not just those from Mexico. As now that the Canadian insiders in their government are as corrupt as their US and Mexican counterparts, the illegal worker movement patterns have really taken off in the last 15 years. Further, as I am a frequent poster here, I’ve never seen you comment on any of my posts and comments I have written (yes, I double checked) regarding American Indian, MesoAmerican and Latin American history and enfranchisement issues, US war crimes in Guatemala, human rights, civil rights, prisons, circular migration, the economic underpinnings and history of slavery and human trafficking, medical research and red-lining practices, considerations in caring for the sick and the old, child labor, dumpster diving, cannabis, or even Abuelita chocolate. You didn’t even respond to my political issues jokes illustrated with “La Cucaracha” and funny videos of Jorge Lopez and chola makeovers.
I’d just like to point out that $4 billion divided by 52,000 = just over $76,000.
In my experience with horse farms, doing some contracting/repairs, I’ve had what appeared to be Hispanic fellows drive through the farm road, stop and come up to me asking for a job…they are not using the papers. They go farm to farm asking for a job.
I saw them come into the main office of the horse farm and apply for a job…that was two other Hispanic men. They use word of mouth…they cannot read English. Horse farm managers know that, also, and do not use that means to hire…why should they? The Hispanics come to them.
Also, I’ve met a Kentuckian who used to cut tobacco for extra money. Last time he tried, he was run off by the Mexican workers who had claimed the field for their own race, telling him to leave as he was taking one of “their” jobs. They threatened to cut off his head if he came back.
I gave you a chance to enter dialogue but you instead returned it with insult. I do not accept your gift.
great story.
What an interesting interlude that two relatively unheard of posters lay out a barrage of jive bullshit . . . that’s just not grounded in any reality but is obviously aimed at smearing the diary author and promoting a false meme . . . the kind of false meme the Chamber of Commerce likes to promote . . . and the kind of disavowal of facts the Chamber likes to employ.
Interesting, we likely found the source of the trolls.
*scrolling*
Great read Rayne.
We live near Cal Expo, my wife waitressed at Turf Club while in college, I cooked there a bit while in college, a neighbor has run the backside track concessions (food and such) for the horse owners/stable workers for 20 years, and still does.
I kinda knew my way around the track one way or another . . . for a decade or more . . . much of what you discuss above is in evidence at the track itself . . . and much of what other comments document was/is also in evidence.
And yes the horse racing industry has been huge and steep decline for 15 years or more now . . . just signs of our times.
Some natural change, much of it foisted by unfettered and deregulated capitalism.
Rcc’d.
As someone who actually lives in Kentucky and who actually has been involved in the horse industry since I worked on the backside as a mucker at Kentucky’s dogfood track, Ellis – I have to say that despite my sympathy with the point you are trying to make, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
There are a lot of minimum wage types of jobs which go unadvertised because they are low paying and the employers are not mega corporations hiring a slew, but instead are a entities hiring a few – often part time. It’s like saying that “it can’t be true” that it’s hard to find someone to come and cut your grass if you can’t point to where you spent the equivalent amount of money that you would pay for the jobs in running the ads.
The truth of the matter is that the work is seasonal, tends to be parttime, and tends to be very hard and dirty work; however, it not only doesn’t need a lot of upper education to perform, it operates in an environment where the work almost has to be low paying because there are only so many costs you can bump onto the monthly cost of keeping a horse that don’t make it cost prohibitive except for the very wealthy.
I do my own stall work and work part time, but whether it’s someone like me with 10 horses in mostly pasture retirement, or someone like any number of my friends who have 1-4 horses or my stableowning friends who board or do layups for 20 and upwards – I can tell you for a fact that it is incredibly difficult to get help for the low paying, very hard work, part time and seasonal type of work that is involved.
Where once the teenage country boys would work for a few hours a day doing things like putting up hay, mucking stalls, nailing fencing back up, cloroxing stalls of sick horses, carrying water buckets from frozen handpumps back and forth, etc. – it’s the kind of work that you have a hard time finding anyone to do now.
You can rail and rant that this is because people have to be able to make lots of money if they are going to do such hard work, but the truth is that, but for a very small sliver of the horse industry – most horses are supported by people who work very hard themselves and live on the constant edge of how to pay the next big vet bill and they just don’t have an extra 25,000 out of their own gross 50,000 to pay.
So they do for themselves a lot or the other common outcome (and just as illegal) is that they have someone who is also collecting some kind of disability who does the work on the side without any reporting.
It is very much like fruit picking and other industries where illegal immigrants are very much abused, except that almost all of the horse industry is mom and pop, struggling to get by themselves, almost no one does anything but lose money – employers. There’s a reason you get extra years under the tax code to show a profit if you are in the horse business. There’s a reason that bumperstickers saying, “The way to make a small fortune in the horse industry is to start with a large one” are so popular.
Sure there are some very wealthy people who may take advantage. But you’ve really targeted an indsutry that you don’t know anything about and where a hell of a lot of the “employers” dip below povertyline themselves if their horse colics and has to have surgery.
And all horse people – “Caucasian or African American” or other – know that a newpaper classifieds is where you look for hay for sale, but not job postings. They know that for jobs, you go where the horses and horse people are and ask. You might have tried getting some info from someone in the industry before you went on the tangents but even from the time I was 16 and on the backside (several decades back) and you did see a lot of African Americans (and horsecrazy young girls) and toothless middlaged men who looked very old and not nearly as many hispanics, no one ran “ads” in a classifieds for stablehand jobs. Feed stores, tack stores, riding organization newletters, travelling to the barns and farms knocking on the doors – those have ALWAYS been the way to get stablehand jobs. Or at least, for the four decades I can speak to specifically.
And here’s the other thing – working with horses is dangerous. Extremely so – even though it is low paying. So if someone doesn’t know enough about horses to be looking for their jobs through those avenues, they aren’t likely to be someone with enough horse sense to turn loose working with your animals without having them get hurt.
If you wanted to dig in and chew on something, the way KY makes getting workers comp for banr help almost impossibly might have been a good topic – but what the heck – a clueless rant about missing classified ads is probably more satisfying.
Or it could be that the nature of the industry is such that, except for a very few high rollers almost everyone loses money and and works a full time job on the side for the benefit of losing money on horses and what they can offer is a part time job with no benefits.
You guys have some kind of wildly out of touch perception of who and what the employers in the horse industry (which is way wider, even in Kentucky, than the race industry). A typical “employer” might be a full time firefighter whose retired (on an 800/month soc sec payment) father lives with him and helps out on an 8 acre lot with 2-3 (usually 1 sound at any given time) “racehorses” that are co-owned by the firefighter and 3 or 4 friends, at least one of which is constantly trying to “get out” because they don’t want to cough up their 2-500/mo share of overhead. This is the employer who needs someone to help when the horses go to the track or travel and it shouldn’t be a big freakin surprise that they can’t pay full time and benefits. Sheez louise – learn the industry first, then criticize it – it has LOTS to validly criticize. But the fact that the vast majority of horse owners who need part time help don’t a) advertise or b) have a full time 35,000/year plus benefits opening available and that forms the heart of your griping is just silly. Crane – if you don’t understand enough about the business to know that, I think that might have played a role in whether or not you got call backs. If you went in with a sense of entitlement to get high wages and benefits from people who often don’t have that themselves, then yeah – they are going to keep doing the work themselves before they hire you.
” and they’re definitely not the only ones who want them, despite what the employers claim”
That has not been what I have seen, living in KY and being involved in the industry. Every year people I know get ready to put up hay and struggle to find anyone at $15.00/hour, because it is back breaking, hard, part time, seasonal work. That’s not to say that they all turn to non-native help, but the contrast is that you can’t live in a horse area without having non-native, healthy guys willing to work really hard show up knocking on your door, even for a part time or just that day job.
The teenage guys up the road that you’ve begged over and over, or the laid off truck driver who you try to cajole – they are all at “notsomuch” after they’ve tossed the first bale or two of hay, or pushed an overful muckbuckets through the mud uphill the first time.
Come to Kentucky and find for my horse friends all these guys who want those flat out hard, filthy dirty, part time jobs that can only support a low wage. Because cleaning a stall is never going to be a $300/day job.
What size farm, Rayne? What is it’s gross revenue, it’s net? How many full time employees with above $11.00/hour jobs and full benefit employees do they employ? What kind of farming is it? What kind of work do those full time employees your family keeps on staff and provides benefits too – what exactly is it that they do?
How much of it was horse related? How much did you say, again?
From the 70s when I got my first job on the track backside through now – almost no one in the horse industry ever runs classifieds. Firstly due to the cost, then for a range of reasons, but most importantly because you need someone, even in low paying jobs, with horse sense (and there’s a reason they don’t call it tomato sense or flower sense or composting sense) or the person or horse or both will, in very short order, get hurt.
Note, too, that they are referencing one segement of the horse industry in that 4 bill -the horse breeding industry. In addition to covering salaries to the 52,000 employees, that 4 bill industry must also cover: purchase of the real estate on which to house the horses (amortization, interest etc.) and housing (barn construction and maintenance, fencing, field upkeep, etc) for the horses, and innoculations for the horses and shoeing for the horses and the breeding fees for the horses, purchase of the horses, farm equipment and truck/trailer, property taxes, feed, salt blocks, supplements, hay, hay storage, hay delivery, euthanasia costs, disposal costs, vet and rehab costs, bandaging supplies, brushes, water, electric … should I go on?
If you can’t stay in business without using illegal hiring practices, then you shouldn’t be in business!
“But paying legal citizens what the work is worth would put us out of business!” is not a valid excuse. I’m sure I could make $50,000 a year hiring homeless crackheads off the street to mow grass at $4 an hour. The fact that my business might not survive if I paid minimum wage, etc, isn’t an argument for repealing (or ignoring) labor laws!
Jesus.
I agree. Clueless rant. Most of the grooms in a racing stable also live there too–their employer provides more for them that “just a salary.” They work hard and hispanics have a way with horses. The job is 24/7. Horses have to be fed 3X day, groomed, stalls mucked out, watered, tacked up and exercised, etc. These equine atheletes are fed very hot and confined to a stall which means they are harder to handle than most horses. There are skills involved that many people do not have but they are not high paying skills. The job also involved traveling from one racetrack to another.
Horse breeding farms also require specific skills–foaling out a mare, handling a stallion/mare in the breeding shed, handling baby foals/weanlings/yearlings. You have to be able to handle these wonderful animals without getting yourself killed or injuring these expensive equines. But again, these are not skills that are high paying skills.
They’re only not high paying skills because the employers are criminals using pseudo-slaves.
Not true. These workers love what they do. Most white and black people wouldn’t last one day–they would quit and not because of the pay.
…he was run off by the Mexican workers who had claimed the field for their own race, telling him to leave as he was taking one of “their” jobs. They threatened to cut off his head if he came back.
I would be very interested to see the police report he filed following this indecent.
The love that they do in the sense that they’ve probably had worse jobs before.
If the pay was right, legal workers would do it. American workers do hard, grueling, difficult, challenging work that requires skill every day in this country.
What a crock, Texaschick. You have such great respect for illegal alien Hispanics when, in the past, all work with the horses was done by Americans, white and black, with almost no Hispanics. Such a disdain for Americans makes me wonder of your patriotism. Not to mention that you have no respect for the lives of those being abused and used, but justify the continuance of this abuse. With charity like yours they don’t need enemies.
I know of an American licensed groomsman who was fired and replaced by an illegal alien. Why? The owner didn’t want to pay the extra dollars per hour to keep a licensed groomsman when he could get an unlicensed illegal to do the job.
~~~ModNote: It is very strongly suggested that, whatever your disagreement with a commenter or author, avoid the ‘Patriotism’ card.~~~
mary and texas chick-
it’s good to read words by folks who have actual experience with one aspect or another of farming, animal husbandry, etc.
the bottom line fact is that this is very hard work for which it is very, very difficult to find workers willing to do it.
those teenage boys that used to be available to put up a field of hay (of which i was one) just aren’t there anymore.
and no small farmer that i’ve ever known has lots of free cash available for labor.
Again, if you can’t afford to follow labor laws, you do not have a valid business model and should not be in business. Hiring undocumented workers is a criminal activity for a very good reason. Everyone knows there are rationalizations for this crime, as there all with all crimes. That doesn’t make it ok.
athena1
your comments evince anger and ignorance.
perhaps you could list a few of what you term “labor laws” for us.
would that be minimum wage laws?
certification or training laws?
what “labor laws” do you see as being not followed?
or are you really just talking about immigration laws, but calling them “labor laws” to hide your intent.
and while i’m at it perhaps you could tell us your experience with
“farming”- caring for horses or, perhaps, completely different forms of farming.
in short, give us some reason to believe you are speaking from more than bullying anger at an easy, vulnerable target – hispanic workers.