About 60 workers were left in a Eastern Washington field yesterday after they decided that $25 was not enough money for four to five hours of work.
They had to walk an hour and a half just to get to the street so they could wave at cars to find a way home, which is an hour and half away.
The same day, another story starts like this:
Even after deploying 105 prison inmates this week to help pick apples in Eastern Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire said growers still need from 3,000 to 4,000 workers to help harvest before the season’s first major freeze.
A quick look at the map shows that the prison workers in the Wenatchee Valley were an hour and a half away from the Mattawa Orchard, where the “unimprisoned” workers were stranded, the same distance the they had to hitchhike home.
The prison workers are getting paid $8.67 an hour. The “unimprisoned” workers were told they would be paid less than $6.50.
According to the TriCity Herald, Governor Gregoire’s rationale for using prison workers was that “growers could not find enough workers, even after advertising jobs with pay of $120 to $150 a day.”
If the workers in Mattawa had seen those advertisements, I have a feeling they might have passed on the opportunity that left them stranded for an entire work day.
As a web designer with an interest in marketing, I would like to offer my services to any of these growers. Let me promote your $120 a day jobs. I will find workers for you. I think I know some people already (although we might have to take an hour and a half walk to find them.)
If the dissonance has not yet made your head explode, another look at Google Maps reveals that the prisoners were driven at least 6 hours, 290 miles, from the other side of the Puget Sound.
The grower is paying $22 an hour for each prisoner. A lot of that money goes to the security, seven guards, transportation, housing and food. The average prisoner will see “net pay of $1 to $2 per hour after money is subtracted for child support, taxes, crime victim compensation, incarceration costs and any other legal and financial obligations,” according to state officials.
This does not compute.
A video about the stranded workers can be found here.
The story about the prison workers can be found here