How much do apple pickers get paid per bin (slavery?)

[LTD]

so your ok paying 12 bucks for an apple I guess

and by the way if you think the farmers are getting rich you should maybe take off the blinders and get out more

[TylerM4]

People haven't learned to think outside the box - that's the big problem these days.

The other big problem these days is people think they magically know the answers without having any experience, insight, or data on the topic. It's painfully obvious to both LTD and I that you've never actually farmed a piece of land.

Ain't nobody making good money farming honestly. You're better off to sell the land and invest. If you are making good money it's because you've started will millions in assets, you're cutting every corner, you're breaking every rule you can without getting caught, and you're using temporary foreign workers.

I grew up on farms, I come from generations of farmers, I love the outdoors and the farming lifestyle. Yet I grew up with a goal of never being a farmer because I also like money.

[youjustcomplain]

People haven't learned to think outside the box - that's the big problem these days.

It's not impossible. It's not rocket science. Just pay the pickers a fair human wage. $18.00 per hour
for back breaking slave labor. Pay the orchardists slightly
higher for their apples, and voila - problem solved.

there's no need for the rich to keep getting richer every day.

What an idiotic idea. The problem isn't people not thinking outside of the box. I'd imagine every farmer and picker have tried to come up with a "better" way. But you have the solution?

Your solution first presumes that any pay less than $18 per hour CAD is not a fair "human" wage. Were do you come up with that number? Minimum wage is just over half that number. And as has been said before, this is not slavery. Those pickers are not owned property and are FREE to find a different and better source of income if that's what they want.

The rich getting richer? So that's your conclusion? Do you seriously think that orchardists are the "rich" of society? Notice how many orchards have disappeared in the past 20 years? What do you think caused that? The orchard owners bank accounts were full and couldn't accept any more money? Seriously, where do you come up with your thoughtless ramblings.


I do wish there was a better solution than needing to pay so little for a very hard job. There just isn't. I suspect that the job doesn't have too many years left in it anyhow. Why pay someone anything to pick apples; I suspect a machine will be doing it for us someday.

[Silverstarqueen]

We don't need machines to put our pickers out of work. Already the Chinese have gone in to the apple growing business and they only have to pay their workers a few dollars a day. They do not have to follow any of the regulations regarding pesticides, land use rules, fair wage. When they got into the business was the beginning of the end for our producers. When the U.S. had cheap mexican labor, our producers had a hard enough time, but with the Chinese going in to business it's a whole nother ball game. Chinese workers can only dream of being paid $10.00 to pick a bin of apples.

[Thinktank]

Here's an example of how easy it is to pay people a fair human wage:

My ICBC insurance is up 50% in the last fifteen years. That's because all those lawyers that get paid
when people crash into one another demand a fair human wage. They demand maybe $100,000 for some
jobs they do - and they get it. And I pay it. And I'm honored to pay it. I would hate to see the lawyers underpaid.
I would hate Canada to be so uncivilized, we have to underpay hard working people for their work, so I gladly
pay my insurance, which has gone up 50%. It's a privilege to pay my higher insurance rates.

All we need to do is pay one cent more for our apples, and the poorest people, the ones who do the back breaking labor
so we can enjoy cheap food, will be paid a fair honest human wage.


all it takes is a penny more.

[TylerM4]

Sure. But you don't seem to understand that the farmer doesn't get a say in how much he is paid for apples. Fruit CO-OP/Packing house sets the price. Take it or leave it.

Been a while since I've done apples. Based on current grocery store prices, I'd estimate they'd be lucky to get 40 cents/lb. Taking 1 cent out of that means a 2.5% cut to total income. 2.5% doesn't sound like much, but when a farmer is lucky to make 10% profit after paying the bills that represents 1/4 of his total net income.

Again - it seems so simple until you actually understand how things work behind the scenes.

Farmers would love the luxury of being able to pay pickers more. Frankly - it's a pain finding people who will work at that price and when you do, they're often meatheads and a total PITA to work with.

[Silverstarqueen]

If prices for apples were dictated, and it was also mandated that the farmer get 50 cents for every pound produced (the grocery store is charging $1 to $1.50), workers could be paid more. Great idea. So how is that going to be mandated. We have one provider of car insurance in this province, everyone complains it is too high, but they have no choice. Can you make buyers pay a premium at the store for apples, can you make the store pay the farmer twice as much for his costs, then you could certainly make him pay the worker more for their work. Of course, customers at the grocery store could easily then say, well I'd rather buy bananas at 60 cents a pound, or oranges at a dollar a pound. Very few people will pay more than $1.50 per pound for apples. Comparing marketing of fruit to the rigged system of ICBC is silly, but that's what it would take. and you would have to prevent other states/countries from providing cheaper fruit coming in to the province as they can sell to grocery store for far less. And none of your apples would be selling outside the province because the product would be too expensive, so there goes a large chunk of the market for your apples.

[TylerM4]

Prices could totally be controlled. Right now prices are set simply by supply and demand - free market capitalism.

The biggest question is "do we want to go there"? It may start with a 1c increase, but it sure won't stop there. It'll end up going the direction of dairy products where people are not pleased. Hop across the US border and you can buy milk/cheese at nearly 1/2 the price. It won't stop with apples either.

What I would really like to see is grocery stores/distributors "cutting out the middle man" the cost of fruit packing and distributing is darn near criminal. The fruit packing/distributing industry gets paid as much or more per pound than the farmer! Really happy to see some of these independent packing houses (mostly for cherries I believe) starting to open up as a result. Farmers are banding together to find a better way.

[Symbonite]

Obviously the OP has no clue..or set foot on a orchard.

[Silverstarqueen]

Okanagan Cherries sell in China for $10-$15, China grows it's own apples , so you are comparing apples to cherries (pun intended) if you think pickers could be paid more somehow for picking apples. Price of apples in China dropped 30% last year. China produces half the world's apples. IF our growers could get $10-$15 for apples, pickers could be paid more. It's not going to happen. Law of supply and demand.

[Dizzy1]

this is Canada, where lawyers get $300 per hour

Guess the apple pickers should have stayed in school, they all could have been lawyers too

[Silverstarqueen]

I knew a fella could pick eight bins a day (not bruised either). So he would be making more than minimum wage. Mind you I would say he worked harder than at most minimum wage jobs. He had done all kinds of interesting jobs in his life, he just liked picking apples and was pretty good at it. Pretty rare when you are looking for orchard workers tho. All types apply , some understand hard work, some don't. Some we had to feed first, because they couldn't work hungry, and couldn't afford food.

[techrtr]

$18.00 an hour? Problem with that is if they're not being paid by the bin, pickers will pick fewer apples and take longer breaks. No incentive to work harder. I tried picking fruit when we first moved to the Okanagan in the late 70's. Lasted 3 days and hated every second of it. People from Quebec continue to flock here every summer though probably because they can live cheap, party like crazy, work outside in the Okanagan sunshine, and go home will a lot of tax free money in their pockets.

If people simply refused to pick fruit, I suppose fruit growers would be forced to pay a higher price per bin, or bring in more Mexican pickers because from their perspective they're probably being paid really, really well.

[charles+]

I started picking apples when i was 15 years old as a summer job which allowed me to take an extra 2 weeks off school to help with the apple harvest back in the 70s. A bin of apples back then was 10 dollars. eventually i was able to pick an average of 9 bins of apples a day at around 45 minutes to a bin, we would quit work around 3 in the afternoon as the heat in sept was still pretty intense in the afternoon. I learned that it was technique more than anything in that you had to learn how to position your ladder, always pick with 2 hands [never hold on to ladder and use 1 hand). No matter how hard i worked my sister would always pick 1 more bin than i and my older brother, sometimes 2. My best was 10 bins in good conditions. I know it sounds crazy but i could stand on top of a 10 foot ladder and pick with both hands. Having spoke to friends who used to work in the industry, up to a few years ago, they informed me that they have not seen any picker who could pick anymore than 5 bins a day for a long time. in those days we would start the season in wenatchee washinton and work our way back to BC. Yes it was hard work but it was always something different and you met new people and made life long friendships with soem of the orchardists. but those were different times and a different age. Yes I do miss those days sometimes.

[davis123]

so let's say the cheapest orchardists pay $22.00/bin and some of the better orchardists pay $26.00/bin.
It doesn't matter. It's a criminally low wage, that equals modern day slavery. $12.00 per hour for slave labor.

We don't live in Guatemala or Zambia here. this is Canada, where lawyers get $300 per hour. Where Justin
just forked over an extra $15 billion for more weapons. Our houses are worth $1,000,000. A 40 lb. box
of apples sells for $100 at retail - the picker gets $1.00 to pick that box. And he better keep picking fast becuase
if he slows down to rest - he'll get $5.00 per hour.

But slavery has always been a good thing, and around the world, slavery will always be a good thing. That's one reason
the rich keep getting richer. Slavery.

Everyone thinks their wage should be more, but let's face it anyone can pick apples if they don't have any physical issues. So why do you think the apple picking trade should pay more? They could literally grab ANYONE off the street to pick apples, you can't grab anyone off the street to be your lawyer. It's better pay than minimum wage and if you work hard you will earn more, sounds pretty fair to me. To call it slavery is ridiculous, if you don't like the pay walk down the street and apply at the gas station or maybe that pay is slavery too? You want the pay of a lawyer, then go to school to become a lawyer. Gawd why are people so whiny about crap like this? Don't like the wage, go elsewhere!