I get paid more money for raisins than I do wine grapes or juice grapes. But he couldn't get workers. Without enough workers, he couldn't pick at the optimum time for raisins, so he had to sell his grapes a little later for jug wine. I blame that absolutely on the labor situation. The labor unions don't accept that there is a shortage.
Leaders say it's just an excuse farmers have invented to get cheaper workers.
We have double-digit unemployment in every single rural country in California. There's a lot of people that are without work, but obviously they're not going to work where they're going to be abused, where they're not going to have sanitary facilities in the field, and when they're not even making the minimum wage. Grape grower Shellenberg says that he was paying good wages but still he could find only a few workers. He said the state Employment Development Department, EDD, couldn't help. Opponents of the program say that growers should first look to the ranks of the unemployed for workers, but EDD division chief Diego Haro says that while Fresno County has an unemployment rate above 10 percent, only a tenth of those have agricultural experience.