The Race Is On

Wow! Long time without something new on this little blog outpost. I thought maybe a few posts a month this year would be the reality, but that was just the dream talking smoke in my ears.

Why no blog post?

For the past year I tried my hand as a freight agent. Logging (instead of blogging) lots of computer time checking on various logistics boards from freight companies trying to find good paying lanes that truck drivers would book with me. This gig entailed lots of phone time and quote generations on top of the heavy computer hours spent each day just finding and posting hauls. And when one I posted finally got booked that precious cargo meant I became the dispatch person making sure the driver was where he/she was supposed to be from the moment the load was booked to the minute the haul was delivered and the trailer emptied.  Lots of 4AM alarm noise to get going for East Coast traffic when you live on the Left Out Coast.

Freight agent meant  contract worker, a 1099 IRS form unit of America's working class. No vacation, no benefits and no affiliation with any company, although I could only book hauls for one freight carrier's "independent" business owner-operator drivers.  On May Day I said enough to 70 hour weeks earning well under the federal minimum wage. Logistics is big business in America, but like nearly all big business in this country most of those doing the work from booking, warehousing and hauling don't make much dough and have little or no benefits. The 1099 form I received from the business entity I worked through placed "fishing services" as the category for my work. Oh well.

So late spring sees me in a variety of ball caps and loose fitting clothes gardening the grounds. Well, gardening might be a generous term. Mowing edging, trimming, raking and watering to keep up with spring-spurring grasses, hedges, leaf sprouts and weeds means I'm a glorified weed whacker doing all I can to stave off the inevitable reclamation of the family domicile by nature. I won't claim the title of gardener. Forget planting and harvesting some fruit or something on this 3rd of an acre plot. Who has time for that shit when you also have the pool duties to keep the old cement-pond appropriately cleansed and swim worthy with pitted plaster and warm water the perfect algae growth compound? Although all this activity keeps a body in shape, the heat these past couple of weeks has sapped my motor of any kick by early afternoon.  And it is still spring here in the Southern San Joaquin, before the real broiler temperatures arrive later this month.

Sipping on a cool one after working up the sweat pores I ponder the tough work done by men and women out in the California fields shaking trees while gathering nuts and fruit, digging in the ground with vegetables and doing all the various tasks with irrigation and maintenance. The Byrds version of Woody Guthrie's Deportee plays in the background. Here's a wonderful version by Arlo Guthrie and Emmy Lou Harris, but the Byrds take is the true classic for me from the Ballad of Easy Rider album the group released in 1969.




I have to give the field hands and the small working farmer huge props for strength, courage  and willpower. Field work is very hard work, by any measure, and unlike the category that it usually falls under in the various government and private think-tank repositories of statistics (unskilled labor) a tremendous amount of skill is necessary to do this work, grow and get the food to market and survive in some of the hottest climate conditions on this planet.

I won't bore you with a bunch of stats but California agriculture generated $37.5 billion for 2010 crop and livestock revenues (most recent statistical year) once again leading the nation for agricultural output by a huge margin. Iowa was a distant second and Texas was numero tres with a little more than half the revenue California totaled. But, all this agriculture grandeur is small solace to the hundreds of thousands who work  here in California in the lowest paying and physically demanding industries in America. California also puts to work more than two and a half times the amount of field hands than does Iowa and Texas combined, and 90% come originally from Mexico.

Kris Kristofferson comes to Bakersfield tonight to play a concert to help the UFW. Cheers, old bright dude, for still caring and doing something good for people who deserve it.  

What too many people fail to realize is that when a nation continues to deny one class of workers rights, privileges and benefits it doesn't take too long for other less stigmatized/scapegoated workers to lose theirs. So we see workers in all sorts of occupations from freight (in my recent case) to major food service locations and food processing plants working desperate hours for terrible wages and no benefits with no protections against the big business ownership class. 

So the Prez comes out and says no more deportations for the youngsters whose parents brought them north to try and earn a dollar the really hard way. This announcement is pure politics trying to seal up votes from a Latino community the Tea Baggers want totally gone, and the liberals seem incapable of protecting.  But, as poorly as liberals and Democrats have performed they stand as beacons of light in comparison to what the Republican Party has done to all minority groups in this nation over this past decade. But, all this tension and rancor  over the poor Mexican immigrant might just be a lot of hot air today over a problem that no longer exists, if truly it ever did.

The recent immigration statistics from the government have come out for 2011 and Asians now account for a larger percentage of USA inbound opportunists than do Latinos by a 36% to 31% margin. The Pew Research Center just recently posted a fascinating report on this social shift. What surprised me most was that Asians are far more satisfied with things here in this country than the all other ethnic groups, and the cumulative citizenry as a whole. It also surprised me to see how generally satisfied all people are in this country with their lives. When all you watch, hear and read in the media is how angry everyone is, you have to ask one basic question. If 75% of all Americans are happy with their lives why so much hostility in the media and politics?

Back here in beautiful California, the state that feeds the world, the news for everyone that the Latino immigration numbers have fallen off a cliff this decade are not comforting to many of our farmers and food processors. The trade associations for big agriculture interests in California are busy meeting with the politicians they have heavily invested with over the years like Rep. Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Dan Lundgren. Too bad for the  big agriculture folks that these two members of the House of Representatives are out there working to make it impossible for Latinos to migrate to this country by supporting profiling laws that have surfaced in Arizona and in some southern states. When an industry continues to seek out only the most desperate of people, who will work for a pittance of what their labor is worth, more stories like this one from the Sacramento Bee are bound to follow.

Asians will not be the new immigrant group to replace the Latino in the fields and dairies. Asians now earn more than any other ethnic group in America by a hefty margin. Asians are the most educated ethnic group in America. This is a group that works hard, smart and not for chump change. 

Where will the labor come, from and at what price going forward? It could be as big a problem as water in these parts, because unlike the rest of the country's agricultural fields which are dominated by very few crops that machinery can harvest fairly efficiently, California has a labor intensive array of a multitude of diverse crops to pick from.

All I know is that I'm generally satisfied with my beverage, and my surroundings and hope to blog a bit more going forward now that my 1099 contract workdays are through. Thanks for stopping by.